Do you think the average wine drinker even knows smoke can damage a wine?
I would say the problem starts and stops with Ridge. They knew the proximity of their vineyard to heavy smoke over a prolonged period of time. They could’ve easily just not made Monte Bello or any estate reds knowing there is a great likelihood of smoke taint regardless of their own lab results.
In my opinion, making this wine and selling it when it was smoke tainted is a worst case scenario and erodes the confidence I would have wanting to do business with them.
I was not offered 2020 MB and dropped them so I did not have to buy any of the estate 2020s as I could deduce for myself that their vineyards weren’t going to be safe from smoke.
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I would ask - do i think the average wine drinker is buying $200 a bottle wine? The answer is no. MB is not sold/marketed towards the average wine drinker. Come on. The average bottle sold is like below $10 in the US and I think they call anything over $20 or something “premium”. $200/bottle is for the 1% of wine drinkers of which WBer’s are the .25% of the 1%.
Do I think the average wine drinker who shops/buys/drinks $200+ bottles of wine knows that smoke can damage wine - yes I do.
Man this group loves to attack. I didn’t say Ridge is flawless, I said, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION taking back unopened wine is good customer service. You cannot return other MB Vintages that aren’t opened, but they are allowing it here. Maybe you would have done it differently, of course no one or no company is perfect, except for the arm chair quarterbacks here.
I got better things to do on my Friday, you all enjoy your glasses of wine tonight. this is enough of a thread drift and its clear we agree to disagree on the definition of “good”. Sheesh.
For someone with “no horse in the race” you’re posting in here a lot. Most of the thread drift is your doing.
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Earlier you make the onus on the customer to know the macro encironemnt, and not the winery’s job to make a good decision. Now you’re comparing retailers to the winery? When do you hold a winery accountable?
The winery, you know, the entity that produced the product - put everyone in that position.
We are not talking about 2023 BENCHMARK Monte Bello Futures are we?
probably best to… 
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Just because a person spends a lot on wine doesn’t mean they’re knowledgeable about vintage differentials, let alone fire damage. The sheer amount of shitty expensive wines should tell you that.
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keeping my allocation 
2020 handling was annoying, but I think they’re acting in good faith (even if they’re making mistakes).
I’d rather buy straight from the winery than on the secondary market for ~same price. I already have long term storage sorted. I enjoy driving up the mountain and having a great day on their dime for the release party. No brainer for me.
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After the short '22 vintage, I am happily nearly back up to my full standing order for '23, short just 1500ml. If enough of the naysayers pissed about 2020 keep to their word and cancel their futures orders, I should be able to be fully restored.
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We agree to disagree, but you seem to be the only one in this thread with this opinion and you are posting a lot about it. I think I understand where you’re coming from, but given all the data available (now) and the points everyone else has made, maybe you should at least consider that you might just be wrong…
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I was on a work trip and missed the email. 4x750 coming my way in 2026. Its still a “good” “value” in the grand scheme of things.
I don’t know about “never”. Fully disclose it to the customer, along with a rational of why you chose to do so, and a healthy discount.
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If you don’t trust the winery, I think it is no-brainer – don’t buy.
But if you don’t think their 2020 vintage precludes purchase, then I think the quality of a good MB vintage is better than market price. Not a ton of domestic cabs (IMO) that can consistently beat a good Monte Bello vintage for a lower price. For a wine that is so long lived and beats a lot of high-end Napa cult wines in good years, $185 is still a “relative” bargain. Not a value option, just reasonably priced to the wines with which it is compared. For example, there is another Napa producer that makes great wines and I started in 2012 buying their top cuvee for $175 as a splurge. The 2021 release is $340 with shipping adding $45 per bottle to it. I could go on and on in this regard and that is not likely near the most egregious inflation curve. As someone who has put the 2020 vintage behind me (and its not just a Ridge issue), I think the $185 price of the 2023 is going to be pretty stellar when I am (hopefully) drinking it with my family and friends in 25 years.
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And you are rather interestingly ignoring the salient point of my response: Ridge has NEVER made this option public information. I wonder if you have some undisclosed association with Ridge considering your consistent defense of them.
I had been on their MB list for years. I had one bottle that a friend opened and it was not good. I NEVER received an email from Ridge that you could return the wine if you chose. Had it not been for this group, I would not have known that returning the wine was an option. For a winery that had been so highly thought of, this was unacceptable. Yet, this is what they chose to do. I don’t have any facts to back it up, but I can’t believe that they didn’t have an idea of the potential problems with the wine. So many other wineries chose not to release wines. I purchased based on their history of doing the right thing and releasing great wines. This was the vintage that caused me to cancel my membership and not look back.
You stated " IN MY HUMBLE OPINION taking back unopened wine is good customer service.". I would agree IF they had let buyers know this was an option, BUT they didn’t. That is NOT good customer service, and for that I was greatly disappointed.
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People are missing some points from the original thread.
First, Monte Bello isn’t a single vineyard, but a disparate estate over a few miles and over 1000 ft in elevation.
There were vineyards that were clearly affected, and they did not pick those. They claim to have extensively tested what they did pick and only used clean lots.
The wines were excellent at their Spring Release event. I picked up a hint of taint on the tail end of the finish of the MB, Estate Cab and Estate Merlot, but no one else I know of did. If the MB had remained like that taint-wise, then you’d be talking a 96+ pt wine that you’d want to have food with.
Groups opening bottles in the monrhs after that had differing results, with some bottles showing great and some not right at all.
The subject of smoke taint is very complex and the knowledge evolving. It seems they were out of date in their testing and convinced the wine wasn’t flawed. That was the tone when they first agreed to take back bottles, which was well before the WA testing. (Taking back bottles you don’t think are flawed is good custo.er service, right?)
Winemakers are used to hearing all sorts of ill-informed opinions. I mean, in the old thread people accused me of having a perception bias, imagining smoke taint because of the Galoni review. Couldn’t Ridge think that the Galoni review was influencing people, too?
A good example of the wacky sort of things wineries hear from their customers is when I was tasting '23 components last month someone asked if they’d been tested for smoke taint.
Anyway, the questions are how Ridge feels now about the '20 MB. Still being in denial would explain the radio silence, but concerning. Or, do they think its an issue of individual perception, or something that could resolve? As people noted with the “not right” bottles, including the one i had, they did not show tell-tale smoke taint.
It’s an interesting enough question that one of my friends was thinking about keeping a couple of his 750s to check in one in maybe 10 and 20 years. I said return them and I’ll give him two 375s, and I’ll keep two 375s and return my 750s.
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Haven’t heard from EricZ since this comment. Anyone else curious?
I don’t buy anymore. They screwed me by releasing the tainted wine… 1100 dollars I won’t get back.
I dropped from the list earlier this year after I returned my 2020’s. I’ve said it in other topics here, but there is so much wonderful wine out there, and I felt let down by Ridge in how they handled the whole situation. Plus I was never happy about having to buy the cab, merlot and chardonnay as part of being a MB collector and that negated a lot of the benefit of the futures price for the MB. Ultimately for me it just boils down to where I want to spend my wine budget, and while I’ll enjoy Ridge wines for a long time, they’re not an active part of my acquisition process anymore.
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Actually, you can get your money back. They’ll take the wine back and refund your money. A good number of Berserkers, including myself, have done that. You need to contact Ridge directly.
That might be true for members who bought it from them. What are people doing that bought it retail in Europe (like me) or elsewhere in the world? And if they would still do it, would they also pay for the several hundred dollars in shipping costs?
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