If they didn’t have all those single vineyard designates, they couldn’t keep production low enough to support the price.
Who wants “1,000 Barrel” pinot noir? We want “Four Barrel,” or less!
Isn’t part of the problem potentially one of perception these days? A “Sonoma Coast” or “RRV” cuvee is almost always priced lower by most producers and thus brings with it the thought or concept of a lesser wine or a “well, we didn’t have enough of these grapes to run out a SVD/didn’t know what to do with the grapes, so we “bulked” them into an AVA designate”. I think in the era of having to “cool up” to the customer, the customer wants to say they own a piece of something unique or individual. SVDs play right into that. Take Jamie—now, in his case, I’ve tasted both cuvees of Bohan and absolutely have been startled at the differentiation so I get why he’s doing it, but he’s going to run out a “regular” Bohan and then a “Graveyard Block” Bohan Pinot. Rochioli has been doing block-level releases for years. As others have opined, I suppose the customer base will determine how much is too much. But I will say that some winemakers that I talked to on my trip last summer are cutting back on their SKUs.
It’s a worthwhile question, Brandon, and I’m glad you got discussion started on it.
Awesome! ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
After reading so far, I should’ve used the term “cuvees” instead of “bottlings.” Darn it.
Part of the reason I posted this question is that it can be frustrating as a consumer to have to guess what cuvees to buy because, unless you have an unlimited wine budget, buying one (or more) of each isn’t possible in some cases (pun intended). That’s why we have professional reviewers, though, right? They can tell us which cuvees to buy. 
The number of available SVD’s boggles the mind. Many have noted that the market should eventually sort this out, but with all the individual taste preferences out there, maybe not. I feel fortunate to have finally zeroed in on about six producers and I no longer need to chase/search for the next big thing (unless current pricing gets out-of-hand). Although I have also zeroed in on some favorite SVD’s from these producers, I also enjoy the complexity provided by some appellation blends too (I’m pretty sure that puts me in the minority on this issue). Cheers!
Coming from what I believe is the winery with the largest number of Pinot Noir bottlings in America (27 in 2017 and again in 2018) I can say that it is in what you can produce, what you can sell and what your customers enjoy. The amount of pushback we have at this point is zero. I believe we can show totally distinct characteristics in each wine, have themes of commonality and distinction, have wines that are all complete wines on their own and still offer excellent, high-quality, single vineyard bottlings for very fair prices. We work with 13 top notch, largely older and historically relevant (by Oregon standards) and we take insane levels of care in our sites and the winery to ensure the sort of SVD program we have actually works for us, our direct buyers and our wholesalers across the country.
Are there too many SV Pinots around? Probably. There are plenty of wineries all over the world where even 1 wine is 1 wine too many so anything that is a sub-set of that certainly is going to bring about an affirmative answer. To some extent the market will figure things out for everyone but winery economics are not always as straight forward as just regular economics.
I would say if you are bothered by this occurrence that seems strange. It doesn’t really impact anyone at all. If you don’t want to pay a high price for a small bottling you don’t have to. Perhaps some wineries have out-priced people and you’re annoyed by that. I get it. I used to buy quite a lot of Grand Cru Burgundy and simply do not/cannot any longer. I would hope other folks making a large number (whatever you consider large to be) have a justification for it. I think we do and have no qualms backing it up either in print or via tastings.
It’s only a “problem” to me if a given producer could have made a better wine by blending.
Yes and no. Its not the sheer number that is problematic. Its how many of them (1) don’t add meaningful insight into the differences of that vineyard and (2) just aren’t good, yet are bottled with “xyz vineyard” on the label because that is supposed to sell better. As others have pointed out, burgundy producers often have several single vineyard bottlings (Fevre, PYCM, Lamy all come to mind). If you can draw out a meaningful distinction between California pinot vineyards, by all means do it. Certainly some do that very well. But how many sonoma coast pinots just taste like every other sonoma coast pinot? (maybe this is just a reflection on my unnuanced palate).
To me, the question is are the wines distinctive from each other and are they really good or would the wines be better if the various vineyards are blended together? My sense is that wines are best made separately where the vineyards are great and each gives a distinctive and complete wine while maybe blending is better for lesser vineyards to balance out the deficiencies of each vineyard and make a more harmonious whole. So, how much of this is separating out great parcels that have something to say and how much marketing. Only you can say for yourself. And, this is true worldwide. For example, Grand Cru and Premier Cru Burgundies (the best vineyard land) are generally bottled separately by vineyard (there are some premier crus that are blended together, for example, to make Chambolle Musigny Premier Cru but this generally when wineries have insufficient holdings in one or more premier cru sites to make wines separately). And, while a few producers separate out specific sites in what are villages wines, that is much less common.
You really are taking a huge step in learning wine here. You are beginning to realize that there is so much wine in the world and even in your favorite regions that you cannot buy everything or even learn everything. Frankly, wine writers generally are of limited help. They can tell you what you what is objectively the better wine, whatever that means, but not which one you will like better. Learn where the individual vineyards are from. For example, I tend to like wines from Morey-St. Denis more than wines from Nuits St. Georges, so I tend to buy a producer’s wines from MSD over his wines from NSG. I tend to like Ridge Geyserville more than their Pagani Ranch, so I buy Geyserville. If you tend to like wines from Russian River more than Sonoma Coast, when confronted with a choice for a new producer or a new offering from an favorite producer, pick a vineyard in the Russian River over one from Sonoma Coast, etc. Find out about vine age if relevant. In Burgundy, one tends to prefer wines from producers where the vines are older. One reason certain Zinfandels are prized so much is that they come from very old vines. It probably is rare that California Pinot is from old vines because so much of it has been planted relatively recently, but when you get a chance to buy wines from old vineyards, grab it unless there is reason not to do so (the terroir is not good or the wines are going to be ripped out soon, etc.).
When you get a chance, visit Sonoma or wherever and taste through the portfolios of your favorite producers. Use the knowledge you get to figure out what wines to buy in future offerings.
None of this guarantees or even suggests that you are going to get the very best wine but that is impossible. It should mean that you drink wines you really like.
And, eventually, the market will sort a lot of this out, as it has in older wine regions. Demand will go up for wines from the special vineyards and so will prices. Wineries charging premium prices for wines no more distinctive than their general cuvees will have unsold wine and will drop those vineyards as separate wines and go back to bottling them as part of their general cuvees.
Who decides which ones “just aren’t good”?
I would be happy to never see another Platt Vineyard Pinot Noir for the rest of my life. Other people really like how that vineyard expresses Pinot Noir.
Jim,
When I have visited Burgundy, I have actually found that many producers seem to have too many buyers for their Grand Crus and have a harder time selling their villages wines and regional wines - where many producers have much more in the way of quantity. For example, last year when I visited Domaine Bernard Moreau in Chassagne Montrachet, the biggest reaction I got from Alex Moreau (a very big smile) was when I told him that I really like his Bourgogne Blanc. I almost had the feeling that he viewed the higher cuvees as producing great grapes where his job is not to screw up what nature gives him but that it was with his lesser wines that HE is making a difference. And, a lot of offerings of Burgundy both there and in wine stores here require people to buy up and down the line to get the limit quantity wines from the top vineyards.
Just for fun I would like the OP to tell Ted Lemon at Littorai that he has too many single vineyard wines, then fly to France and say the same thing to Aubert de Villaine. 
Hey, Man, I simply posed a question.
I do like what some others have said in that it depends. If all of the various cuvees are distinct and unique and make better wines than what would be made by blending, I guess that makes sense. However, that’s an “if” that will likely never be fully answered. It would be interesting to see what revenue would look like when factoring in the premium that some smaller batch cuvees can command versus the revenue made from an appellation cuvee with larger production. Based on what I’m seeing, I assume the former is more profitable than the latter.
I am not sure what “answered” means. If you like one wine better than another wine and are willing to pay more for it, it is answered for you. Over the decades or centuries, it has been similarly answered by lots of people in the same way. For example, it is my recollection that Burghound has said that Clos de Beze has been recognized as a special vineyard since at least 1200 or something like that.
The market makes this determination. And, truly, hope and pray that what you like best is different from the market likes best because this means you can get the wines you like best for less money than the wines the market likes best.
All I mean is that I can’t foresee a situation in which a winery would actually go from producing a dozen different cuvees and charging $60 per bottle to three different appellation wines at four times the production and charging less.
Most earlier examples were working with estate fruit, so single vineyard with no reason to say more than estate. Calera is really blocks of one single vineyard, so must be the first to have subdivided distinctive sections of a vineyard in the U.S.
I don’t see love for Furthermore, but they’re PN specialists. A friend (Shalini Sekhar) was their winemaker when they were awarded SF Chronicle Winemaker of the Year a few years ago. (I bottled for them back then.) They have some SVDs from elsewhere, but put the best barrels from their five Sonoma Coast vineyards into a higher end cuvee (in a crazy big/heavy bottle) called Alchemy. Iirc, it goes/went for around $80 when the SVDs are/were around $45.
Jim touched on that. There certainly are a lot of mediocre Pinot producers out there. If a producer sucks, why should you as a consumer care how many sucky wines they make? Who cares if they’re bumbling along trying to mimic someone else’s successful model, but in reality making 8 indistinct wines that aren’t worth the price?
Not necessarily. It’s very complicated. With some producers, the top-tier wines can be essentially break-even. But, the prestige they get from those wines helps sell the much higher volume QPRs, where the profit is.
I think much of this is simply that most California pinot noir producers don’t own their own vines. So many producers just make whatever they can with whatever grapes they can purchase.