Any love for second labels here?

Whether due to budget restaints, QPR chasing, or any other reason, is there anyone who prefers second labels to the main Estate bottling from any producer?

California seems to be the place to find these values as the string of very good to great vintages runs. There seems to be less of a qualitative difference between primary and secondary wines from the same winery, like Napanook versus Dominus Estate or Shafer One Point Five versus Hillside Select, as there was last decade.

Maybe it’s just semantics, but I’ve never heard anyone consider a wine like Shafer One Point Five to be a second label. That’s their regular, main, premium, highest volume cabernet. Even though they have a smaller production super premium reserve wine in HSS.

If that were the case, 98% of California high quality wines would be second (or lower) labels.

I really enjoy our gang wine from casa piena. It’s half the flagship price and the 2013 was slamming

Guess that answers my question - two replies, and one of them was to argue.

One of the year in and year out high scoring QPR’s is Quinta do Crasto’s Old Vine Reserva. About $38-41 and usually is in the 92-94 point range. And it often shows better in “off years” as it gets more declassified fruit from their top cuvees. Hard to go wrong with it.

You’re reading Chris Seiber completely wrong, dude.

Indeed. He’s the least antogonistic attorney on this board.

Key word: attorney. I didn’t say he was being nasty, just that he didn’t even give an answer to the question. His post was completely about arguing that I was wrong and then making his case.

Now this thread is even less about the original question and more about the so called discrepency over One Point Five. TMFL.

There doesn’t seem to be much mention of Chateau Montelena’s Cab vs. their estate cab. It used to be called their Calistiga Cuvee. Have not had in awhile and always enjoyed.

And sorry, but Chris’s points were valid in the discussion here.

Cheers.

Well, you were wrong.

David and Andy - thank you for your contributions on the subject.

Larry - thank you for the first two sentences of your post.

Kyle and Craig -

The rest of you -

Just like most detectives can’t stop being suspicious whether on or off the clock, most attorneys can’t stop debating minutia even about their hobby. It’s not just their job, it’s who they are.

Cypres de Climens. We had a bottle of the 2007 last week and it was a worthy wine. Quite a bit less money then Climens and also less intense, which is good.

I’m not really sure what constitutes a second wine, except for in Bordeaux, where it is pretty clear. I have had the Alter Ego from Palmer a couple of times and it appears to be made in a more early drinking style. For me that is important.

I built my bordeaux collection on second wines from first growths when I first started collecting wine (1998). I branched out after a few years but overall I’m still enjoying them.
Don’t know much about seconds other than as they pertain to bordeaux.

Le Marquis de Calon Segur and Château Capbern-Gasqueton which is not really a second wine but made from the same grapes (albeit with a different cépage) by the same winemakers iirc.

W.H. Smith Bronze Label Cab

Chateau Musar Hochar Père et Fils Red – again not really a second wine but nice to drink while waiting 20 or 30 years for the Musar to be ready to drink!

Sorry you found my reply counterproductive. Let me try to redirect my thought into a more helpful way:

Bordeaux is the only place I’ve heard “second label” get used. I don’t know what you would consider a second label in California. Is Mondavi Oakville a second label to Mondavi Reserve? Or is Mondavi Reserve a second label to Mondavi Reserve To Kalon? Is Sea Smoke Southing a second label to Sea Smoke Ten?

Define for us what you mean by the term, and I think we can have the discussion you want without too much sidebar about whether that’s the best terminology or not.

Why do we have to have a sidebar at all? Are you saying that people here didn’t know what I meant? If I got the point across, which I obviously did because anyone into wine knows what a second label means and there are already members who were playing along without parameters being set, then there’s no need to turn this into a thread on semantics. There doesn’t have to be strict adherence to industry nomenclature, nor a direct translation of Bordeaux classifications to California wines. I also did not restrict Bordeaux from the discussion despite using examples from California (one ill-chosen), so if a member felt the need to pick nits they could reply with examples from only Bordeaux.

I guess it’s too much to ask a lawyer to stop thinking like an attorney and just be a wine geek. No wonder half the threads here erupt into arguments.

(… and now I wait for one of our distinguished members of the legal profession to check my math and then reply with something like “No, it’s only 41.7% which isn’t half at all.” )

Yes, I do not know what you meant, outside of Bordeaux, thus my polite questions.

Rather than say what I think of the rest of your comments, I’m just going to end my participation in this thread. I hope you get the discussion you had hoped for.

Well, I apologize then because I thought my idea was relatively easy to grasp, but of course I would because I know what I was thinking.

Here’s part of what Wine Advocate / Robert Parker had to say about the 2012 Dominus line:

“The second wine, the 2012 Napanook Proprietary Red Wine has a similar profile, but certainly comes across as less nuanced and slightly less concentrated and profound compared to its bigger sister.”

Parker calls Napanook the estate’s second label.

Now, if you felt like interpreting my original post differently, you could use the Schrader Beckstoffer To Kalon wines: CCS and RBS. They’re both highly regarded Cabs. CCS is more expensive than RBS on the secondary market, so you could say RBS was the second label if you so desired and then follow your point up with a few sentences.

Another example: EMH makes two Black Cat cabs. She has a Special Selection and a regular bottling. The Special Selection is a bit pricier than the regular.

Bottom line: there are plenty of ways one could join the thread using their own version of what “second” means.

In Bordeaux it’s pretty clear (waits with bated breath for someone to come with an exception).

Elsewhere … isn’t it up to the wine-maker / winery to indicate if they think a wine is a ‘second’ or ‘third’? Absent an explicit declaration, I’d presume it’s “I love all my children equally”.

There has to be, I would say, some sort of selection - of fruit, or location, etc, by the wine maker - to support the designation of first / second etc. The market may have an opinion that one is “better” (worth more $) than another but that’s just an opinion if the winemaker didn’t set out to do that (make one wine “better”, as opposed to just different).

For the market Id use ‘top ranked’, ‘second ranked’ or something like that.

PS: Oh, and, Yes, depending on price. Carruades for example used to be a favourite until the prices got silly. Reserve de la Comtesse. Many others.