Harlan Live

Time to drop off another list…

2013 Harlan Estate:

Bottle: $700
3 Bottle OWC: $2,100
Magnum OWC: $1,500

2012 The Maiden:

3 Bottle OWC: $645
6 Bottle OWC: $1,290

Both great wines, have had prior vintages of both, but this pricing is just absurd.

You beat me to it . . . not that I am on the list but someone in my office put his name on the list almost as a joke and asked me if I wanted it. I signed up for the list years ago and by the time I finally got an offer, it was $350, which I thought was ridiculous.

Yup.

$700/btl of current vintage Cali cab is seriously tough to swallow both literally and figuratively. Maiden is a little closer to reasonable. Asking price for Harlan Estate is just way too rich for my blood. There are literally TONS of bottles and back vintages of other produces that you can get for that kind of pricing and ready to drink.

Does anyone know how much of the estate he produces? Does he actually sell it all at those prices?

I ask because I like my high-end napa producers, but it feels like some of the first wave of 90’s cult producers (Screagle excepted) like Bryant/Grace/Harlan/Cogin are really starting to get overly agressive with their pricing, and to echo Albert above, there is other crazy good wine to be had for less.

My thoughts exactly. Why dump 700 bucks into something that you shouldn’t drink for years when you can buy 6 really nice, properly aged wines for the same price???

And on the Maiden, it’s good but not great. We blinded the '09 a while back and it lost out to several other, cheaper widely available Cabs from the same vintage. Personally, it’s a $50-75 bottle of wine with a $100+ of breathless hype…

You guys are pretty funny. We all know that great an exceptional are subjective and relative terms. Yes, there are some absolutely wonderful, in my opinion, cabs coming out of that area left dough.

That said, the same could be said for wines from every single region and variety in the US, and most other countries around the world.

Just my $.02 . . .

jeez with all this love from the board you would think the web site would work just fine… IT isnt

What are we missing? Just the hype?

The Estate is one thing as its arguably the second wine to SE in the whole of Napa.

My issue is with the Maiden pricing, its a second bottle and your charging money equivalent to HSS and double Monte Bello, not to mention higher than lots of great cabs like Dunn, Spottswoode, Montelena Estate, Myriad, Quivet and a host of others

If they market hadnt just crashed i might consider this. But right now i cant justify $700 per bottle.

Unless i thought i could flip it which isnt something i do so…

I guess im not buying these.

Estate is a $50 increase from last year. Maiden up $15

So do you think they should price this wine at half the current price and let the secondary market raise it up to this price? Would that be better?

No I have not had many of these, the few that I have had has been pretty spectacular wines. They have been more in line with old world Bordeaux than many other Napa cabs.

YMMV of course.

Every major wine region has wine that is priced for both its quality and its worth as a collectible. Its hard for me to fault someone for spending too much on a bottle of wine due to its scarcity when I own like 50 different copies of the lord of the rings. I have a Hobbit that cost me nearly $1000. Sometimes the thrill of collecting something rare is its own reward. It can be a bummer when that collecting attention drives up the price of favorite wines, but there are always more producers and regions out there.

Harlan Estate is clearly an excellent wine. I was on the list for many years, but dropped due to placing orders for say 12 bottles and 2 magnums and getting 3 bottles. My first order included a bottle of the 1994 Harlan. Incredible wine!

I had a '94 last month and, while wonderful, it was still a baby. Anyone shelling out $700 for a new release had better have both cellar space and plenty of patience. Or a masochistic love of young tannic cabernet!

too rich for my wallet but frankly, i have never had a bad bottle and if this had a french sounding first growth name, would we all be dumping on it’s price? i mean, heck, some of those first growths in worse years making 30000 cases charge as much…

i stopped buying after they screwed people with the 2002 vintage and said FU to some long time buyers. then sold my remaining vertical back to 95 at auction.

i still have a few other bottles but this is just to much. frankly, SQN is getting too rich and but for my childs need to have lots of money set aside, for which SQN will assist in 10 years from now, i would drop them too.

I also dropped off the list at $350 and never looked back.

I no longer drink much cab and what I do buy is definitely under $100. I guess there is no need to sign up for the mailing list.

I heard Cash Steele bought 6 cases.

Man aint that really something though. I mean i can kind of understand a great small producer charging $700 but when you make 300,000 bottles of something…???

Fabulous wines, but I too quit when they passed $350. If my net worth was in the dozens of millions, I might still be a buyer.