My outlook is slightly different. I bought most of my allocation. I’m about to retire. While I still have an income from working, I plan on buying most of my allocations from my favorite wineries and stocking up my cellar. I imagine I’ll slow down my purchases in the future due to age and reduced income. At that point I’ll just drink down my cellar.
Wait list still 6 years?
well said, and for me it’s 5% of my “cellar” and I’ve been buying since 2003 so I have a nice array to choose from going forward
Just retired late January and just can’t easily pull the trigger going forward. Took the 4 offered Rocket Block bottles and passed on the rest. Have 142 bottles in the cellar, 22 are magnums so I have a good amount to carry me through. Will look for the 2021 releases and grab a handful instead of a full shopping cart. Enjoy your pending retirement. Highly recommended!!
1 Like
K&L auctions often has bottles for just at or slightly above current release price. If you buy a lot that has several of the same bottle you can get it cheaper than release. I got a 2010 Broken Stones for $109 in auction (March 2021). Drank it with my wine friends and they all loved it so I made it a birthday/celebration hallmark wine for us. Shortly after (July 2021) there was a 4 bottle lot where I got them for $125/each.
The exception to this may be vintages/vineyards that got a 100 pt from one of the magazines.
1 Like
The earlier wines were released at $89 - shipping included. So everything you listed is still at a premium.
Correct. I should have prefaced that I would rather spend $120-$145 on a bottle that is 7-12 years old to drink now than spend $130 on something I am going to sit on for 10 years before I drink.
I haven’t heard any mention of scores. The recent releases, especially 2018, have received a lot of love.
I’m also curious about the use of Graciano, especially in the Heartstone. I have not really had any of the newer cuvees that use Graciano.
in for 4 hexe and 2 rocket blocks.
My initial offering email said only Broken Stone and Hexe, but my offering that arrived today has everything available with the exception of magnums. I imagine the increase in prices reduced purchases in the first round unless my first email was wrong.
Same here
I would agree that there’s going to be more left over for the 2nd and 3rd waves this time around. The Rocket Block magnum was gone in the afternoon last Tuesday before I could order one. Everything else was still available.
A number of growers bought a supposed clone of Mourvedre, called the Monastrell clone, that later turned out to be Graciano. Some of them, including Justin, noticed that it grew differently in the vineyard and tasted and smelled much different when they started making wine from the grapes, but really loved the resulting wine.
-Al
I’ve been out of Saxum ever since they didn’t respond to my emails to them. Terrible customer service.
I was camping during the release, but asked to purchase before I left on the trip. Saxum graciously helped me out.
I have a quibble about our expectations of wineries, especially the smaller ones-
We collectively talk a good game: We like to support small, family businesses. We bristle when our favorite privately owned wineries sell out to conglomerates. We want to support the quality focused little guy through the ups and downs.
IMO, it’s important to remember these small wineries are typically family owned with very few employees; they’re not large corporations. We like the personal touch and connections we often get with these small wineries. We like them precisely because when we call or visit we’re speaking with the owner or the winemaker. They operate with very little overhead. The winery might have marketing, order processing, shipping, customer service, and purchasing departments; but they’re likely all staffed by the same employee who handles those functions when they’re not assisting with winemaking. Or by the spouse. I talked with a vineyard owner a month ago who mentioned his shipping department just came home from college.
We’ve been trained by large companies selling commodities that “great customer service” is refunding a purchase no-questions-asked or doing whatever the customer demands. These corporate behemoths can eat order after order when selling the dizzyingly high quantities they do. The Prisoner Wine Co can easily eat a case when a customer isn’t happy because they sell nearly a million a year. They also have the overhead & employees to deal with it all. A small winery selling a 1000 cases of wine/year can’t afford to write off many cases of wine because a customer didn’t like the shipping date before they significantly chew into their margin. The small winery might not have a PR Firm or a marketing department who worries about the “optics” of price increases so they could have a PR gaffe or two.
It’s good to have high expectations for businesses where we spend our hard earned cash. But I also think we need to be realistic about our favorite small wineries who don’t have the overhead and personnel capabilities of the large corporations. Yes, their wine is top-notch, but some other parts of their operations might be run on shoe-string budgets. We all have our own thresholds and shouldn’t feel guilty if we stop buying when a winery exceeds ours. It bothers me that some think Saxum is a bad actor here. If the value proposition isn’t there for you, it just isn’t there; no need to make them out to be a bad guy to justify your decision. If they had more finance employees, I’m sure they might have raised prices 10% every few years and no one would have squawked. Possibly Justin wishes they had in retrospect, although in the release email he mentioned the desire to keep their wine under $100 as long as possible as the driving factor.
10 Likes
I was on the July 19th list and picked up 18 bottles of 750s. All I see still available on my dashboard now are single magnums of 2019 Hexe for $312.
Was there any comment by the winery about pricing?
Yes. From the release email:
Now let’s talk about the offering today. I have dreaded writing this letter for a long time. It’s been 9 years since the bulk of our wines increased in price. Over the years I was motivated to keep them sub triple digits, but could no longer ignore the dramatic rise in production and fulfillment costs during that time. Standard shipping will continue to be offered without an additional charge. I understand the increase is a bit of a surprise and I totally understand if you decide to buy a little less. I get it!
FWIW- just came across this in the wine room, I’ve got 2 from a few yrs ago. Saxum had some leftover lots of Zin, Grenache, mataro, Syrah. As a Thank-you to long term customers they released it to us at $10? Or free? Can’t remember the price.
It’s routinely scored at 93-96 pts & sells for $150+ at auction. Was a very cool thing they did.
2 Likes
Given to members for the cost of shipping. Spectacular.
1 Like