When I first started exploring wine circa 1999-00, I sent 3 initial requests to be added to mailing lists. Alban and Cayuse quickly sent me mailers to purchase, screaming eagle sent me Email letting me know the list was so long they weren’t even adding people to the wait list any longer. I wish I would have pressed harder at that time to get added. I might not still be buying but probably would have at prices a few years ago.
I hope this question isn’t taken the wrong way. I’m honestly interested in your answers. Speaking for myself, I would be interested to try SE but the price is just out of any reasonable range for me. For those who are on the wait list, are you anticipating drinking all the bottles, flipping some, flipping all, opening in shared cost tastings, opening in BYO tastings, etc?
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Craig I am taking your question the wrong way. To take it the right way would be merely expedient and cynical and would lack integrity.
IDK. I will make the decision if and when I get a bottle allocated to me.
Does anyone actually drink screaming eagle? I just assumed it is only for display and traded/sold over and over again.
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What is the reasoning here? Why not respectfully remove yourself to open a slot for someone else?
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Craig
Although I understand flipping might be tempting considering secondary market, if and when you make the list, I would NOT recommend it as they will kick people off of the list that they catch doing so. I believe they number the bottles too
Ive drank most vintages of screamjng eagle. Mostly at tastings so people do drink it. I passed on mg first offer a few years ago, though I have an 02 that I got in a trade. It too will be drunk unless I need money urgently…
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I’m not on the list!
But I guess few people can afford to drink it over dinner with a few friends.
Literally everybody I know who was once on the Screagle list played the whole flip 2 bottles and keep 1 for free game. Like others have already said, once the price gets to a certain point, you’ll get on. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has tried it and wondered what the big deal was. Lots of worthy competition at that price point. Hence all the peeps saying they’ll pass once offered. #notworthit
We have been on the list since the 1999 vintage. Have never sold or flipped a bottle. We do drink them on special occasions.
I think I only waited a couple of years on the waiting list, but that may have been from our support of Auction Napa Valley. That has opened a lot of doors that might otherwise have taken far longer.
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The bottles are numbered. Very active tracking system. But hard to control the secondary market regardless, as auctions lots show.
Me too, mostly, but it’s over now. Started with the 1992, my one bottle of which I agreed to sell in my 2002 divorce. Three bottles a year starting with the 1993. SE always won blind and nonblind cab tastings for me. Masculine feminine yin yang with an endless pretty finish. I once brought a bottle, mid90s vintage, to a small informal dinner at a restaurant. There was a woman there I didn’t know. I dumped it into a decanter. She said “nice to see someone actually drinks it.” It turned out to be Ms. Philips, the founder and then owner. Already it had become a commodity. A couple of years ago I had an informal dinner in SF for Chris Ringland. I brought three great wines he had made and a 2001 SE. Both it and an SQN someone brought weren’t empty at the end. Not because of quality but because when you get to a certain level of quality they’re all equally great if showing well. Maybe no such thing as $1000 super-great.
I tried really hard over the years not to consider what the bottles were worth if I sold them. It was hard because that is the accurate math of what you lose by drinking them. I stopped buying when the price – my mailing list price, not the auction price – exceeded anything close to what the wine, or almost any wine, was worth it to me to drink. I still haven’t had, or bought, 1989 Haut Brion or 1990 La Tache.
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Signed up in 2015. Hope to make it before I leave this earth
You might want to sign up for a cryonics list too.
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George -
I cannot recall if you enjoy Bordeaux, but if you do, given your willingness to buy these uber-expensive wines, you owe it to yourself to try that 89 Haut Brion. It’s phenomenal. Or find someone with a wine like that, and offer to pop a Screaming Eagle with them. I have a buddy that buys Screaming Eagle. I have had it in flights with mature, perfect to near-perfect Bordeaux, including with 82 and 86 Mouton, and an 89 Petrus, and the Bordeaux win every time. Could be the difficulty of comparing mature to a Cab that is only 5-7 years of age, but for me it’s an easy choice.
Sorry for this late to the party input regarding Caymus SS data.
The 1984 production went up to 1000 cases with wine in Limousin oak for 48 months.
Starting in 1985 the production went up a couple of hundred cases and the time in oak diminished, a trend which saw both of these trends continue in the same directions over time.
I am an Arsenal man. And not a buyer at any price.