It’s always nice to say, My wine tastes better than LaTache and therefore you should pay a lot for it. But it is not so easy.
If you look at the Napa Valley:
1/they have milked the Paris tasting for over 40 years…books, movies
2/various winery personnel have staged many many tastings with their wines and first growths…this sort of thing has a cumulative effect.
Pinot Noir benefits from a movie, Sideways, but the chief beneficiaries are in Santa Barbara county.
Josh Jensen created a road show with himself, a Burgundian and an Oregonian. Folks would taste the wines blind and vote. I’m not sure who won but I got a ride in Josh’s new Porsche last year so he seems to have done well.
I read an interesting book on pricing strategy called Priceless by a man named Poundstone. What I really learned from it is that if you go to a big company and say, I can cure cancer, bring about world peace and reverse global warming, they might give you a $10,000 grant. But if you say, I can help you increase prices by 2% they will buy you a building for your new institute.
One tactic is used by a Texas steak house that (and adjust for inflation here) that offered a 72 ounce t bone for 72$…if you could eat it in an hour or so it was free. The point is to anchor a price in peoples’ minds so they might pass on the 72$ steak but not mind paying $30 for a smaller steak and a baked potato.
Robert Mondavi deliberately priced his Reserve Cabs at a high price so people would compare them to First Growths.
Most people don’t know they make chardonnay in Oregon.
Most people don’t know we make
Chardonnay in Oregon.
And if Nathan and I each had to write a list demonstrating our respective biases with CA/OR wines, his would be a LOT longer than mine. There’s more wines lacking in acidity and minerality than not.
I don’t run my mouth because people know what is possible in Oregon. I run my mouth because of what is possible, and because what is possible won’t happen if people don’t buy in.
I believe what I posted above. Whether others believe or not, the easiest thing to do is put my wines where my mouth is. And I am happy to do that. If I am right, great. If I am close but come up short, still great-Burgundy has centuries on me. If
i look like a fool…I won’t but I would still have had a great day tasting some great wines.
My wines will never be priced like La Tache. But Evening Land priced the Summum Chardonnay at $120, so people would approach the idea of Oregon Chardonnay as similar to white Burgundy in quality. Can you blame them or Mondavi, if that’s what it took to get taken seriously. And 70s, 80s, and early 90s top Napa wines were remarkable wines. (No idea how they stack up to top Bordeaux).
Put Aubert, Kongsgaard Judge, Marcassin or Point Rouge blind in a Chevalier bottle and see if people would say its worth it to pay $600-$1,000. My guess is yes.
I used to sell Aubert, Peter Michael and LeFlaive to restaurants and hotels and at first was amazed they would pay so much for the latter. After a while I realized it was the name and place more than anything-the wines were incredible though. That and their customers bought them and made their cellar Grand Award worthy.
Bravo to those who sell AND buy the most expensive domestic chard and pinot
I know that many great wines are being made in Oregon. But I am somebody who has been going to Oregon on a regular basis since 1954, if only to see the Portland Beavers play the Seattle Rainiers!! Others don’t know the region as well.
I think you get my point. Shakespeare said that good wine needed no bush --maybe he meant George–but he was wrong. You need to get out and tell the world…over and over!!
