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What’s wrong with raising prices if it’s that good?

A Year in Burgundy

As in all things, relationships matter. Good business is personal. A personal relationship requires attention and reciprocity. You have to be willing to risk rejection and disappointment. Some relationships work out, some do not. Every relationship is unique. Let it develop organically.

Cheers

I have a bottle each of the 2015 Prager Achleiten and Bodenstein Riesling Smaragds, if anyone could comment on these and drinking windows in context of the vintage. I haven’t tasted the 15 Austrians broadly but have had the Prager Achleiten Riesling twice; once in 2017 and once in 2018. It showed a...

I recently realized that the more I taste, the more I am able to find pleasing wine at a pleasing price. My per-bottle spend is trending down while my per-bottle enjoyment is increasing. How about you? You can see a CT report with annual averages at https://www.cellartracker.com/list.asp?table=Pivot...

This is a category where I generally get the least satisfaction from bottom fishing.

However, the J Laurens Cremant de Limoux Brut is pretty good and for $14 beats anything else I’ve tried under $30.

Every year my average purchase price goes down and my average rating goes up .... this is a game of skill, not of chance

Made it to Lamaii tonight! Iffy strip mall location with several abandoned storefronts but a beautiful room once you go in. Really terrific service too. They are serving from a modest sized menu with a mix of common and unusual Thai selections. One dish was outstanding (salmon) and two were average....

I’ve had great luck buying and selling wine fridges on Craigslist...
- got a 180 bottle Eurocave for $100
- got another 180 bottle eurocave for $200
- got a 600 bottle la cache for $1000
- sold the two eurocaves for $600

6 years into this and I haven’t had to get an offsite yet...but ya never know

Lopez de Heredia Tondonia ? The GR 1973, drunk at the domaine, is a great white ... The Montenidoli whites that are on the market in SoCal are 10-15 years old and around $20. I don’t know if they are “top Italian wines”, but certainly not “ones to avoid.” That they would suggest tondonia blanco is ...

Generally, I avoid Tuscan whites and most vermentino, but I may be missing something. It has been interesting to me to explore the Montenidoli bottlings. I’ve especially liked the Vernaccia Tradizionale and Templare (vernaccia+trebbiano gentile+malvasia blend...the poor man’s tondonia blanco!). Bac...

Lots of great options above.

One additional wine that I have enjoyed quite a bit, particularly in the cooler vintages, is the Quintarelli Secco Ca de Merlo. It’s not as much of a bargain as some of the under the radar options but it puts a smile on my face

The clearance shelves today at Krisp

I’m ok with aged massican for $15, prieler for $10...yw

Barbaresco: http://www.enotecadelbarbaresco.com/en/cellars/

Austria: https://www.austrianwine.com/search/wineries/

IDTT is a treasure and I understand that it’s, at least in part, fan-sponsored.

As with WB and CT, I’ve given an amount equal to my average per-bottle spend annually for as long as I’ve been listening (5 years now).

I encourage all fans to do the same.

Vino Carta for wine. So many restaurants down there now it’s ridiculous

alan weinberg wrote: ↑
March 20th, 2019, 12:52 pm

John Davis wrote: ↑
March 20th, 2019, 7:47 am
I d include tax and shipping-because that is what it cost me. IIRC, this has been discussed before and results are mixed.
+1

Poll!

Russell Faulkner wrote: ↑
March 19th, 2019, 7:48 am
Cordobar is now the restaurant Cordo.

Yes - it had already become Cordo when I visited.

I had an epic night at Cordobar during a visit last fall. The prix fixe dinner was excellent for what is essentially a geeky/natty and convivial neighborhood wine bar. Everyone in the place knew each other (or wanted to) and there was a lot of gregarious generosity going on. (“Hey, you wanna try my ...

I host several business dinners a year at restaurants at the big strip casino hotels and have never had any trouble finding decent wines to order at decent prices no matter where we were. Yes, you will (usually) pay 2x retail. No, you won’t (usually) find geeked out berserker stuff. (But that’s not ...

NoahR wrote: ↑
March 17th, 2019, 8:39 pm
Overnoy cheap? Several hundred a bottle here because of the unicorn status, and that’s if you can find a source.

I ran across the savagnin for about 30 gbp at London retail a few years ago. Have never seen it at retail in the US.

Off bottle?

They took my full wine check but charged me for my carry on because it weighed more than 18 lbs

James Cross wrote: ↑
March 11th, 2019, 9:18 am
Bank's new place is open. Some friends went there last night and I'm awaiting their report.

What’s its name?

Another tip that I can share is to avoid making your plane changes too tight when checking wine. You may be able to hurry to make a tight connection but the wine might not. It’s no big deal for your wrinkled suit to spend a day sitting on the Heathrow tarmac waiting for the next day’s flight back to...

It obviously depends on what you are looking for but I have been very pleased with what I have found at Enoteca Costantini and Trimani in Rome (central location / broad selection of the quality italians / good pricing)

I have found unexpected bliss in

Girolamo Russo Etna Rosato

and

Forlorn Hope Touriga Nacional Ukiyo Dewitt Vineyard

+1 Gravonia (blanco)

But are they correlated? I love family domaines and am not one to run a small business through the wringer, but Won’s experience with Halcon is not unfamiliar. I think the basic service level is too often overlooked even by those who cater well to their die-hards. In the age of social media, it can...

The behavior that TCV is engaging in is discriminatory and intentionally so. I don’t mean this in a prejudicial way; businesses discriminate between their customers all the time through loyalty programs, volume discounts, clubs and so forth. But it’s important to not confuse a company’s preferential...

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I opened a few bottles of the 14 base bottling early last year that were picked up stateside and found them to be much as Ilkka describes the 15; savory, with some complexity, and food friendly. A good buy.

Rating at a tasting is as much about “quality of the experience” as it is about “quality of the wine.” The rarity and uniqueness of an experience can easily overwhelm any objective assessment of the wine. The wine I open every Tuesday may be an objectively better wine than the rare old bottle I will...

Tasted 8 of the 2017 wines at the domain in Nov and this was in my top 2. Good pick, Tom.

Over on Instagram, the good folks of Agriturismo Emidio Pepe have announced that they are taking action to end the confusion between their domestic and export releases by labeling the export release as “vecchie vigne.” A welcome move, imo. https://www.instagram.com/p/BsppimxHfN_/?utm_source=ig_share...

We received a liberte for evaluation (thanks Chris!) and the packing was fine. (At least I think it was the liberte; it didn’t say in the packaging anywhere.) Our first trial was Alessandria Pelaverga 2016 side by side with a Gabriel Glas gold. These glasses are very similar; Chris’ has a smaller m...

Liberte (in large print!)

We received a liberte for evaluation (thanks Chris!) and the packing was fine. (At least I think it was the liberte; it didn’t say in the packaging anywhere.) Our first trial was Alessandria Pelaverga 2016 side by side with a Gabriel Glas gold. These glasses are very similar; Chris’ has a smaller mo...

Why is this thread focused solely on retail customers buying from retailers. Importers cherry-pick. Certainly, I would hope that most top quality importers would stand behind the wines they sell and so would not buy wines from producers they don't think are top. In fact, don't most high quality imp...

Most stores don't put the real cherries out on the shelf to be snatched up by first-time customers or those with no loyalty. Yes. Why do sellers of wine need to bundle? Are they all just selfishly exploiting their best customers or protecting themselves from a harmful effect? If it’s selfish exploi...

So, you sell it to him or you don't. You name your price, if there is one, and he pays it or doesn't. There is no moral dimension to this equation so far as I can tell. Moral is too strong a word. There’s also etiquette and ethics (the philosophical kind; not the legal kind). You walk into the stor...

Cherry-picking or a cherry-picker is generally meant to be someone who comes into your store and only wants to buy your Raveneau Clos, Allemand Reynards, Fourrier CSJ, etc. That is traditionally how the trade refers to customers like that. Yes, those are the wines I meant, just not solely in the re...

Neal.Mollen wrote: ↑
January 6th, 2019, 10:43 am
At a retailer I am a paying customer and I am only concerned about myself. There is zero connection between these circumstances.

Are there really no relationship considerations? Don't retailers/distributors/wineries/etc steer their most prized wines to their best customers?

I like the creative answers (thanks Matt & Victor!) and appreciate the legit responses that expose some of the different contexts where this comes up (winery/collector direct purchase, retail/collector, collector/collector at offline, maybe importer/winery too). To be clear, I am thinking of social ...

Asking for a friend.

Hi Alan I haven’t done a travelogue. As much as I enjoy making the trips and reading others’ tales from the road, I always feel that recounting the trips in full would be boring. The thread drift police are going to take my WB posting license, but here are some quick takes, since you ask: - Th Feast...

The 16 Tribut village was a disappointment; I think we poured it out. Looking forward to opening the 13 Beauroy now. I found these at Vinograf, Ilkka, visiting on your recommendation (!) but think the Beauroy at least is imported to the states.

By the way isn't the vineyard actually located on the other side of the border in the Kremstal region? Yes, it's in the Kremstal region adjacent to the Wachau/Kremstal border and directly across the river from the domain. The Austrian Wine folks publish great maps! https://www.austrianwine.com/pres...

Great read, thanks. I have a single bottle of the 2010 Steiner Hund but really have no idea when to drink it. The early notes were all full of praise but the more recent ones kind of seem to either indicate that the wine is going through a shut down period or that it will not be a long ager. I have...

1986 Nikolaihof Riesling Steiner Hund

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