At that price, I’d guess Hyde or Hudson. But there isn’t even a website for this wine.
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or Burgundy 
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Interesting that “adequate return on investment” is not actually a consideration
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I just love the writing. So good.
15.7 ABV is all I needed to know about the wine. Enough said.
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In all honesty, that could just mean that they decided not to spin the alcohol out whereas others did.
Cheers
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Even still, they’d have to be picking in the high 20s for that potential alcohol, right?
(The only Napa wine I buy is Corison, so I realize my reference point is very different)
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Pricing was a subject I brought up a few times this past week. With Mike Officer he was very aware of the crazy costs over the hill in Napa. He also noted how he’s subsidizing freight costs and don’t have it all baked into the bottle cost.
Ketan doesn’t believe the value is there for the highest priced wines.
Another winery told me they were offered fruit that would have required a $200 bottle and they turned down the site not wanting to make the jump.
At $275, there’s a whole lot of Bordeaux anyone can buy below that number ready to drink today. No reason to chase those prices
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They communicate with their customers and prospective customers solely by helicopter.
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Exactly encapsulates everything that has gone wrong in new Napa startups. Sounds like the San Francisco real estate market. Multi millionaire X now wants to spend money on fun new hobby. Has little to do with the passion of making wine (there are lots of other places that would love to have investment in a vineyard project) but it has to be in NAPA dammit! Because that’s the most glamorous place to be…
Dennis - this is wrong.
The owner is going to put out a serious, sensitive piece about how wine is made in the vineyard and how it is important to respect the terroir and the vintage.
All they need to do is to get their consultant to finalize the copy and they’re good to go.
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From the article:
What he means is that because rich people buy vineyards as a vanity project, they have become like pro sports teams. The revenue will never pay off the investment. Owners are banking on the fact that some day an even richer, vainer person will buy your vineyard at an even more ridiculous price. It’s farmland as real estate investment.
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I went to school with Stein.
Back when paper mags were important he had a column in Time for many years.
Joel Stein is a brilliant writer! His skewering humor just eviscerates. Was disappointed when he stopped writing his column in Time, was always a fun read.
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Planted Cabernet vineyards in 1985 were around $80k an acre. Wish I had bought some.
You can buy fine vineyards today for $8K an acre.
No, not in Napa.
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The article strikes the right tone, skewering some of the Napa realities without being overly mean, judgy, snarky.
For all that we see what Napa is becoming, it doesn’t mean all or most of the people involved are bad people by any means. And if they want to pay a premium to have that life and experience, that’s totally their right.
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What a fantastic read. His sense of humor is wonderful.
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it never ceases to amaze me that people in 2024 still actually believe there’s some correlation between labeled alcohol and actual, and then going so far as to thinking that misguided perception is connected with how the wine tastes.
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The perception works pretty well for me. There is zero chance that I am buying a wine labeled 15.7%. That means I lessen the odds of getting a cocktail. Even if there is a swag of the 1.4% that I have heard, just slapping 15.7 on the label, speaks volumes to me. And after close to as many years as you in this hobby, I’m pretty confident that for my palate, there is almost always a correlation to high alcohol and my negative perception in the wines that I tend to enjoy, Zinfandel being an obvious exception (yet even there I prefer lower ABV).
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There is a legal correlation, which is not to say that the law is never broken.
However I agree that if somebody prints ‘15.7%’, odds are that’s what’s in the bottle (give or take a tenth). I would think that most people itb have little if any reason to cheat or fudge on the label (now that the limit for fortified has been upped from 14% to 16%).
In general, I look at what the label says, taste, and usually find no reason to doubt what’s printed.
And yes, I often find wines labeled at 15% or higher to have noticeable alcohol, there is definitely a correlation.
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My experience is exactly as @Robert.A.Jr and @Dan_Kravitz describe. There’s a strong correlation with style at these high ABVs. Not a 1.0 correlation, I’ll give you that. To me, it just makes no sense paying that high price tag for Beckstofffer terroir when there’s a high probability the ripeness has obliterated said terroir.
The rules, to me, vary by region too. I enjoy many Priorat reds that clock in past 15% that show tons of terroir character. But I can’t say the same for CA, outside of perhaps Zinfandel.
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