Realm Save the Date - 3rd Feb

WINE TALK
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I thought I would share the release email which I just received but first….

A couple of comments which I think is worth sharing on this board. Firstly the REDUCED price of The Bard - $125

Scott has been very vocal on prices in Napa, and so this drop is certainly appreciated. Thank you!

I am also interested to hear Scott’s thoughts on the Fidelio and why they decided to blend both vineyards, I believe this is Chris Cooney’s first vintage , and having produced the SB at Dana he certainly knows a thing or two. Also I believe 2025s seem to be very strong for white’s in general given the cool nature of the vintage.

Email received as follows:

We are excited to announce that our 2026 Spring Release will begin on Tuesday, February 3 at 10AM Pacific Standard Time.

This offering includes the release of 2023 The Bard, 2025 Fidelio, and the pre-release of our 2024 Beckstoffer wines – To Kalon, Dr. Crane and To Kalon Cabernet Franc. Consistent with recent years, the 2024 Beckstoffer wines will be shipped later this fall once they are ready. Each new vintage of The Bard will now debut in the Spring Release. Some members will also see an allocation of our newest wine, 2023 Heavenly Questions, which comes from Cabernet Franc vines grown at Houyi Estate.

Once the Spring Release opens on February 3, you will receive an email with a link to your personal allocation. Your allocation is guaranteed until February 17 at 11:59PM Pacific Standard Time.

Winegrowing has always been a long game, as in a lifelong marathon…punctuated by seasonal sprints we call harvest. At times, both nature and the market can be unforgiving, so the enduring winegrower must develop patience and resilience. That’s particularly relevant now as Napa Valley faces significant market headwinds. It’s an uncertain time in the wine business, and yet one thing has never been clearer. The quality and character of wines being produced across Napa Valley today are as great as ever. It’s reassuring to have three healthy vintages in the cellar – 2023, 2024 and now 2025. All three vintages are featured in this release, and we are excited to share these wines with you.

From the 2023 vintage, there are two wines in this release: The Bard and Heavenly Questions. 2023 The Bard is once again a blend of mostly Cabernet Sauvignon from all over Napa Valley. This wine is our calling card, it’s the wine we hope overdelivers. Nature was more generous in 2023, giving us a larger crop of high-quality fruit. That translated into some production efficiencies, and we are thrilled to share those with you! We are reducing the price of this wine compared to past releases to $125. We hope this reduction is seen as a small gesture of our gratitude for your support. Nature hasn’t always been kind to us (2020) so we are cherishing the twin blessing of high quality and high quantity in the 2023 vintage. If you would like to learn more about what made this growing season so unique, read about the 2023 vintage on our website.

Our newest wine is 2023 Heavenly Questions, a Cabernet Franc wine grown at our Houyi Vineyard on Pritchard Hill. We’ve long been inspired by Cab Franc from neighboring vineyards, so it felt natural for us to separate out a few barrels for this new bottling. The character of this wine is distinct, reflective of a special connection between this particular varietal and the rocky, volcanic soils of Pritchard Hill. Production is quite limited for Heavenly Questions, so allocations will be small.

The 2024 vintage of our Beckstoffer wines is included as a pre-release in this offering. Quite a contrast from the vintages on either side of it, the 2024 growing season was warm, whereas 2023 and 2025 turned out to be relatively cool. The wines from this vintage are displaying classic Napa Valley lushness in barrel. We are pre-releasing three bottlings from Beckstoffer Vineyards – Dr. Crane, To Kalon and To Kalon Cabernet Franc.

Our 2025 Fidelio once again blends Sauvignon Blanc from Farella as well as Tom Gamble’s vineyard holdings. In 2023 and 2024, we separated this fruit into two bottlings but in 2025 we returned to blending them into one wine. The result is a wine with verve and vivacity, indicative of the cooler growing season we experienced in 2025. If 2024 Fidelio displays a voluptuous and playful character, the 2025 comes across as a more serious and determined wine.

In closing, we want to thank you for making this distance run so meaningful. By now, we hope you’ve discovered that we view Realm as more than a bottle of wine. Realm is a way of life, a quest for greatness, a belief that our best days and our best wines are still in front of us. It’s incredibly humbling and rewarding to share these wines with you.

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Really respect the pricing on bard- it’s a good to see a winery responding in a productive way to the market. Easy buy…

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Why don’t they tell the price of everything ahead of release so we can plan our budgets accordingly?

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Been a bit since I’ve bought Realm on release. Definitely grabbing some Bard and Fidelio this go around. The Bard is a great value proposition and perfectly fills a hole in my cellar. Ups to Scott for the utmost transparency on here and engaging in thoughtful/insightful discussions.

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Agreed, cheers to Realm/ @scott.becker for their approach. I think other wineries may want to take note. Shipping included in the cost of the wine, the ability to buy a single bottle vs. a required 3 pack, reduction in pricing on The Bard, customer engagement, friendly tasting policy for list members, great wine, etc. Makes me want to remain a customer.

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Love Cab Franc and all things Pritchard Hill, so very excited to try Heavenly Questions. The Tokalon franc has been exceptional, will be interesting to see how the two compare.

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Heh bought a bunch of ‘21 Bard at $150 as part of their initial allocation for new members and now it drops.

Wouldn’t be on the list for the ‘23 offering if I didn’t so I guess that’s just how it is this time.

Cool to see a price drop though!

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I’m sure you can get the 23 if you want.

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I’m hoping for Bard magnum this go around. I’ll probably skip the Beckstoffer wines this go around.

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Hi everyone, thanks for the comments and interest. Another spring release is upon us! @Alexander_Smith you mentioned the reduced price on The Bard. I can’t be vocal about Napa’s pricing problem and then not walk the walk myself! At the same time, I’m certainly not trying to take much credit. Everyone on this board knows secondary market prices have compressed and I really appreciate the feedback and insights from folks here. Why buy in the primary release if you can pick up well-stored bottles with age for lower prices? Of course there’s some nuance here and this is well covered in other posts. I realize it’s our job as producers to make sure there’s a healthy value proposition, and of course the definition of that varies by each consumer. I hope most people will see the price reduction as a small gesture of goodwill and gratitude for your support.

In truth I wish I could lower prices for some of the other wines. I don’t buy the luxury narrative that prices can only go up. Wine is meant to be consumed and shared, and I hope more of us in Napa Valley will look closely at how and where we can sharpen prices or add value. So why don’t we just lower prices across the board? I’m struggling to balance the realities of buying land in 2010’s and 2020’s Napa Valley with the market and pricing pressures of today. The same is true for buying Beckstoffer fruit. There’s sadly a minimum price that must be maintained in order for any project to have a reasonable chance at penciling out over the span of several decades. At some point I’ll sit down and try to be more articulate with my thoughts on this topic.

In the meantime, I’m happy to share that you will also see a reduced price for Fidelio. Down to $75 for the release. @John_Coop you asked about all the release prices. The Beckstoffer wines will remain flat at $300, $350, $350 for To Kalon, To Kalon Cabernet Franc, and Dr. Crane respectively. Heavenly Questions will be $375. Apologies in advance that HQ quantities are so small that most people won’t receive an allocation. Bear with us - that wine could grow slightly in future years as we grafted over two blocks at Houyi to Cab Franc. You will also see some half bottles of The Bard and the three Estate wines in the release.

@K_Kladder many thanks for your feedback. Exactly the kind of detailed comments we need to hear to continue refining our approach. Of course it’s always nice to hear the good stuff but I’m also here for the stuff that can be improved and I certainly know we aren’t perfect. So keep it coming!

@JosephW we utilize a two-tier approach to pricing. When a new wine/vintage first comes out, we offer it to members of our mailing list at what we call the release price. Once the release closes, that wine reverts to what we call the retail price. We do this as a way to maintain some consistency and support for our retail partners around the world (so we aren’t undercutting them). If you come visit us at the winery and purchase a bottle of 2021 The Bard today, you would pay $150. If you went to your local wine shop to purchase the same bottle, it would be plus or minus the same. That’s the idea anyway. So once this spring release closes, the price of 2023 The Bard will go to $150. Make sense? There’s some other factors here of course around general secondary market prices, we do not (cannot) control pricing for retailers, etc. The intent is to give members the best access and best price during the release. But we’ve learned members sometimes want to buy outside of releases, or they want to buy when (and where) it works for them. So we’ve adapted to ensure we have some wines available year-round and other wines (with smaller volumes) are more limited to just the release.

Other comments on this upcoming release. In the past few years we noticed first dozens and then hundreds of late order requests. People are traveling, busy, etc…obviously! So this year we are trying a new extended format. Allocations will be guaranteed for the first two weeks, and we will grant wish requests at the end of that period. Same as we’ve always done. Then, we plan to leave the release open in a first-come, first-served format for two more weeks after that. Hopefully that’s a bit more member friendly and it gives our team time for more thoughtful outreach. A few wines will likely sell out in the first two weeks but some members are just looking for Bard or maybe Houyi or To Kalon, where we have more volumes, and this makes it easier to accommodate members’ busy lives. That’s our hope anyway. Give us feedback on how it works as you go through it this release.

Thanks again for the comments and support over all the years. Yes, it’s a challenging time in the wine business but I believe this will make us better, sharper, stronger. Napa Valley has always been about relationships, and there’s none more important than between producer and consumer. Your support, your feedback, your engagement is what makes this journey possible. :folded_hands::wine_glass:

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Scott, it is much appreciated seeing a a reduction on the Fidelio, would be great to hear why you have decided to combine vineyards again for this wine. 2nd question is the 2024 vintage, you were very vocal about how good the 2023 vintage is, however for 2024 I would love to hear your take and if you feel it represents another more recent vintage. Thanks as always.

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I got to try Heavenly Questions this past fall when I visited Realm North. Absolutely phenomonial wine. Who ever gets an allocation is in for a real treat.

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I second this! I was able to try the entire 2023 Realm lineup last fall at a tasting in NY that Scott hosted. All of the wines were exceptional, but the Heavenly Questions really stood out as unique and was my WOTN. A really special wine.

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I recently signed up for the intro offer (got some Bard and Tempest) and received my first Save the Date email. I’m really looking forward to my first order in no small part due to @scott.becker board engagement and transparency. I’ve learned a lot reading your older posts! Thank you!

A bonus after signing up was seeing the Uovo partnership as I was planning on signing up with them a bit later this year. Nice savings!

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Is the Heavenly Questions 100% Cab Franc?

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@JosephW 95% Cabernet Franc, 5% Cab Sauv for 23 Heavenly Questions.

@Alexander_Smith the short answer is we thought the blended wine was better than the two wines separate. It’s about 2/3 Farella, 1/3 Gamble. The coolness of the growing season really shows through in the whites. Brighter citrus notes, punchier in 2025 compared to the almost tropical notes of 2024. The longer answer has to do with how many individual wines we are bottling, and I would like to see us reduce that number over time. Of course I’m writing this at the same time as we are introducing Heavenly Questions! :person_facepalming: We opted for one white but we also held back a small lot to play around with some extended aging trials, something Chris certainly has experience with from Dana. More on that in future years.

@Br4d_L thanks for your support! You’ll know I spent too much time here on WB when my current posts start conflicting with my older ones. :laughing: Or maybe that’s just me getting old. I’m a fan of UOVO and use them for my own storage as well, so it just seemed like a natural partnership.

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Boy I am hopeful for some of the Ta Kalon and HQ!

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Offer came in.

The To-Kalon offers are for 2024.

Does anyone know how 2024 stacks up to 2023? Especially considering the To-Kalon bottles are more than twice the price of 2023 Bard?

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Are you going to make a ‘25 Riverbound? Loved the ‘24

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Thanks for the communication as always, Scott. I was on the fence this release for the fidelio at 95. But it’s truly refreshing to see a price decrease on certain SKUs where most wineries would never think to drop prices, even during economic headwinds/downturns. Putting your money where your mouth is. I will be picking up a few fidelio. Thanks, Scott.

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