2011 Maison Ilan (and other Maison Ilan / Ray Walker discussion)

[Scott_G_r_u_n_e_r]

Funny. I thought Maison Ilan had some grand cru’s. Seems they are all premier cru though.

[Alan_Rath]

@Charlie Fu

almost everytime someone posts a thread here, Ray responds to their inquiry via private communication…

I know, but I felt obligated to respond to the “queue the apologists” comment Seems like Freek was justified posting here, but other people seem to just pile on with no added value.

[Rick_Smith]

@Scott G r u n e r

Funny. I thought Maison Ilan had some grand cru’s. Seems they are all premier cru though.

Well played.

[Peter_Kleban]

@Alan Rath

@Charlie Fu

almost everytime someone posts a thread here, Ray responds to their inquiry via private communication…

I know, but I felt obligated to respond to the “queue the apologists” comment Seems like Freek was justified posting here, but other people seem to just pile on with no added value.

What else is new?

[Chris_Presutti]

@M A T T H A R T L E Y

@Alan Rath

@Chris Presutti

Queue the apologists…

I’ll play. Ray used to participate here, providing lots of good info and stimulating topics. And he would tell us what he was doing in the winery, give us updates, make predictions. Some times those predictions and schedules didn’t turn out right, and some people get annoyed at that. So they would come here to complain and criticize. Now Ray says nothing, doesn’t participate (like 99.99% of all winemakers in the world), and some people come here to complain and criticize.

It should be clear that Ray isn’t going to answer anything posted here, maybe people will figure that out and stop expecting to learn anything useful here.

Please refer to post #29

Bingo!
How do you rationalize that, Alan? Blindly defending poor customer service also adds little value to a bulletin board. Has Ray been on vacation since January? Has vacation or criticism from this board caused Ray to give Freek half-assed, untrue, and no responses to his very reasonable and civil e-mail inquiries? My problem is not with Ray but his legion of bootlicks who have convinced themselves that he can do no wrong.

[SteveBrown]

I call dibs on the Legion Of Bootlicks band name.

[Chris_Presutti]

@SteveBrown

I call dibs on the Legion Of Bootlicks band name.

I love your Frank Booth avatar, Steve.

[Jon_Hesford]

Alan raises a good point but how many other winemakers have built their market using bulletin boards? The subject isn’t really Maison Ilan. It could be any winery. The debate taking place here is really about a business that builds its reputation and customer base through social media but when things start to get a bit tricky, for whatever reason, the business throws the toys out of the pram and refuses to communicate via the channels that they used so freely in the past.

Ignoring that this thread is about Maison Ilan, how are people likely to react to any direct-to-customer business that follows that path?

[Paul_H_Galli]

@Jon Hesford

Ignoring that this thread is about Maison Ilan, how are people likely to react to any direct-to-customer business that follows that path?

The reaction would be about the same as when a fellow winemaker trashes another even though he has never met or communicated with Ray or tasted his wines…

TTT

[Dale_Bowers]

@Paul H Galli

@Jon Hesford

Ignoring that this thread is about Maison Ilan, how are people likely to react to any direct-to-customer business that follows that path?

The reaction would be about the same as when a fellow winemaker trashes another even though he has never met or communicated with Ray or tasted his wines…

TTT

Normally Paul I would agree with you but the OP did communicate with Ray concerning delivery. Ray provided inaccurate information, then went silent.

I run a business too, and learned a valuable lesson long ago: Never promise anything you can’t deliver. Whether it be a product, service, advise, etc. That probably goes double for a product-based business. If I tell a client that I will be at their farm at 1 PM on Tuesday, I better show up at 12:59. If there is an emergency and I can’t make it, I better call and apologize, explain why, and reschedule at their convenience.

I realize Ray is kind of a one man band. Responding to every email on a timely basis might be asking a bit too much. However, the inaccurate information bothers me more than the response time.

And before you say I have no horse in this race, I am a Mason Ilan client.

[Peter_Chiu]

Jon is expressing his opinions in a wine discussion board.

Do I find his comments : * trashing * ?

Not really …

[Alan_Rath]

@Chris Presutti

How do you rationalize that, Alan? Blindly defending poor customer service also adds little value to a bulletin board. Has Ray been on vacation since January? Has vacation or criticism from this board caused Ray to give Freek half-assed, untrue, and no responses to his very reasonable and civil e-mail inquiries? My problem is not with Ray but his legion of bootlicks who have convinced themselves that he can do no wrong.

So let me ask, out of curiosity: do you know Ray? Have you met or spoken with him? Have you tasted or bought his wines?

BTW, “bootlick” is a bit strong, and I think undeserved. I have not been an unabashed defender of Ray, I’ve criticized him for some of his communications (or lack thereof). But having known him for quite a few years, visited him in Burgundy a couple times, become familiar with him and his family, I tend to be a little more forgiving than it appears others are for his marketing and communications imperfections. In my mind, those certainly don’t earn him the now routinely periodic thrashing he gets here.

[Freek_S_u_i_j_v_e_r]

Hi all,

I really do not want this to turn into a pro-Ray / against-Ray thread. I started it because I was curious if anybody in Europe received the wines. So far, the answer seems ‘no’. It annoys me that I get incorrect or ever-changing answers, but I still assume that the wines will get delivered. And that I will enjoy them once they get here. But I am running out of patience with the way that this is going. I invested a (for me) signficant amount of money and I do expect to receive what I paid for…

[Jim_Hartten]

I haven’t purchased any wines from Ray, but I was a member of the David Klinger Hospice de Baune group for vintage 2005, which resulted in many of us getting our wines, in what - 2010/2011. So I don’t think those of you waiting for 2011s to deliver have yet been waiting an inordinate amount of time, though I sympathize with the miscommunications. Just a little perspective.

[Jim_Schultze]

I hesitate to wade into this because I don’t know a lot of the background. However, for what it is worth I had a great meeting and tasting with Ray last week in Nuits-Saint-Georges. I really admire what he is trying to do, and I tasted some potentially great wines, both premier and grand crus.

Clearly Ray is a real iconoclast, and he doesn’t worry too much about what other people think. He has taken a very pure approach to making his wines–which particularly in Burgundy is very difficult. Having been to Burgundy many times over the last 20 years, and talked to many winemakers and others, I can confidently say that the general perception of Burgundy is very different from the reality–there is a lot of manipulation that goes on in some vintages, even at some of the best known wineries (I’m not saying all wineries!). Even the yields are different than they are represented for many premier cry and grand cru vineyards.

But back to Ray–he is extraordinarily busy, collaborating with the many vineyard owners he has developed relationships with, working with his distributors, making wine, looking for and moving to new facilities, and yes, responding to customers. I cannot speak for Ray, but I think he has become very frustrated with a lot of the inaccurate or outright false things that have been said about him. He simply does not have time to respond to a lot of it and has chosen to not spend any more time on this.

He is one of the few people I’ve met who I think is true to his principles and I wish him great success in the future.

[CFu]

I wonder what’s been inaccurate or false said about him.

[Peter_Chiu]

@Charlie Fu

I wonder what’s been inaccurate or false said about him.

Yes - + 1.

[Alan_Rath]

@Peter Chiu

@Charlie Fu

I wonder what’s been inaccurate or false said about him.

Yes - + 1.

There have been numerous posts over many threads over the past year (and more) questioning his veracity, his ethics, his motives, events in his past, and more. Some have implied that he doesn’t actually have the wine to deliver (even though any number of us have seen and tasted the wines in the cellar, and reported that multiple times here). Some have implied (weakly or strongly) that he is a charlatan, or a scoundrel who used unethical methods to secure fruit, or is just an empty self-promoter. I don’t have the time (or, frankly, interest) to go back through all the threads and dig up the posts, but I assure you they are there.

Some of these characterizations may have some basis (he has most definitely done a good job of promoting himself, though that is hardly a sin, and in most endeavors would be applauded; he seems to let some communications drop through the cracks; he has sometimes been overly optimistic in projections, etc.), but in my view most are at best baseless, and at worst offensive.

Maybe one day we’ll all read it was all a shell, and Ray will turn out to be a total fraud. Hundreds (thousands?) of people were fooled by Madoff, so anything is possible. But Ray’s life and professional path, and the amount of work he puts into it, seems like a mighty poor choice as a vehicle for fraud.

[Tom_Blach]

Well said Alan.

[Chris_Blum]

I think people just want their wine that they paid for. I don’t think that is too much to ask.