Maison Ilan 2014 "Sneak Peak" Offer

Let’s keep this one on topic. In case you need help to find other MI discussion:

2011 Maison Ilan (and other Maison Ilan discussion) - 2011 Maison Ilan (and other Maison Ilan / Ray Walker discussion) - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers
2012 Maison Ilan - 2012 Maison Ilan - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers
2013 Maison Ilan - 2013 Maison Ilan - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers

Here’s the email offer (also linked through MI social media platforms, so I’m presuming this is 100% free to distribute public info). Small revisions made for copy-paste propriety (removing images and such).

2014 Sneak Peak

Hello again everyone.
At Maison Ilan, we pride ourselves on doing things the "old fashioned’ way. Of course, as time marches on, things certainly can benefit from a bit of change here and there. With this in mind, Maison Ilan’s next official offer, for the 2014 vintage, will be offered on our eCommerce site. The site should be up in August, with a new home site to arrive shortly thereafter.

This new eCommerce will not only allow everyone to view and purchase allocations; track orders/shipments; and get a more in-depth look beind the scenes of Maison Ilan. The site will additionally provide detail directly from us on each of the wines we have produced, as well as our latest impressions of them.

Allocations are something that we have been flexible about since our first vintage. It was our goal to allow clients to set their own allocations without worry of being dropped from the list or to lose their place, so to speak. 2014 will mark our SIXTH vintage release. With the upcoming changes taking place with our ordering process, there will be changes coming to the allocation system as well. Allocations will now be formed by a variety of factors, including but not limited to ordering history. Specific wines will have individual allocation formulas as well. As before, no one will be dropped from our list for not purchasing. Though we will modify your allocation to correspond to your personal drinking preferences.

These wines are currently in barrel and will remain in barrel until we believe them to be ready. It is our goal to not have wines leave their barrels before they are ready. As always, each of the wines leaving our cellar doors are first brought in as grapes. We feel it to be our responsibility to respect their evolution through a watchful eye rather than sheer guidance. There are many wineries in the World affording wine lovers quite a wide range of choices. It is an honor to have your support of our winery as we do things just a bit differently. We believe it to be important for those that are buying our wines to understand that we wish the best for our wines which then provides the best for our clients. Space is at a premium in Burgundy. This being said, we would rather buy more space to cellar our wines than rush a wine out of the door. Patience is a wine’s birthright that we fully believe in honoring.


2013 Maison ILAN

SIX BOTTLE MINIMUM

Volnay
1er Cru
Les Robardelles
5 barrels total
6 bottles allocated
86€ / bottle

Morey Saint Denis
1er Cru
Les Monts Luisants
5 barrels total
6 bottles allocated
86€ / bottle

Morey Saint Denis
1er Cru
Les Chaffots
5 barrels total
6 bottles allocated
86€ / bottle

Mazoyeres-Chambertin
Grand Cru
7 barrels total
6 bottles allocated
129€ / bottle

Charmes-Chambertin
Grand Cru
“Aux Charmes Hauts”
8 barrels produced
6 bottles allocated
149€ / bottle

Echezeaux
Grand Cru
“En Orveau”
2 barrels produced
(of which 1 to be used in extended barrel aging)
2 bottles allocated
((LIMITED to 75 orders during offer period))
199€ / bottle

Chambertin
Grand Cru / Tete de Cuvée
5 barrels produced
(of which 2 to be used in extended barrel aging)
1 bottle allocated for each case of 12 bottles requested
((LIMITED to 150 orders during offer period))
269€ / bottle

IMPORTANT:

PLEASE SEND ALL ORDER REQUESTS TO:

RAY@MAISON-ILAN.COM

We will need your:
full name
best contact number
mailing address
order request
and the best time to reach you

*Please note that we are moving to a tiered allocation system (based upon buying history) with the 2014 offering once the eCommerce site is active in August.

We appreciate your patience in our contacting you for payment details.

Updates on orders take place during order confirmation and once the wines leave our winery. Prior to shipping, your information and shipping preferences will be confirmed by the shipping company. Along the way, there will be points of updates from our blog and other social media. For all updates in between these times, please visit our Shipping NEWS Page on our BLOG! Click here for more details!

If you have ordered 2013s as En Primeur, we thank you for your support!! Stay tuned for the 2014 - 15 Day Sneak Peak prior to the changeover to our eCommerce site in August!!!

We appreciate your patience and support!
Cheers

Ray and Christian Walker
Maison ILAN

One very noticeable change is requiring a case purchase to get one Chambertin (used to allocate up to 4 with case). Of course, I’m still waiting on my 2011 Chambertin so maybe it’s all a ruse anyway.

If anyone has pricing data going back to the original 09 offer, that’d be interesting to see. Whole lot of $$$, that’s for sure… just not positive if that’s a new thing for 2014, or if 12/13 had similar tariffs.

I haven’t received any email.

Hit my inbox at 4:24 eastern. Check your spam filter?

I stopped receiving emails after I passed on the '13s.

I got this , too.

Prices up from this:

2013 Maison ILAN

SIX BOTTLE MINIMUM

Volnay
1er Cru
Les Robardelles
3 barrels total
12 bottles allocated
76€ / bottle

Morey Saint Denis
1er Cru
Les Monts Luisants
4 barrels total
12 bottles allocated
76€ / bottle

Morey Saint Denis
1er Cru
Les Chaffots
4 barrels total
12 bottles allocated
76€ / bottle

Mazoyeres-Chambertin
Grand Cru
7 barrels total
8 bottles allocated
119€ / bottle

Charmes-Chambertin
Grand Cru
“Aux Charmes Hauts”
7 barrels produced
8 bottles allocated
129€ / bottle

Chambertin
Grand Cru / Tete de Cuvée
5 barrels produced
4 bottle limit when ordering a case of 12 bottles
229€ / bottle

I thought I remembered that the initial release of the Chambertin was more along the lines of 160 Euro.

In the past the price increases were mostly or maybe entirely reflecting the prices of grape contracts. There were big jumps partly due to the yields in recent years. Does anyone know if these 2014 prices are doing that? If so, Burgundy growers must be very confident.

2009 chambertin and charmes were £100 and £50 all in, respectively. I would guess fx rate was around 1.15 at the time so €115 and €58 vs €269 and €149 for the 14s, ca. 20% cagr over the 5 year period.

To put that into some kind of context, I bought the Bouchard clos de beze in 2009 for £120/€140 all in. The 13 was released for ca. £160/€230. A 10% increase for the Bouchard 14 would put it at a similar level to Ray’s chambertin.

I don’t quite understand Dan’s comparison. Is it saying that Ilan is fairly priced or OTT? How would people compare Ilan to Bouchard, or one of the other universally esteemed producers?
I’m just looking at the producers recommended by Revue du Vin de France from 2013 and I see prices from their chosen producers like Echezeaux GC at 70€-170€, MSD PC at 50€ and Charmes GC at 90€. And these are not EP with shipping on top.

From the tasting notes posted here and on CT (given that there are no critics reviews available post 2009) it would appear that the wines are not comparable to those of the upper tiers of Burg producers and, depending on the bottle in question, verging on faulty.

How would people react to an EP offer from an inexperienced winemaker with only 3 released vintages making wines from Napa’s top vineyards and offering them out EP at similar prices to the top estates? If Ray had gone anywhere other than Burgundy and made wine from anything less than Grand-Cru grapes, would people be that interested in Maison Ilan? If this was a young French guy, with the same experience and track record, offering those wines, would anyone pay those prices?

I think those are reasonable questions to ask and on topic.

Jon,

How would you feel if somebody who hadn’t tried your wines bad-mouthed them in a public forum like WB? How would you feel if another winemaker did this? Why do you think other winemakers restrain themselves from publicly insulting wines they’ve actually tried, much less ones they haven’t?

What are your motives for constantly attacking Maison Ilan?

Ugly is as ugly does.

Stick to the topic please Brady

Here’s a thought. Given that there is almost no secondary market in these wines, is the increase in EP prices for 2014 an attempt to make customers’ investments in previous vintages seem more worthwhile? Or is it a genuine reflection of the demand for them?

To Brady or the original OP (Nick, I think) or any other loyal supporter of Ray’s MI:

I haven’t participated much in the original train wreck thread, but I am genuinely curious about this - given all that has transpired over the past several years, why would anyone be lining up to take their 2014 allocations at this point?

If we look at past what can only be described as monumentally bad customer service, we are seemingly left with wines that in the TNs I have seen could only be described as average.

What about that combination would cause one to want to sign up for futures? I’m honestly wondering what I must be missing here, because the information on the Board would certainly not support that kind of a purchasing decision?

Was there a certain segment of folks who got exactly what they ordered on a timely basis? And if you were in that apparently lucky group, have the wines performed to your expectations?

Honestly not trying to be confrontational here, and I know from the lengthy MI thread that Ray did have some very loyal fans (I seem to recall Paul Galli being one, but I may be mistaken there), but after all that has gone on, and more importantly, the TNs on the released wines, from my standpoint I couldn’t imagine responding to this offer?

As I said above, the increases from 2011-2013 reflected the prices Ray had to pay for grapes. I suspect that’s the case in 2014 but I don’t know.

Pretty good question. I would certainly not buy at these prices based on the strength of the 2011s and the one 2009 I’ve tasted. My impression is that the bottled 2010s have been much stronger but I have none. So for me, the 2012s would be the big test, and then I’d have to convince myself that the prices are okay. There are a lot of really good wines for $90+ which is now the entry level. Right now there is a short allocation window for 14s that precludes any opportunity to receive and taste the 12s.

My guess is that grape prices rose again in 2014 and the wine prices are following. That will make it tough to sell EP 14s against the wines in the market and the 13s coming out, except to the extent that the older wines still reflect a higher exchange rate.

In reality I think Ray has burned too many bridges on WB and it’s not where you’re going to find most of the people buying the wines. The market may be there but I suspect it’s not here. I wouldn’t assume that the world’s view of MI at all reflects the WB view. If someone comes here and reads the 2011 thread carefully start to end they will learn a lot about Ray, but if they take a quick look they will just think we’re all idiots.

I’m not a buyer of the 14s (wasn’t of the 13s either). Just relaying the info.

i was thinking the same thing…these prices appear to be competitive with rousseau ex-cellar. which is ridiculous if you think about it.