This really sums it up. A ‘bad’ year in Napa still creates some incredible wines. Don’t get me wrong I’ve had a few 2022 cabs that really missed the mark (looking at you Turnbull) but I’ve had a few that also blew me away. I believe it was the 2022 rubicon(?) by Tamber Bey that had some incredible freshness and pyrazines despite being harvested after the heat wave. Owner said they left the canopies bushy, no leaf plucking. Mr. Schaffer had it right a few posts up, we need to start trusting the good producers to do their job.
Curious what you did not like about the Turnbull wine - and could it be that it is just too early to truly to tell?
I think that some who tried the 2011s early were not happy with them - but overtime they were (IF they were looking for something ‘different’ than what others were producing in normal vintages)
Cheers
Cheers
Tried it in a blind flight. At first I thought it was something akin to a Zin/Petit Syrah from Paso or Sierra foothills. Really ripe red fruit driven, flabby in structure/phenolics. Didn’t have any varietal character, and didn’t have any promising structure for aging. Felt like a basic soft table red with little depth. I should try other vintages of Turnbull to verify if it was truly the vintage I disliked or just the winery’s style.
I agree with you Larry - 11 ain’t so bad for some of the wines I have tried. '17 also has had a lot of very good wines.
“Cherry picking vintages” often happens not because the consumer isn’t interested in having “every vintage”, but rather because many consumers get to a point where having unbroken verticals is stupid and/or not practical. Buying every vintage is exactly how cellars become bloated and out-of-balance — it has happened to me in the past, it may be happening to me right now with Cayuse (unless the sharing of my allocation with a friend is solving that problem — won’t know for a few years), and hopefully won’t happen to me in the future … but it likely will. It’s such an easy problem to acquire.
And also: one person’s “cherry vintage” is not necessarily another person’s cherry vintage. Of course, this does require independent thought and confidence in one’s own palate, both of which the wine community would benefit from seeing more of.
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I agree. Those are on my shortlist of good 2022s
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That’s a problem of rating/ranking vintages as opposed to characterizing them. Some wines from the highest rated vintages are both the most expensive and unenjoyable for near-term consumption. A wine that won’t be particularly enjoyable for its first 25 years and won’t get into its amazing phase until age 40 is just a different category than highly enjoyable younger drinking vintages. They both have high value. Vive la difference. But, I wouldn’t go calling the latter a “lesser vintage”. There are true lesser vintages.
Agree, I mentioned '17 above. It was dumped on because it came between '16 and '18, but many of those bottles drank very well early and still held up over time. Curious if '22 may shake out to be a similar vintage.
Andy protects his brand. I believe he approves the wines before they get to carry his name.
Napa wineries charge what people are willing to pay, ultimately. Yes, real estate and related costs have skyrocketed right along with wine prices, so there’s a lot of pressure to try to charge a certain amount still in a lesser vintage.
There are so many options out there that if people feel burned by a winery charging the same price for a significantly inferior wine they may move on.
I see people mentioning that good producers made good wine in '22. Maybe they go lucky with their sites. Maybe they drastically declassified (more than usual) fruit to maintain the quality of their top wine.
Wineries can charge less in a lesser vintage. That may make sense to some, like if it’s still good and collectors want a vertical. Not Napa, but Kathryn Kennedy did this a few vintages ago. Marty thought the fair price for the vintage was $100 rather than $350. Other wineries have just not made a top wine, but put the best fruit into their second wine and declassify below that to whatever. That makes sense to hold a quality standard for each label.
You are, of course, correct, Wes, but the math is not equal…not because SC is not Napa, but because the land and facilities are bought and paid for. By now I would have to believe the KK estate is free and clear. Marty is able to charge less because he doesn’t have the same financial pressure (a big assumption on my part, I know).
New estate wineries in Napa are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre, correct? At those prices, they are still only getting so much fruit, and therefore have to charge $x per bottle - $200 and up - to cover debt service, operating costs, etc. and have some amount of income left for the owners to take or reinvest. I believe that the majority of these new labels are charging what they are not because they are greedy and think they can get it, but mostly because they have to. Burgess was able to keep prices low because he bought decades ago and didn’t have a bank to answer to for a new vineyard and winemaking facilities.
The math is very different for new wineries in Napa. Ultimately, I think we will see more and more deals on close out sites as the market continues to soften for high end Napa wines.
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Well, the math is accounting. Proper/competent accounting would factor in lesser vintages, low yield vintages and crop failure. Someone with that much money invested will likely have crop insurance.
Risking your brand image by releasing an inferior wine is foolhardy. It might be a sort of time bomb if the customers are cellaring the wine. Or it may cause a gradual loss of customers that the owner may not connect the dots to, or they might be the sort of greedy, cynical douchebags that see the waitlist and don’t give a rat’s ass because they see their customers as suckers, disposable commodities. Sorry, but I’ve seen quite a few business failures in many sorts of businesses that were directly attributable to short-sighted greedy half-wits who are devoid of ethics.
We’re in an era where once long wait lists are gone. Where many wineries are holding back huge volumes of unsold inventory so as to avoid saturating the market and degrading their perceived value. There are more high priced Napa Cabs than the market has demand for. It’s not a good time for an own goal.
And no, Marty leases what little is left of the estate vineyard. He took a hit doing that.
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I think it becomes easier to question vintage pricing in Napa as the global wine market shifts to a buyers market. As Wes alludes to a bit in his last post, there’s a lot of quality wine in the market that is outpacing consumers demand to purchase it. While I don’t have data to suggest how severe this is compared to the last ten years, I will say I’ve been solicited more this year for “exclusive hard to get” Napa wines or reminders that mailing lists are open than I ever have.
The same is true for Bordeaux in that there is a lot of great Bordeaux available across multiple quality vintages sitting in the marketplace. There isn’t much consequence for balking on an offer from a mailing list as a result. Obviously there are some exceptions, like MacDonald, where demand is still outpacing supply.
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