It’s a no.
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agreed
And as for this project. Sounds like good people, and i hope an excellent wine, but a very easy pass. I should thank them, i do not need to be buying more CA Chardonnay and at over 500 landed for an inaugural 3-pack I have no temptation to overcome))
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Easy no for me. Good luck to them and no ill will, but it’s hard for me to understand how you come out of the gates with this price point based just on “was an assistant winemaker at Aubert” and “from vineyard used by Stonestreet.”
Oh well, it’s a good thing not to be tempted by an offer these days, there are so many great ones to choose from.
$140 a bottle. That’s tough.
I’m sure the fruit is expensive and seems like a great team, but…
You can find bottles of Aubert chardonnay at retail for less than that. Maybe not SVDs, though.
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You can find them for this price or less at auction and sometimes retail (for some svd)
I didn’t even make it to computing shipping, as it wanted my cc info. I’m going to imagine the all-in price is even more difficult for a debut vintage.
Didn’t even think of that (also haven’t clicked through)!
I’m always up for supporting great people, but $140/bottle before shipping and tax is not in the cards for me. Not sure if there would be a magic number, but $90 would be an easy buy, $110 would make me pause and $130+ and it’s a flat-out pass.
My sincere wish is that Brian and his wife sell out their inaugural release and I hope nothing but the best for them. I’m sure there are a lot of folks willing to buy at this price point and I think they’ll be quite happy in the end.
Onto the next one!
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100%
I guess it’s easy for me to say from being on the consumer side, but it certainly feels like if they sold this out quickly at some lower price (let’s say $90), and customers got the wines and loved them, and there became a waiting list to buy them, and it was a point of pride that you were on the list and felt like keeping your place on the list by ordering each year was something valuable, and the price moved up $5-10 a year . . .
Now, my assumption could be completely wrong. Maybe this sells like wildfire at $140 and they would have been throwing money away to offer it at $90. If so, good for them, good for their happy customers buying it for $140, and life rolls forward.
@Steve_Crawford or anyone else: how much is Aubert chardonnay if you’re on their list? Do they still have a wait to get on the list? I’m not going to do it (Aubert is a wine that I admire if I have it once or twice a year, but not something I’m looking to load up on), but I’m just curious how that compares to this.
aubert is 95ish for their appellations and 110-150 for svd. but most of the svd’s are 110 iirc.
the 140
exactly. there’s many ways to skin a cat. but i saw this coming with their release letter last week and i don’t agree with this approach at all. i think it’s extremely short sighted. you can’t release at 140 and then go down to 120 if you don’t sell out. but you can release at 110 and go up to 155.
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Aubert is $100 to maybe $150ish with a 6 bottle minimum.
At $140/per It’ll be really interesting to see how many “Your Allocation Is Still Available” emails will go out over the next few weeks if they don’t sell through immediately…
Price point aside…
I know Brian and Laura and they are great people and unbelievable hosts. I can speak to the quality of this particular wine as I barrel sampled this summer and the vineyard that this comes from is spectacular.
What I do know of the project is that this inaugural release represents their high end Chardonnay as they wanted to come out of the gates with a bang to show that it’s not just “another new project” but something special. From what I understand, future releases will have other bottlings, many of which will come at a far lower price point.
Just felt the need to chime in on the thread as I can’t imagine taking the leap from winemaker and GM to Proprietors is an easy one both physically and financially so wanted to give them a shout out.
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They should probably lead with that.
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Just wanted to add that I picked up a 3 pack on release and popped one last week. It is insane, truly superlative. Laser focused, key lime, merangue, perfectly balanced high acidity, solid minerality and perfectly integrated fine grained oak. I reached out to pick up another 6 pack, and hoping I can.
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I’d call it insulting, but yeah.