Gotta say, I’m not an expert at this stuff - have really only started getting more “serious” about wine during the pandemic - but I got some of that Editorial (it was 2015) and I really did not like it. It was easily my least favorite wine I’ve gotten from WineAccess (bad enough that I considered contacting them). In fact, I registered with WineBerserkers in part because I though it would be interesting to post here and get reactions to my experience. I found it to be disorganized, cloyingly syrupy and too aggressively high in alcohol. I’ve loved other offerings of high alcohol Cabs from WA - Sixteen Appellations and Wolfe Grade stood out for instance - so its not that I don’t like high alcohol Cabs. So - not sure if maybe it was a bad bottle (I have another one), a style that I don’t like (and if so, I’d like to know the style so I can avoid it), or others had also tried it and not liked it. Would love to hear if anyone else has tried it or if anyone has insights to share.
I’m with you. I tried two different Editorials (2015 and 2018) and both were pretty awful.
Plus 1 on 2015 Editorial - watery…not good…I sent it back…
All the other NDAs have been great - 2018 Yesterday Reserve…Moundsman…2018 Radio Silence…Phoenix…
So far I think Wine Access NDAs are a cut above Cams NDAs…Consistently higher scores than Cams high end cabs on CT. But Cams seem to need a year after purchasing before drinking so comparisons not fair I guess.
The Wine Access ones are low 20’s to high 30’s. The DN ones are $13 to $18, mostly, inclusive of shipping. Generally speaking the Wine Access ones are 2x the price. I do wonder if people paying higher makes them score higher. I have bought a ton of Wine Access private labels and when I drink them I think I’m drinking something more special than a de Negoce. The mind is funny…
Small quibble, Wine Access NDAs (almost all Cabs) would more closely be comparable to Cam’s top-end Cabs which would put the all-in price comparison closer to $20 - $22 per bottle for de Negoce and $27 - 30 per bottle for Wine Access.
The difference here being a 35% - 50% premium for Wine Access.
This assumes the Wine Access buyer is:
a) purchasing either 6-bottles or spending $120 to get free shipping,
b) using coupon codes, whether they be 15% or 20% off, and
c) taking advantage of the volume discounts that typically kick in at 6 or 12 bottle lots.
Considering Cam’s pricing model is based off case-only purchases I think that is the most fair way to compare these two.
Yes. Despite our best efforts anyone who says otherwise is deceiving themselves.
I am going to go -1 or against the grain on the Editorial. We love the 2015. Yes, it’s not a full throttle in your face cab but it is red fruited, has good acidity, balanced and ends with a really nice finish. I called it a pretty wine. We (party of 4) start with it and then move to a bigger wine.
I don’t know, I’m kind of the opposite. The more I pay the more I expect and if it doesn’t wow me, I rate it lower than a less expensive wine that doesn’t wow me.
That’s fair, I just think most of the $20 dN’s haven’t been reviewed much on cellartracker as people letting them sit. The vast majority of Cab reviews are in the $13-$18 range (pre shipping).
WA is listing a 2018 Halpin Oakville Reserve which they say is more or less the same wine as the 2018 Yesterday Oakville. There’s a tale about the Halpin guy buying one batch of Yesterday Oakville wine directly from the winemaker, who then bought more fruit to be made into another batch of Yesterday Oakville. Not sure I fully understand the twists and turns of their story, but multiple batches might explain the bottle variation in YO.
Our good friend Halpin is always a step ahead. But last August, we managed to one-up him. And then, Halpin reminded us that he’s not to be one-upped.
In classic Halpin fashion, he didn’t inform us of his plot. Halpin’s winemaker Ry Richards would break the news that an extremely special lot of wine he’d been saving for us was no longer ours. It had been bottled in the form of today’s 2018 Halpin Private Reserve Cabernet—with a newly-minted, special-edition black label.
The Oakville grape source is one that Halpin himself has boasted about when he’s raised bottles of the actual winery’s wine from his own cellar. “If you want better quality grapes,” he’s said, “You’d have to get them from a Bordeaux First Growth!”
Their flagship Cabernet starts at $500 upon release and rises into the stratosphere outside the mailing list. For most California Cabernet fanatics, the chance to taste even one glass would be enough to catapult them to Nirvana.
Here’s what happened: > Halpin phoned Richards minutes after reading our missive about a wine called Yesterday. > In it, we described the grape source as the apogee of classic Oakville terroir—a cult winery with a mailing list that sees a handful of spots open up in a decade, an estate on the receiving end of more 100-point scores than are worth recounting. We guess you could say you’d have to go to a Bordeaux First Growth to get anything better…
Halpin was bullish. > He pressed Richards on the source, whether he’d “had a hand in making that Yesterday wine,” and if we’d exhausted our supply from that abundant 2018 vintage. > Richards demurred at first, but grew helpless against Halpin’s rapid-fire interrogations, and having worked in the cellars of 100-point winemakers with equally fiery demeanors, he quickly devised “The Oakville Compromise,” which resulted in us learning a valuable lesson: that sometimes, the barrier to fine wine isn’t about access, it’s about the price someone is willing to pay to one-up their friends.
Richards, therefore, is this story’s antihero. Yes, > he took our wine and re-sold it to Halpin at a premium, but he didn’t pocket the profits. He called us immediately, explained that the special project we’d been plotting would unexpectedly be a new Halpin release and that he’d garnered enough capital from Halpin to secure another lot of Oakville Cabernet (from the same source) that we should use before Halpin found out. > More on that later… sorry Halpin!
The 2018 Halpin Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon offers a unique perspective—a bargain snapshot of fruit sourced from a legendary triple-digit Napa estate, showing a deep and brooding purple-ruby color in the glass and revealing both aromas and flavors that simply taste expensive. Enticing blueberry, black cherry, and lavish cedar notes are complemented by flavors of freshly rolled cigar, allspice, and crushed clove while this red balances grippy, firm tannins with the tension and coiled energy you’d expect of an Old World First Growth. All of this culminates in creamy layers of black fruit, savory spice, and mocha notes that linger through a purely Napa-opulent finish.
Here’s a link: 2018 Halpin Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley
Have to say that WA overdoes it on their writeups. This particular one on Halpin is so twisted that it leaves me confused and not sure what to make of it…
Anyone have any new promo codes? I have burned through the $50 off 200, 21%, and a 20% I believe.
The average wine consumer, i.e. anyone not actually on a forum about wine, tends to really enjoy this erudite fluff. I’m waiting for when the copywriter there decides to just go H-A-M and write something like, “these grapes are so good that they make your dick bigger.”
Considering the ever-increasing average age of the buyers of the sort of wine in Wine Access, the copywriter could just say the grapes will make it work and would clear out the warehouse. 
All kidding aside. I’m not sure how many average wine consumers have a Wine Access account. I think the average wine consumer buys wine at the supermarket, Trader Joe’s or Costco, maybe at Whole Foods, and at the local wine shop for a splurge or a case of champagne for a party. If there’s a winery in the area they might buy there too. But a mail-order store with ever-shifting limited inventories, NDA wines and one-off custom bottlings (they even have a custom dosage on some champagnes), that’s prosumer to connoisseur level. (In fact, I found Wine Access through WB.)
I do enjoy the copy, maybe because I’m so used to the absurdly over-the-top Last Bottle copy that Wine Access’s seems tame by comparison. And, it is much more informative (I can’t for the life of me figure out why all stores don’t put drinking windows and tasting notes on listings). But, I have to agree with Scottie that sometimes it gets confusing. And, to paraphrase David Ogilvy, who said that nothing is worse for a bad product than good advertising; nothing is worse for a long term commitment to Wine Access than getting burned by their glowing copy a few times.
I’m curious if anyone bit on the Halpin Oakville? I always have a hard time believing that somehow they are selling wine that is even remotely close to the style and quality of the source they are loosely describing.
The few Oakville wineries with a list price of $500 (promontory, bond, etc), not sure they would offload their juice at wholesale prices. The NDA wine market is not one in overly knowledgeable about.
Look for posts by me or Tyler Rico in the coupon thread. Between the two of us, we should’ve covered just about everything
I did, solely based on the quality of the Yesterday wines, Which should be from the same source (probably Bond). Are they as good as entry-level Bond, probably not, but the WA NDA wines have (usually) been worth the price of entry.
Looks like Halpin Reserve sold out. A little fomo on that one but definitely helps the wallet…
Just got a follow up email from wine access about the Halpin Reserve…
In stock here on the east coast. Just ordered 5. I had a credit and got 15% off. Love my Yesterday reserve. Hope this comes through and not a stinker like Editorial 15…
Yeah. You all are right. Went to order earlier and it said sold out, but it’s now showing available. Order in. Good marketing tactic.