Myriad Release

WINE TALK
61

[quote=“MitchC”] If a lot of these wines show up on retail shelves at the release price then that infers the winemaker made less money on each bottle at the same price. Was the winemaker better selling all the wine at a lower price to their clients or were they better at the higher price maybe to be more (exclusive). Only time will tell.

Another question I ask myself, the Crane wines went up significantly, is this the 2020 effect? has Crane fruit contracts been renegotiated? I do not know, again others here may.

In the end if you drink and can afford good Napa wines in a particular style you will not go wrong with Crane.
[/quote]

The next time a Myriad Dr Crane shows up on a retail shelf will be the first time.
Contractually they can’t sell at a lower price.

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62

They may not but if u can afford it get the Elysian For a young man today I would recommend allocating some into Bordeaux great values at great pricing. Taste changes over the years. If you take care of the wine you will be rewarded. If you do not like it and buy right u will get your money back

63

Surprised that today I still have the same allocation available as release day, in my experience if you weren’t Johnny on the spot day one it would go down significantly. Curious if that indicates a reduction in demand. It’s paining me to pass as I want to support Mike and Leah and love the wines but I simply can’t swing these increases

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64

I dropped Myriad in 2021 after the 2019 vintage because of the price increase then.

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65

Yes and No in some states they have to go thru a distributor to sell retail. I do not think that the distributor does this for free. The distributor gets a cut of the retail price which is the same as the winery. Though there may be none at this moment on the retail shelf that is no indication of future sales. I can not predict the future. My point being if the wine shows up on retail shelves and has not been there before it may show a softness in that wine or the market. There are many wines recently that never were in the retail market but have recently shown up. Markets are fickle things.

66

I was answering two questions.

  1. Mike never sells his Dr Crane via retail, always DTC through his mailing list.
  2. It cannot be retailed under $300 contractually and since he never sells it through retail channels a distributor is never part of the sales chain. .
    I hope that clears up the confusion.
67

as u saw brian i gave the cranes a buy i do not know mike but have been buying his wines for years however, i am in the present as far as time goes never is a long time. i do know a few others who said the same but at times for whatever their reason have went retail, especially in 2017 vintage

the question is are they worth 300 i pontificated on the possibilities in the end the buyer must decide

appreciate what you can’t afford you don’t have to have it

68

This.

In 18 and 19 the Dr. Crane offerings were gone the same day, within the first few hours if memory serves. At least the Elysian, maybe the standard Crane took a bit longer.

I also believe my allocation was 3 bottles of each at the time. That number is now 6 bottles of each allocated. And they are still available as I just checked a moment ago.

Carter 2018s for the OG and La Verdad were similar in terms of price and how quickly they sold out, at the time.

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69

Good points

70

I heard that Mike didn’t lose Carter, that he walked so that he could bottle To Kalon under Myriad.

71

Thanks for the input. Has anyone drank any 2021 Carter by Bevan and the Smith Carters and made a comparison? I sent my 2021 carter and bevan to storage so have not been able to make a comparison.

72

Insane in general - I stopped buying last year at these prices and just a couple weeks ago their “leftovers” still had many bottles still available from last vintage. I still think that the basic NV is a solid value, but prefer Becklyn at the prices we’re currently at. The Becklyn Pangkarra is still the most hedonistic Mike Smith wine in my opinion, and prefer it for my taste vs any bottling from Dr Crane or To Kalon.

Was honestly heartbroken when we visited Napa in October for a tasting with them at Tamber Bey. Basically had nothing to pour except the things we rarely buy (Syrah, etc) and talked about how they were sold out of evertyhing. We didn’t buy anything (again due to lack of selection to our tastes) and got charged a tasting fee…even though (1) we already had an order on the way of other wines which I’ve bought annually since 2015, and (2) they never mentioned a tasting fee to us. Luckily I persuaded to waive the fees afterwards…but the damage was done.

Feel like what was a humble, small producer making incredible wines at a great price is now just like the others. I’m still a Becklyn buyer but skipping Myriad for now.

5 Likes
73

2021 Carter is still pretty similar style to the old Mike Smith wines. I think Russell extracts more spicebox than dark fruit from To Kalon vs Mike - but Mark’s preference is the big wines they are both known for. I still loved and bought some O.G. from 2021 and was in the tasting room just a couple months ago.

Can’t go wrong with “The Haze” either, that’s a solid one we buy 2 cases a year of to enjoy while the others sit.

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74

I doubt that anyone in Napa is making the exact same wine under different labels. Probably not in Sonoma either, or Bordeaux, or anywhere that you can sell the fruit based on a vineyard. There are multiple brands involved - the region, the vineyard, the winemaker, and each one will be worth something in the final product.

However, I once imported the exact same wine under different labels. Same bottling line, etc., but one guy wanted a house label, one guy wanted a different label for restaurants, and we liked the original. And I know of a few French wines that were exactly the same wine, as I knew the winemaker, and she had about four labels with the same fruit from her vineyards. Neither of these were big producers, but they needed to get into the market somehow, and just like P&G, they were looking to maximize shelf space. And in a few stores, the wines were next to each other on the shelves.

There was no fraud intended, and the wines were priced roughly the same, except that as usual, a restaurant marked them up more than a retailer. They even ticked the woke boxes - organic, minimal intervention, etc.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, and no, the wines were NOT going for over $100, much less $300. But they were good, fairly priced at whatever the label happened to be, and they were honestly made from specific vineyards, not a bunch of random grapes from all over that were then acidified, chaptalized, etc.

Beckstoffer is smart. He’s made his grapes a brand. He’ll charge whatever he can get, and he’ll accept a few squeals as long as the wine keeps selling. His costs for labor and fuel will have something to do with it and those have increased, but he wants a premium for his fruit and so far, has obtained it. That’s going to work its way through the entire chain. And in the case of Myriad, there’s not really much of a retail chain as Mike is selling DTC. So the prices increase for him may well reflect his cost increases, although I don’t know.

If it is important to someone to have Beckstoffer fruit made by winemaker X, then the price will continue to go up until it no longer sells. But I don’t see that happening in the near future.

75

Isn’t the main share of the to kalon now owned by Constellation?

76

Maybe originally there is a misunderstanding. The point is not that a certain wine has one bottling and that they just put labels on the one bottling. Point being if winemaker A makes a wine from the same vineyard for multiple people I find similarities. Hence, sometimes the difference to me is not worth buying all three sometimes. No different than if I look at three blue period picassos I can tell they are picasso and they have unique markers. I would prefer to see how multiple winemakers utilize the same site. Assuming they are all fine wines.

77

While I’m not a buyer of their Cabs at the current prices, the visit we had with Mike and Leah a little over a year ago was really wonderful. Ahead of time, I mentioned that I like the Syrahs and Cabs, so they poured a good variety of each from both Quivet and Myriad. I recall the tasting fee was waved with purchase, and even without a purchase, I think it was very small, like $25 (which is very low not only for Napa, put even for Paso and SBC).

78

This was literally what our visit with them was like in 2021 - 2023 was an entirely different vibe…it was strange, which is why it broke my heart a bit as a huge fan.

79

Understandable since lots of people passed on 2020.

80

Sure, since Mondavi owned the lions share of what is considered To Kalon and Constellation bought Mondavi they now own the lions share.