@Hayes_Drumwright, thanks for responding and for your contributions. I sincerely hope you have a successful release and sell through your inventory.
I do own some of your wine, although I have saved the bottles I have for they were still a stretch purchase for me at the time (2016 vintage).
There is probably a ton of logistics to deal with for the question I’m about to ask, but I’ll go for it anyway and feel free to ignore me if addressing it is too tedious… I wouldn’t expect you to abandon the core lineup that has made your brand successful, but if prices for raw material rise so significantly, why not add another wine to the portfolio with fruit sourced from a single vineyard that has better costs per ton? The benefit from a consumers perspective would be that we can enjoy the style of your wine at prices we might be able to afford, if priced out of your flagship wines.
I can see a lot of reasons/issues it could be a problem, capacity at your facilities, higher overall operating costs (especially in the near term), perhaps contract issues with current sources, the complexity of marketing an entirely new wine, etc.
I for one would be interested if an offering existed at a lower price point that wasn’t from a Beckstoffer site. But perhaps I’m in the minority.
Interesting point raised above, as to really how much are the Beckstoffer grapes and other highly priced vineyards worth the price, not even considering the rest of the costs that go into making a great bottle of wine.
While I like SVD wines, I find myself buying more blends or SVDs from less highly “touted” vineyards as the gap between high end SVDs and blends increases. For me, the taste difference, in an ever increasing number of wineries, does not justify the price difference.
That said, I do go out of my way to buy direct and support smaller wineries even at higher than retail, and do hate to see acquisitions by big corporations. @Hayes, thanks for your insight and participation. It really does help.
What are some of your favorite “less highly touted” vineyards, ones that are clearly high quality, but have yet to receive that same amount of acclaim or recogniton?
Joe - thank you for supporting the brand. I love the 2016 wines. Great year.
I have been actively focused on making decisions around what you ask above for the past 5 years. Some of you may be aware that we did a $100 bottle called Vanitas that we sold through Wally’s and other by the glass to try and introduce people to the brand. There are many high end brands that have a high priced bottle with a lower end offering. There are also strategies where you start a wine blend one way with very high end sources and then over time source much more cost effective fruit and change the blend after the brand is established in order to lower cost and up profit. My guess is many labels come to mind for you as you read that where suddenly they just don’t seem the same quality. It is my belief that Vanitas actually caused quite a bit of brand confusion with our clients. The reverse of what is happening on this thread started to occur where some thought we were lowering quality to try and make profit. (Rather than raise price to maintain great sources) Obviously it was very difficult (read impossible) to make a traditional MM quality wine for $100 a bottle through distribution (means we need to sell it at $50-55 a bottle). Because of all the confusion we stopped making it. It wasn’t the intro to the brand we wanted people to have.
When we started MM we didn’t have the money to buy land so we sourced grapes. We focused on the best we could get having quality be our only guidepost. We thought we would always be 100-200 case production as we had no intention of making it a big well known brand. (Not that we think we are now) Over the years we put more and more in as people would constantly complain that there wasn’t enough wine and be mad when we could only allocate one bottle instead of a three pack. Or they would get mad at how long the wait was to be able to get our Dr Crane/LP offers. We still didn’t have enough money to buy vineyards, so we stayed with our mantra of quality and got into VHR which we absolutely love. We have grown the brand delivering quality and trusting if we give Sam amazing components he will deliver an amazing bottle via our flagship that shows the very best of what Napa Valley has to offer. Most of the critics now agree with us on the strategy and so do most of our clients.
The strategy is tough when it comes to price. One of our contracts actually dictates our minimum price. Most contracts climb in price every single year. That may sound shocking, but I believe the grower is supplying incredible quality and I don’t blame them for one second that they want that quality valued and represented in the market. I don’t think changing the entire brand strategy would be smart. We have to stay on the path of making incredible wines. And farmers with incredible fruit have high costs too. It just flows through. How do I know? Vida and MM now own properties with incredible fruit, and no part of owning or farming it is cheap. High end vineyards can be upwards of $800K an acre in Napa now. It is crazy. When we started it was $300K.
But I guess that is the point. We want to make insane wine and you guys wanna drink insane wine. I am sure if I looked through all your cellars you all have a wall of some crazy good (expensive) juice. I am very hesitant to change brand strategy because of inflation, Covid, and other macro issues. My plan is to just grow the team and work harder to get MM in front of people that understand and love it. I honestly don’t know what other choice I would have. I am watching many get crushed right now by trying to shelter and contract. Many turned down fruit in 23 and the farmers will have to now drop them as they have costs to cover.
The last thing, any changes you want to make in wine take three years to get in front of the consumer. Just another thing to consider. You can’t just run a test. You will have three vintages in bottle or barrel before you sell a single thing in the market to find out if you were right or not.
Talk about fun…
Sorry for long answer and any typos. Grammar ain’t my thing.
Thanks for quickly and thoroughly replying. Also appreciate the insight on how you’ve been considering this for the portfolio.
One point of clarification as I wasn’t overly specific when I mentioned a lower cost alternative. I meant more so something similar to when you added VHR to the portfolio. But rather another SVD source that could be had at a closer price to where the flagship wines were previously. Say 175-225$. I’m not even entirely sure it would be possible based on costs and the standards you are looking for. I’ve had wonderful wines from Moulds and Steltzner vineyard in the past, as an example. But again I have zero clue how possible or feasible that is.
Larry nailed it. FWIW, I can recall two wineries who have chosen to go another route, Di Costanzo and Roy Piper, I believe both have made comments in the past about swimming against the current to chose vineyards that are a little less popular, but still allow them to make great wines from.
Roy Piper - Moulds and Greer Vineyards (no longer has access to Houyi) with Bonny’s Vineyard in the future.
Di Constanzo - Monticello and Caldwell Vineyards (no longer has access to Farella) with Charlie Smith Vineyard being the newest addition to their line.
Both Houyi and Farella are now owned/controlled by Realm Cellars and part of their Estate wines.
@Hayes_Drumwright I was wondering if something like Vice Versa would work. All their higher end SVD bottles are 300. But they have the spinning plates bottling (also an SVD) that they purchase from a lesser known vineyard in Oakville for half the price (150$). This gives people the opportunity to taste the VV style at a more affordable price and it’s really good as well.
Well you know how I feel about the LPV. I love that juice. It is my fav. And no it wouldn’t have been $395. We have been able to get into more of that site. The Crane is just SUPER limited on what we get.
Got the notice this am… I had to look twice. I just checked again, and my allocation is gone so they must be selling.
There’s always a buyer, it’s just now a different class. My Napa cab collection is over a 1,000 bottles so I don’t need to play this game anymore. Bummer, really like the wines.
I wish I could pull off these kind of %increases in our service oriented business.
I also no longer have an allocation after having one this morning. It’s a shame that the prices have to increase so much. I posted in commerce corner as I was really hoping to be able to get a bottle or 2 of this as it’s my wife’s fav vineyard for our wedding year but I just can’t swing it. If anyone wants any 2018 MM Dr. Crane in a trade…. I’m your guy.
