I am so irked by Rimmerman’s inappropriate use of the word “lipid” as an adjective (it is not) that I’m boycotting them until they offer something not shorty at a good price.
I have bought some stuff from them, but only things I like, or that sounds interesting. He does occasionally come up with somewhat different (esp Italian) wines that I might try. That said, his emails are full of BS! I did buy some of the 2010 $19.99 Barbaresco, mostly because it’s not easy to find Langhe Nebbiolo for that price. I don’t think there was much risk in that, but I would never do a mystery case, there’s too much stuff, even if it was all a good buy, that I don’t want.
Presumably a typo for “limpid”, given his proofreading record.
No, it’s clearly some code to a “mystery offering”
Yeah, he really needs to cut the fat from his prose…
I’m basically in the same boat - here’s my list:
$15.38 2011 Bunchen Mosel Riesling Spatlese
$59.33 1999 i clivi Galea Colli Orientalli del Friuli
$19.82 2008 Substance Syrah WA State
$41.53 2008 Hubert Lamy St-Aubin 1er Cru Clos de Meix
$50.66 2012 Guillaume Vrignaud Chablis Grand Cru Blanchot
$26.94 2010 stefano Amerighi Cortona DOC
$30.13 2009 Olivier Guyot Marsannay Les Favieres
$29.57 2006 Hightower Red Mountain Red Wine
$19.38 2008 Greppicante Bolgheri
$20.10 2008 Domaine Ninot Mercurey 1er Cru Les Crets
$14.58 2010 Oiseau Corbieres
$16.34 2010 Socre Dolcetto d’Alba
Total is $343.75. Somebody else in the office got a bottle of 2005 Chateau Beasejour - not too shabby.
Adam,
I’d be okay with a box like that if I was looking to try new wines and getting into wine.
I think the issue arises when you’re into wine and expecting a La Tache to magically appear in a $250 case…you know wine at a point, buy absolutes for your palate, not random boxes.
I buy more salt, mustard and oil than I do wine.
Agreed - for me the point is entirely to get wines that I wouldn’t necessarily buy and try to expand my palate, try new grapes/regions/etc.
We buy a lot of mustard too!
I’m fairly happy with my box. A lot of Rhone which I won’t complain about. It didn’t add up to a great value but c’est la vie…
$26.93 2011 Le Grand-Clere (Françoise Blanchard) Cabernet Franc
$15.82 2011 Domaine Jean Royer Le Petit Domaine (Le Petit Roy)
$22.50 2010 Château de Fosse-Seche Saumur Arcane
$36.41 2011 Domaine d’Ouréa Gigondas
$28.66 2011 Pian dell’Orino Rosso di Montalcino
$24.67 2012 Domaine Romaneaux-Destezet (Hervé Souhaut) Syrah
$50.96 2007 Porto Rocha Porto Vintage
$30.50 2002 Berrys Bridge Shiraz
$39.12 2010 Domaine Barmes-Buecher Riesling Steingrubler
$15.81 2011 Bünchen Riesling Spätlese
$20.13 2011 Domaine Jean David Côtes du Rhône Villages Séguret Les Couchants
$27.85 2009 Domaine de Saint Siffrein Châteauneuf-du-Pape
$339.36
I received two of the $250 cases. Four wines were the same in both cases. But one of these was the 2000 Bourdy Chateau Chalon so no complaints. Heres the full list, along with a rough price estimate
2000 Jean Bourdy Chateau Chalon $120
2012 Domaine Romaneaux-Destezet Syrah $27
2010 Bunchen Mosel Riesling Spatlese $14
2010 Chateu Vieux Riviere Lalande de Pomerol $22
2006 Domaine Faiveley Nuits-Saint-Georges 1er Cru “Les Saint-Georges” $113
NV Elegie Cote Rotie $25
2007 Moulin a Vent $50
2007 Le Defi de Lamery $16
2007 Mastroberardino Aglianico Campania $16
2010 Chateau de Fosse-Seche Arcane $25
2012 Domaine La Grange Aux Belles Anjou Rouge “53” $14
2011 Domaine Jean David Cotes du Rhone Seguret Le Beau Nez $25
Case #2
2000 Jean Bourdy Chateau Chalon $120
2012 Domaine Romaneaux-Destezet Syrah $27
2010 Bunchen Mosel Riesling Spatlese $14
2010 Chateau Vieux Riviere Lalande de Pomerol $22
2007 Chateau Simian CdP $35
2003 Antica Cantina S. Amico Venere Oro Lacrima di Morro d’Alba $10
2009 Domaine Albert Mann Vin D’Alsace Pinot Noir Grand H $68
1990 Schloss Schonborn Riesling $24
2008 Roots Klee Willamette Valley Pinot Noir $18
2010 Domain La Grange Aux Belles Anjou Rouge “Prince”$18
2011 Domaine La Remejeanne Cotes du Rhone Les Arbousiers $18
2011 Domaine Jean Royer CdP $35
You got much better mystery cases than me. For me, even if the value was slightly over $250, I wasn’t impressed. Had half of them already and feel shafted.
Precisely. Anyone still buying from Fraudiste, especially after reading a few pages in this thread, is certifiably delusional.
I am not surprised that this works for some people – one of whom is Jon Rimmerman – and if you enjoyed the wines, that’s terrific.
But the CT “average” is always high in my view and, after all, it is just that – an average. If you wanted those wines, you could buy each one for appreciably less. It might be interesting to know what the WS best-price figure would be for each. The idea that this case “saved” you $100 seems highly dubious to me.
But really, the most important thing to me is that there isn’t one wine listed by those who bought that I would have purchased independently. They truly do look like “bin ends”
Again, I am happy it worked for you (and must for a lot of others), but I don’t see them as bargains, and I don’t see the appeal in having someone else picking a case of wine for me from a bunch of miscellaneous things they couldn’t otherwise sell
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…
I got a bottle of this and tried it recently. After two or three days and a few separate tastes, it went down the drain . . .
YMMV
I’d be curious to see a handful of eamples of the more expensive mystery cases. Seems like there is less room at the higher end for misc bin end wines that nobody has ever heard of and are merely meh…
I figure my hit rate was moderate enough when I carefully screened his emails (cut through the bs and self promotion) and culled out the ones that sounded best that letting him pick for me could be nothing other than a disaster because 95% of his offers were always of absolutely no interest (though I think overall I have had many more “hits” than “misses”).
My first Garagiste purchase was this year’s $250 mystery case. I take it that some on this board equate asking a salesperson to select wine for you with giving them license to steal your money by dumping their inferior goods on you. This line of thought seems to suggest that anyone who really knows their stuff when it comes to wine already knows what to buy and what not to buy. I take a different view.
I would suggest first that what is easy to sell isn’t always good; and what is more difficult to sell is not by definition inferior. That applies to books, movies, music, and, among many other things, wine. If it is a fact that Garagiste has good wine that hasn’t sold, that should not come as shock. In my experience, what is popular and what is excellent are only loosely correlated.
Putting aside the question of absolute quality, I would further suggest that there is more than one way to approach the love and appreciation of wine. Some take the approach that they know what they like and what they want. They need no guidance from wine sellers on what to buy. Others, and I include myself in this group, take a different, but (I believe) equally valid approach: we may know what we like stylistically, but we believe that the wide world of wine offers many, many variations on that style; we know that realistically, we can’t possibly know all those variations. The fact that some have said the wines in the mystery boxes are of no interest to them is of no interest to me unless they have actually tasted the wines in question.
Speaking for myself, after 20 years of drinking and collecting wine, I have a pretty good idea of what I like and what I don’t. That is not the same thing as saying that I have a thumbs up or thumbs down on every wine out there, though. Far from it. Truth be told, the day I get to the point that I think there is nothing else left to discover in wine, is quite possibly the day I start drinking only water with dinner. How one vintage differs from another, how one vineyard compares with another one across the street, how a wine changes as it ages – all these are variations on a theme. Another variation is finding out what the deal is with a Sankt Laurent from Austria or a new winemaker’s Frappato from Sicily. Isn’t the discovery of those variations, in one form or another, what our wine obsession is largely (mostly?) about?
If Jon Rimmerman has a little PT Barnum in him but knows how to source wine that is interesting and tasty and sell it at a good price, I can overlook the schtick. I can’t afford to pay $1800 to find out how much I trust him, but $250 seems like a fair price to pay him to put a case together for me that represents what he sells. If he has stuck me with a bunch of wine I don’t care for, I will move on and try my luck elsewhere. It will not be the first time I spent money on wine that disappointed. On the other hand, if I like most of the wine, then I will have a new source for some off-the-beaten path experiences, in addition to looking to grab some good deals from him on wine I am familiar with.
Like others who posted here, I got the Bunchen Riesling in my box. This looks like one that the mystery case might have been used for as a way to dump inventory. I also received a bottle of 1990 Karthauserhof Riesling Auslese that I have high hopes for. But in both cases, who knows? I buy and drink a fair bit of German wine, so I have a baseline for comparison. Whether either of them is what I am expecting will play out when I open them. More to the point, over the course of drinking through the mystery case I will find out whether the wines from Garagiste deliver as promised, or whether the emails are all wind up and no pitch.
Brent,
I was a buyer from Garagiste right up to the time that the mystery wines rolled out. Circle back through this thread & read about fake Cote Rotie, a fabricated story behind a “German cellar” that people on this board exposed, a fabricated story about a score on a mystery Oregon PN, Frenchmen Hills.
I wouldn’t buy anything else from this guy & I don’t think it is because I don’t trust someone to recommend wine to me.
Yea, there are no two ways around it: the dude lies.
My turning point was MysteryWine 22: Dois Irmaos 2008 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.