The dreaded email postcard

Sorry folks park is closed email from SQN. Always next year.

Patience is rewarded.
I waited 7 years!

Still waiting 9 years later. -0- attrition from last offering. Crazy.

The issue with these hype train wines is that even if people no longer want their allocation, they stay on and treat it like an annuity.

From SQN:

We are in the process of offering three new wines.
The 2014 Grenache “Shakti,” the 2014 Syrah “Piranha Waterdance” and the 2012 Petite Manseng Vin de Paille “Shackled.”

Horribly enough we don’t have enough to offer some to you. Please know - with absolute certainty - that this is very much disheartening to us and that we much, MUCH rather send you an invitation to buy. But Mother Nature simply did not grant that. In fact, in this outset phase of this offering we could not take on a single new waiting list customer.

Seems that way, although honestly, its not worth my time/effort for something you can’t really scale. Of course we know people who do nothing but sit around and flip bottles all day, so it’s worthwhile to someone I suppose.

I’ve dropped 4 others this year that still have some arbitrage opportunity, it’s just not for me. I dont know what it is about SQN and Scregale, but they have been unbreakable for a decade. At some point, a generational gap has got to break their run, but who knows.

How did you know that? That is pretty wild.

I was a mailing list member, but I dropped them a couple of years ago, mostly because the cost was getting to be a lot, and they won’t ship to PA, which made shipping a real hassle for me. A shame, because I do like their wines, especially the grenaches.

I’ve only been waiting a couple of years because direct shipping became legal in MA less than 2 years ago. If I had only known.

Congrats! Glad you could join us in the bi-annual account draining ritual

A couple of questions / observations:

  1. Are they still offering the ‘second’ label and if so, what is that current release situation?

  2. If yields in 2014 were off, 2015 is bound to be even worse, knowing the conditions of vineyards in the SB County area - so don’t expect much to change next year either - sorry . . .

  3. I wonder how much of their production is their ‘regular’ offerings vs their extended age ones . . . perhaps in 2014 they decided to switch things up?

Cheers

Can anyone post their email address?

sqn@sinequanonwines.com

What is their “second” label?

Took me 10 years to get on.

Bob, they noted in their ‘none for you’ email that they were unable to bring anyone onto the list for this offer. I suppose that could mean someone did drop off, and yields were just down. I simply inferred the attrition because they explicitly came out and said only 3 people had passed on an offering a few years ago. (I don’t recall when, but I’m pretty sure it was when they were still sending paper postcards.) Regardless, movement here is sluggish at best. It sucks watching the price creep up on this each year. It wasn’t until ~9 years ago that I realized VA opened up to direct shipping. Before then, I didn’t even know mailing lists were a thing because I couldn’t order direct. It took me a few years to catch on that state law had changed, and by then, it was too late to get on a few lists.

I elected not to take my NoK allocation this year because someone had reported they were into 2007 sign-ups last year for SQN. Doesn’t look hopeful based on vintage yield for an offer any time soon. NoK is just as painful a wait. I responded to the initial offer in 13 minutes and it took 6 years to get an offer…

nok?

I also received the email. I forgot that I ever signed up! :wink:

Its too bad we didn’t hook up earlier. Part of the reason I decided to drop off the list was because I was having a devil of a time finding someone in a shipping state willing to accept my shipment, split off what they wanted, and send the rest to me. Even at cost. I think people either wanted their own allocation or none at all.

Or is Larry talking about regular vs. EBA bottlings?

I wondered both of those, too, except that he also referenced “their ‘regular’ offerings vs their extended age ones”, and NoK is a separate label, not a second label.