Deal Alert: $65 Five Course Meal w/Wine at the Mandarin Oriental Boston


Gilt City is offering a five course meal paired with one glass of wine at the Mandarin Oriental Boston's Asana restaurant for $65. The going rate for their 5 course tasting menu is $85 and this offer includes a glass of wine (that I'd estimate at being worth around $10 minimum) so this is a value of around $30 per person. A good way to try out a swanky restaurant at a swanky hotel if you're interested.

But the deal comes with an interesting kicker that can make this deal quite compelling if you're into spa visits. It includes a $50 gift certificate good towards a treatment at the Mandarin Oriental Spa. Beware that most treatments run north of $200. But if you're interested in getting to know this hotel and its amenities, and can navigate the restrictions that accompany this deal it can be a good one.

But wait, there's more! You can whittle the price of the Gilt City voucher down a little more with a couple tricks.

First, buy the deal through a cashback portal like FatWallet which is currently offering 4% cashback on Gilt City purchases.

Second, if you're not a Gilt City subscriber you can get $15 off your first purchase by being referred by a friend. Like me! I'll also go $15 off my next Gilt City purchase if you sign up so thanks in advance for using my referral link if you so choose. ;)

Alright, got it? $65 - $15 = $50 plus 4% cashback from FatWallet. That's $48 for the meal with a glass of wine and the spa gift certificate as an added bonus.

Just make sure you check out the restrictions on the offer page to make sure you can take full advantage of this offer.

Here is a link to the offer on Gilt City
Offer expires 1/21/2013.

Related Reading:

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Robert Mondavi 2012 Blessing of the Grapes

The introductions were made by Margrit Mondavi, a gracious lady, so caring and gregarious. Winemaker Genevieve Janssens spoke about the outlook for this year's harvest. After two previous difficult harvests, she is thankful that 2012 promises to be an outstanding vintage. Continue reading

The post Robert Mondavi 2012 Blessing of the Grapes appeared first on Napa Valley Wine Blog.

Source: http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/napablog/robert-mondavi-2012-blessing-of-the-grapes/

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Field Notes from a Wine Life ? Power Structure Edition

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass…

Naked Wine and Occupy Wall Street

It’s not hard to notice the parallels between the natural wine movement and Occupy Wall Street - both are valid causes sorely lacking coherence and a rallying point that would move them from fringe head-scratcher to mainstream momentum.

  Natural wine is about purity of wine expression—shepherding grapes grown without chemicals to the bottle with as little human manipulation as possible, representing the place where they came from in the process.


  Occupy Wall Street is about re-calibrating the world’s best economic system – capitalism—to preserve the middle-class, the labor force that has allowed the U.S. to create the most productive economy in the world.

Neither movement represents fringe radicalism as some would have you believe.  I look at both as being valid inflection points and, at their core, about keeping a balance between big and small, allowing every man and woman an equal opportunity at pursuing success around their particular truth.

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What reasonable person would deny the validity of either if not clouded by confusion?

One idea well-conceived and well-communicated can change the world, but, unfortunately, both the natural wine movement and Occupy Wall Street are prevaricating from their essential truth, rendering them both toothless and feckless.

No need to crib from Che Guevara, but appealing to base logic and the common denominator would do both movements some good.

Just one man’s opinion…

On the Aussies, Redux

A few weeks back, I noted how the Australian wine industry was poised for a rebound in public perception due in part to two things happening in concert – public backlash to Yellow Tail wine, what I call the, “Derision Decision,” and an unspoken coalition of influencers recognizing Australia’s artisanal wine production – the antithesis of Yellow Tail.  I cited recent sympathetic mentions from Jay McInerney in the Wall Street Journal and Dan Berger, wine writing’s current patriarch, as proof points.

You can add to the list of sympathetic mentions about artisanal Australia with recent mentions from Jancis Robinson and James Suckling.

Don’t sleep on Australia.  It’s making a comeback slowly, but surely in public perception.

Tim Mondavi and Wine Spectator

Thomas Matthews, the Executive Editor for Wine Spectator magazine (WS), has commented on my site a few times.  Each of these instances has been to protect or project Wine Spectator around its editorial goals.

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Good on Thomas for not being afraid to get in the ring.  Certainly, WS takes its fair share of shots from the wine chatterati, mostly with grace and aplomb.

Lest I cast myself as anything but objective, I should note that James Laube’s article on Tim Mondavi and Continuum in the current issue of WS (November 15th issue) is everything right about what mainstream wine media can offer wine consumers that online wine writing (mostly) doesn’t –long-form, depth, first-person access and an effort that takes weeks and not hours.

Laube’s piece is excellent - well-written and balanced; acknowledgement thereof is in order.

Besides the Wine

Jordan winery has two wines – a Cabernet and Chardonnay, but they really have a triumvirate in terms of things to buy.  Jordan focuses on food and wine as being partners at the table and, to that end, any purchase from Jordan should also include their olive oil.  Wow!

The Jordan olive oil makes Trader Joe’s EVOO seem like Two Buck Chuck, comparatively speaking.  A little whole wheat Barilla pasta, some homemade pesto using the Jordan olive oil and some artisan bread in five minutes a day and you’re assuredly living the good life.  The rub is I wouldn’t pour the round Jordan Chard with the pesto, probably a Sauvignon Blanc, but don’t let that dissuade you from picking up their olive oil – it’s good stuff.

Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/field_notes_from_a_wine_life_power_structure_edition/

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The Real Reason Wine Bloggers Are Not Relevant To Advertisers

Almost all of us don’t treat blogging as a business. And those few who do find building a community around a wine blog very, very difficult. Without hundreds of thousands of pageviews a month, advertising on blogs of any topic is not a viable business. Source: Typepad Via: FERMENTATION There are are a grand total [...]

The Real Reason Wine Bloggers Are Not Relevant To Advertisers originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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Viognier Theme for WBW78

Nice theme for summer. Join us June 20th. Source: WordPress Via: Drink What You Like I?m delighted to announce that I am hosting Wine Blogging Wednesday #78 on Wednesday, June 20th. WBW78 will mark my second time hosting this monthly virtual wine event. Our theme for this month will be a grape that is near [...]

Viognier Theme for WBW78 originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Winecast/~3/SaN6i1INvI8/

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Saving at Wine.com by Double Dipping

Wine.com is our nation's largest online wine retailer. They're the only national retailer I'm aware of that's gone through the trouble of obtaining a Massaschusetts retailer license so they can legally ship wine to residents here. They've gone to similar lengths in other states and as a result have the widest reach of any online wine retailer.

But their prices are high.

And they're not exactly the most favored of wine retailers thanks to antics like a sting operation targeted at other wine retailers who ship illegally.

So as consumers we interact with them in a "special" way. We'll buy from them if there's a good deal to be had, but we don't exactly "like" them.

One of the central problems, from a consumer's perspective, is how expensive shipping is. This is true for wine in general but Wine.com seems to be pricier than most. So this post will serve as a description of a way to get their fully loaded prices down out of the stratosphere with their Steward Ship program combined with a little trickery called The Double Dip.

Here's how to do it, step by step.

Step 1: Sign up for their Steward Ship program

Steward Ship is their equivalent to Amazon Prime. It provides shipping for 1 year for a fixed price. It "retails" for $49 but they've been known to offer it for half price from time to time. Go here for more information if you don't have it already, but if you can wait until it's on sale:
Steward Ship shipping for a Year icon

Step 2: Buy a Gift Card through an Online Portal

This is step one of the double-dip. You'll can get "x" % cashback by buying a Wine.com gift card through an online Portal. I chose uPromise because when I was performing this experiment they explicitly stated they offer 5% back on gift card purchases:


Bonus: When I ordered the gift card I was emailed a code for $10 off my next order of $75 or more.

There are tons of different cashback portals out there. Some of my favorites lately are Ebates and Fat Wallet, not to mention shopping portals associated with credit cards.

There are even sites which try to dynamically compare cashback amounts across the various portals. Try CashbackHolic.com and CashbackMonitor.com.

Step 3: Redeem that Gift Card through an Online Portal

Once my gift card arrived (Wine.com chose to mail a physical gift card out) I went back to Wine.com to redeem it through a different online portal. I chose SavingsWatch this time because it offered the largest percentage at the time - 7.5%.

I loaded up my shopping card with $75 worth of wine, applied the $10 off $75 coupon I received when buying the gift card, used my Steward Ship benefit that's tied to my account for the year, and applied the $25 gift card. The remaining balance went on my credit card. I was able to find a few wines at good prices I was genuinely enthusiastic about purchasing.

Pro tip: Try sorting on Wine.com by savings - one time I found a wine being sold for less than $2 on sale. Not that I was enthusiastic about trying that wine but it was pretty amazing they'd conceivably ship it out for less than $2 fully loaded.icon


A few days later the transaction appeared in my SavingsWatch.com acount.

Notice in the image below how each of the 4 bottles I ordered were credited for cashback. The $10 coupon was charged back against that, but the free shipping didn't come into play (nicely) and most importantly the amount I paid for with the gift card didn't negate the cashback. A successful double dip!

Discussion:

Ironically, two things went wrong while performing this experience I didn't expect.

First, uPromise still hasn't credited me 5% of the $25 gift card purchase although their terms explicitly say gift cards qualify. I called them about the missing transaction and they said it can take up to 40 days to process. I'm not so much concerned about the $1.25 of course, but it's annoying chasing these things down. Some portals are better than others. uPromise has frequently failed to credit me for transactions.

Second, my order actually still hasn't arrived. Wine.com has reliably fulfilled orders for me in the past, and this one has been mostly FedEx's fault, but after missing a couple of delivery attempts and requesting it be routed to a nearby FedEx location the order seemed to go into no man's land. It illuminates one of many ways this is not the most efficient way to get a few bottles of wine delivered.

Results:

In all, this technique should save the following on this sample $75 order:

  • 5% back on the original gift card purchase (I did just $25 as a test but you could do more)
  • 13.3% off (thanks to the the $10 off $75)
  • 7.5% back when redeeming the gift card through an online portal (the double dip)
uPromise hasn't paid the 5% back yet, but I think they will if I submit a missing transaction after 40 days have elapsed. Plus the wines I chose were on sale and priced pretty well. The Sanford Pinot Noir sells in the $30s at most online retailers in the country.

Here's the potential net of it:

$75 - 5% - 13.3% - 7.5%
$75 - $3.75 - $9.95 - $5.62 = $55.68
That's a total savings of 25.76%

That's like paying $19.23 fully loaded for that $25.99 bottle of Sanford that sells for $35 and up in most stores. Plus no tax on wine in Massachusetts.

And that doesn't include the cashback/points/miles/signup bonuses you might be getting on your favorite credit card. If you consider that you might call this a triple dip.

The Steward Ship benefit has cost me $25 or $35 per year over the last few years. I typically use it 6-12 times a year. What's nice about it is that you can ship out a single bottle if you like. For example, when the 2010 Cosme Gigondas got 95 points from Spectator I ordered a single bottle and it showed up a couple days later.

Subscribe to The Wellesley Wine Press and I'll mention next time I see Steward Ship on sale. Sometimes Steward Ship also includes a Wine Spectator subscription extension.

Conclusion:

The actual amounts you could potentially save using this technique will vary over time, and it's a rather complicated transaction. But I thought it was an interesting exercise that might provide a way to help get more value out of their Steward Ship program.

Related Reading: Wading into the credit card signup bonus game

Question of the Day: Any other tips and tricks for getting the best deals from Wine.com?

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