What is Drinkward-Peschon selling for currently? It pleases both the cult followers and the informed appreciators.
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Great call Peter.
Teeter-totter is widely available and quite “big” in style.
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Is the plan to decant? I love Turnbull but in my experience none are ready to immediately drink. I think this also applies to several of the others mentioned.
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Another vote for Frank Family given the price point, audience, and easy availability you likely want for this situation.
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I love Drinkward and think Justin’s IL’s would enjoy it, but it’s not readily available, IMO. This usually sells out through the mailing list in short order and can’t even be ordered off their website at the moment.
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Faust or Honig. Beringer Knights Valley -Sonoma
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i had amici NV a few weeks ago. if the crowd is the add ice cubes to their wine glasses type, i’d recommend.
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I prefer to keep my crowd pleasers at around or under $50.
Hall
Frank Family
Caterwaul
Robert Craig Affinity
BV-Rutherford
Ch Buena Vista
While I love DiCo I would not call it or use it as a crowd pleaser.
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I’ve put ice in my wine glass in restaurants that served cabs at 78F. Did it discretely. I guess I am that type 
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gotta go high tech and switch to dry ice.
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O’Shaughnessy Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon
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I’d also recommend Pride
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Took suggestions from this thread as well as some personal ideas and mixed that with what was readily available and put together a blind tasting of 18 wines - 3 flights of 6.
I’m going to ask them to rate the wine and then give a price at which they would be a buyer.
The wines are:
- Amici Cellars Napa Valley
- TOR Napa Valley
- Bevan Ontogeny
- Lerner Project 18 Napa Valley
- Shafer One Point Five
- Dana Estates VASO
- Chappellet Signature
- Penfolds RWT Shiraz (EDIT: B-21 contacted and said not available/shipping, so I bought a Penfolds 389 locally)
- Daou Reserve Paso
- Educated Guess
- Cheval des Andes
- Catena Alta Cabernet
- Beringer Knights Valley
- Clos Apalta
- Chateau Talbot
- Chateau Canon
- Chateau Beychevelle
- Mt Brave
- EDIT: Adding Paradigm Oakville Cabernet (due to #8 Penfolds swap, there was money left in the budget - they reimbursed me - so this was a budget match selection to true up the amount they paid).
Anyhow should be fun…
EDIT: I also haven’t decided how to flight them, so let me know if you have suggestions. I wanted SOME diversity to make not everything so similar, so I’m thinking roughly 4 Cali wines + 2 “world” wines per flight and also try and have a range of price points in each flight?
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looks like a diverse and quality group.
have you considered a tournament style, like maybe a sweet 16 type tourney with 2 wild cards?
regardless i’d keep 3 and 4 apart as they’d be quite similar.
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that could be a lot of fun too … could maybe do it flighted one time then revisit in a week and do it tournament style to see if the results are the same. I’d already planned to taste them via Coravin so I can just give them all the bottles at the end of it (so it’s not a $1800 wine tasting), so two tastings to compare results could be a lot of fun!
I have been reliably told that VASO is entirely press wine. I would strike it from the list purely on competing with wines that have (at minimum some) proper free run juice.
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That would be shocking. I don’t - I think? - ever had an entire wine made from press wine. I would think that would be undrinkably harsh? I can’t believe a producer that can sell their top cuvées for $500+ would even bother selling a 5x cheaper wine that bad and still put their name on it — seems like the damage to the brand couldn’t possibly make that worth it.
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The Howell or the Napa Valley?
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I hear you on all those points–just passing along what I’ve been told. Could certainly be wrong but I have pretty good confidence in that info. I had it and was told after the fact, and suddenly it made so much sense why it was so mouth-filling and glycerin like.
Maybe their top wines are purely free run and then the rest is a gentle press. Between 3-4 vineyards I think they could get reasonable case production of VASO. 