Tag Archives: Pinot noir

In Defense of Evil Empires

Amber LeBeau in General, Millennials, Wine marketing

Published on November 28, 2017

Recently Esther Mobley of The San Francisco Chronicle wrote of the blockbuster Pinot noir producer Kosta Browne’s new direction away from their super-lush and highly extracted style to something less “over-the-top, opulent, blow-your-lid-off wines.” The catalyst for this change, according to Kosta Browne’s president Scott Becker, is changing consumer demand, particularly among Millennials.

“We were at the risk of becoming victims of our own success…To be relevant and successful for the next 20 years, we have to recognize that the consumer is changing.” –Scott Becker as quoted by SF Chronicle 11/7/17

A sharp motivation also seems to be a bit of ego bruising that Kosta Browne has taken over the years for being a poster child of the high alcohol, super-ripe and hedonistic wines that flooded the market in the last few decades. Mobley quotes founder Dan Kosta concerns over his namesake winery being used by winemakers in Oregon and by organizations like In Pursuit of Balance as an example of what not to do with Pinot noir. The Chronicle article also includes an amusing anecdote about a sommelier at the NYC restaurant Breslin being ignorant that a winery named Kosta Browne even exist.

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Quick look–is this Pinot noir or Syrah? Sometimes it’s hard to tell with wines as well.

Let’s set aside how poorly that story reflects on the quality of the wine knowledge for a restaurant’s program. As an owner/wine director, I would expect my sommeliers not to be ignorant of a winery that has won Wine Spectator’s Wine of the Year (and been featured in their Top 100 list numerous times) and is regularly in the top half of most collectible wines from California according to Vinfolio’s Collectibility Index. Love them or hate them, Kosta Browne is, for all practical purposes, part of the pantheon of “cult producers” of Pinot noir in California with a 2 to 5-year long waiting list.

Even if you don’t like Kosta Browne and don’t feature them on your wine list, it’s beyond pale to shrug your shoulders at the name as if you’ve never heard of them.

I say that as someone who really doesn’t like Kosta Browne’s wines. Like many somms, I roll my eyes at seeing them on restaurant wine lists with their exorbitantly marked up prices just waiting for an expense account ego to order them.

**Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering.**

Particularly a big-fish whose name rhymes with “Stiancarlo Ganton”

Even if Kosta Browne is not my style, I’m a bit saddened to read about this “change in direction.” It’s not that I don’t think pursuing more balanced wines isn’t a worthwhile goal. But seeing Kosta Browne trying to become “more restrained” in style is a bit like following the Hot Stove League in Baseball in the post-Steinbrenner years as the New York Yankees aim to be more “fiscally restrained.” Yeah, you’ve got the LA Dodgers and Boston Red Sox’s trying to fill in the gap with their best Belle Glos and Sea Smoke like efforts. But as a fan of an old school small market Joseph Swan-like team (the St. Louis Cardinals), the excitement of potentially landing a big fish is not quite a thrilling when one of the Goliaths of the game are sitting on the sideline. David isn’t David if the slingshot is never used.

Likewise, how exciting would the Star Wars movies be if the Galactic Empire changed philosophies all of a sudden and started espousing Kofi Annan style diplomacy?

There’s always a bigger fish.

“Good is a point of view…. Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator are similar in almost every way, including their quest for greater power. ” — Chancellor Kofi Parker, Jr.

The world needs Evil Empires like the New York Yankees and Kosta Browne. Because the little guys, the outsiders, the rebels, the hipster snobs need something to target. The world needs a balance between good and evil and you can’t have one without the other. So why should we root for Kosta Browne to shed its evil ways and try to become something….else? Do we think that people will suddenly stop wanting to drink lush, full-bodied and highly extracted Pinot noirs? Of course not! Just like matter can be neither created nor destroyed, so too, is evil and the taste for residual sugar in wines is constant.

And as we’ve seen from history, when a vacuum of evil is created, there can be consequences when a new force tries steps in.

You can argue that a lot of the world’s recent problems can be traced to the Chicago Cubs winning the 2016 World Series by trying to out-Yankee the Yankees.

If I could photoshop him twerking on the Camaro, I would.

They went from being the lovable, lowkey Eraths of the Pinot noir world to the big budget and crass-commercialized Meiomi. They changed their style, trying to become the “New Evil Empire” and it messed up the cosmic order. Now we have women twerking on top of cars, folks dropping turkeys from planes and idiots launching home-made rockets trying to prove the world is flat. Yes, the world is out of whack. I place the blame squarely on Ben Zobrist.

You can’t stop the change, any more than you can stop the suns from setting.

Sure, big over-the-top wines can be tedious and lack “character”. Likewise, big, cash-rich organizations that can buy or trade for any stud player can be infuriating and soulless. But doesn’t having Evil Empires exist make it more satisfying when you find a gem? A wine that tells a story to your palate. Or when your plucky rag-tag team of no-names finally scale the summit?

Sure, we want to root for the underdogs. But we also need those Big Dogs to be still casting their long shadow of evil like the Death Star. The world works better this way. It has balance even if that balance is dripping with sugar, extract and alcohol.

A New Hope.
AKA winemakers of the Eola-Amity Hills.

There is a place in the world for the Kosta Browne Yankees just like there is a place for my Joseph Swan Cardinals, the Merry Edwards Twins, the Beaux Freres Giants, the Argyle Mariners and the Williams Selyem Braves.

There is even a place, begrudgingly, for the Meiomi Cubs. Well, once they’ve been dethroned and relegated to the bottom of the shelf.

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Brave New Burgs (Part 1)

Amber LeBeau in Burgundy, Wine grapes, Wine Knowledge

Published on November 6, 2017

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. — Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Pop quiz, wine geeks.

1.) What is the white grape of Burgundy?

If you know enough to be dangerous with a restaurant wine list or in a wine shop, then you probably didn’t hesitate to answer “Chardonnay”.

And for the most part, you’d be right.

But also a little wrong.

Some of the best “intro to wine” texts around like Karen MacNeil’s The Wine Bible, Kevin Zraly’s Windows on the World Wine Course and Madeline Puckette’s Wine Folly will teach you that it is easy to start getting a grasp of Burgundy.

Just remember that there is only two grapes–Pinot noir and Chardonnay.

It’s a reflex condition to think with Burgundy that if its red, it’s Pinot noir. If it’s white, then Chardonnay. Sure, everything else about Burgundy with it’s 100 appellations and intricate classification system of 23 regional AOCs, 44 villages, 33 Grand Crus, 585 Premier Crus and countless named lieu dits is enough to make your head spin—but it’s easy to nail the grape varieties. Right?

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” — Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

A Sauvignon blanc produced less than 20 km from the heart of Chablis’ Grand Cru

I started working on the Wine Scholar Guild‘s Bourgogne Master Level Program lead by Don Kinnan with the desire to get more comfortable with Burgundy. But it wasn’t long before I found myself diving head-first into a rabbit hole that would shake me out of my comfort zone but introduce me to a world far more exciting than the one I began studying.

As Allen Meadows, the Burghound, is fond of saying–Burgundy is “the land of exceptions”.

It wasn’t long before the first exceptions started blowing in like the north wind across the Yonne. Here, in the land of Chablis, we have the Auxerrois where grapes like Sauvignon blanc run wild in Saint-Bris and Melon de Bourgogne (the grape of Muscadet) in Vézelay.

However, the exceptions aren’t limited to obscure villages in the northern backwoods of Burgundy. Instead, in the heart of the Côte-d’Or we have the curious case of Pinot Gouges.

In the 1930s, Henri Gouges was inspecting his vineyards in the Nuits-St-Georges premier cru monopole of Clos des Porrets. He noticed that one of his red Pinot noir vines was producing white grape clusters. Intrigued, Gourge took cuttings from the vine and planted them in the NSG premier cru vineyard of La Perrières. His grandchildren still cultivate this “Pinot blanc” though instead of labeling it as that grape, the Gouges family describe Pinot Gouges as “Pinot noir that lost their color“. Regardless of what the vines are called–the fact still remains that in the middle of Chardonnay land, we have an exciting and distinctively non-Chardonnay white Burgundy being produced from a premier cru vineyard.

My notes on the Pinot Gouges “The color looks like a regular white Burg with some oak influence. On the nose, tree fruits of apples and pears but there is a lot of spice here–not oak spice but rather exotic spices.
On the palate there is a lot of weight and texture–things that would make me think of oak except for the complete absence of oak flavors. There is no vanilla, cinnamon, clove, allspice, etc.”

Now while it is technically illegal to plant Pinot blanc in most of the Côte d’Or (though, again, there are exceptions), several producers still tend to legacy vines. Inspired by bottles of Pinot blanc from the 1960s that aged remarkably well, Domaine Méo-Camuzet sourced Pinot blanc vines from Alsace to plant in their Clos St Philibert vineyard in Flagey-Echézeaux. The wine produced from these vines is blended with Chardonnay and classified under Bourgogne Hautes-Côtes de Nuits AOC (as opposed to a village level Vosne-Romanée).

Then there is the case of Pinot Beurot (Pinot gris), the sneaky pink-skinned mutation of Pinot noir that can sometimes find itself interspersed among Pinot noir vines. Not content to just be an interloper, the grape plays a starring role in wines like Domaine Comte Senard Aloxe-Corton blanc that is 100% Pinot Beurot as well Domaine Lucien Boillot et Fils Les Grands Poisots sourced from a parcel of Pinot Beurot first planted in the Volnay vineyard in 1958. Not legally permitted to be called a Volnay, the wine is labeled under the basic regional Bourgogne appellation. Likewise, in the famed white wine vineyards of Puligny-Montrachet, Domaine Guillemard-Clerc has a little less than an acre of Pinot Beurot which goes into it regional Bourgogne blanc. In the Bourgogne Hautes-Côtes de Beaune AOC, Domaine Guillemard-Pothier à Meloisey also produces a Pinot Beurot.

My notes on the Cave de Genouilly Aligote “As if a Sauvignon blanc and an unoaked Chardonnay had a baby. Great mouthfeel with weight. Smooth but fresh.”

And this is not even getting into the more widely known exception of Aligoté which has its own AOC and has earned the affection of a literal “Who’s Who” of legendary Burgundy producers like Aubert de Villaine, Lalou Bize-Leroy, Marquis d’Angerville and Michel Lafarge. Domaine Ponsot takes the love affair a step further to make premier cru level Aligoté in the Morey-St-Denis monopole of Clos des Monts Luisants.

The faith in these producers to devote precious terroir to this obscure grape is a testament that there is something interesting about Aligoté that makes it stand out in the Chardonnay-saturated world of Burgundy. It’s high acidity enchants with racy and mouthwatering appeal that is balanced by a weighty mid-palate that gives a sense of lemon custard richness which can charm even the most traditional white Burgundy lover.

There is no doubt that Burgundy is home to some of the greatest expressions of Chardonnay. However, for the wine geeks conditioned to merely think White Burgundy=Chardonnay, there is brave new world of exciting white Burgs waiting to be discovered.

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Wine Spectator Grand Tour 2017 Las Vegas (Part I)

Amber LeBeau in Wine reviews, Wine Tasting

Published on May 8, 2017

The 2017 Wine Spectator Grand Tour Las Vegas was held at the Mirage on Saturday, May 6th

For thoughts on the 2018 Wine Spectator Grand Tour check out the post Déjà Vu at the Wine Spectator Grand Tour

On May 6th, I had the opportunity to attend Wine Spectator’s Grand Tour at the Mirage Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Earlier in the day, the 143rd Kentucky Derby was held but for wine lovers like me, the real race that evening was trying to see how many of the 244 outstanding 90+ rated wines we could taste in three short hours.

I topped out at 68 wines with that involving making some hard decisions to miss areas that I would have loved to explore more like New Zealand and Piedmont. It also meant missing some of the wines that poured out quickly such as Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ 2012 Cask 23 which was gone about 2 hours into the event. Heading over to the Champagne side last also meant missing the Perrier Jouet’s 2007 Belle Epoque by about half an hour.

One of the observations I made during the evening was how many truly incredible wines only got 90 points. Historically, achieving 90 points from a reputable wine critic was considered a significant achievement for a wine but now it generates as much excitement in many consumers’ eyes as a baseball slugger who hits only 30 home runs a season. Yeah, Ted Williams’ 30 homers was a big deal back in 1951 but that would have him tied for 32nd and keeping company with folks like Kendry Morales, Jedd Gyorko and Curtis Granderson in 2016.

You can partly blame the proliferation of wine critics and wine rating magazines but the truth is that the market is literally flooded with great wine. Advancement in technology and knowledge in both the vineyard and the winery means that consumers have access to more wine of very high quality than ever before. This abundance of choice often means that consumers who focus on critic scores start moving their eye balls higher up the 100 point scale, making wines with scores under 94 points hard press to catch some consumers’ attention.

But Jedd’s got nothing on Teddy Ballgame’s “Blue Steel” action

That made me appreciate the beauty of the Wine Spectator‘s Grand Tour even more. This event, billed as a “United Nations of Wine”, showcased not only the breadth of quality around the globe but also, somewhat ironically, highlighted how much quality is not really defined by a number. While Wine Spectator makes its mark dishing out scores for wine, it was very telling that the vast majority of the 244 wines featured at their event had scores in the 90-93 point range, including 61 wines that scored a mere 90 points. Several of these were highly impressive including one that would make my Top 10 list by the end of the night.

That is why I’m going to start my three part series on the 2017 Wine Spectator Grand Tour with highlighting some of these Jedd Gyorko-scoring wines that are delivering Ted Williams-like quality.

Benovia 2014 La Pommeraie Russian River Pinot noir (90 points. Wine Searcher Average price $59) This was my first time trying wine from this tiny Russian River winery and I was so impressed that I signed up for their mailing list.

Beautiful high intensity aromatics that mixed floral and spice elements. The palate had medium-plus dark fruit notes which were well balanced with enough juicy medium-plus acidity to add elegance to the weight of the fruit. In an evening where I was comparing this wine side by side to other highly acclaimed Pinots such as the Belle Glos (2014 Clark & Telephone), Patz & Hall (2014 Hyde Vineyard) and even a Grand Cru Burgundy from Louis Latour (2014 Corton Grancey), this was the best Pinot noir of the night.

Clos Beauregard 2012 Pomerol (90 points. Wine Searcher Average price $56) Another first time pleasure for me to try. While 2012 as a vintage is a far cry from the very heralded 2009-2010 or the upcoming 2015-2016, it is, in my opinion, a solid vintage that offers good bargains for Bordeaux enthusiasts who need “Cellar Defenders” that that can open up as younger wines while giving their 09/10s and 15/16s more time to age. This Beauregard from Pomerol fits that bill perfectly in offering soft, but full-bodied and structured, tannins with rich dark fruit with spice and chocolate on the finish.

Montecillo 2009 Gran Reserva Rioja (90 points. Wine Searcher Average price $20) Probably one of the best values of the night. Savvy Rioja lovers have long known about Montecillo since it is one of the oldest estates in Rioja and has spent over 140 years making outstanding wines. This 2009 Gran Reserva most impressed me with how well it straddled the line between the modernist, more fruit-forward style of Rioja and the classic, more old-school and oak driven style.

The Montecillo was clearly classic with tobacco and oak spice but it had a rich core of fruit that made the wine seem more fresh than a lot of old-school Gran Reservas tend to be. The event features a lot of great Riojas from producers like Muga (2009 Prado Enea), LAN (2012 Edicion Limitada), and CVNE (2010 Imperial Gran Reserva) but I would put the Montecillo second only to the 2007 La Rioja Alta Gran Reserva 904 for top Rioja of the evening.

Quinta do Vale Meao 2013 Meandro (90 points. Wine Searcher Average price $21) This Portuguese wine is probably fighting head to head with the 2009 Montecillo Gran Reserva for best bargain of the night. Full bodied with chewy tannins and a long savory finish. Again, this will be no surprised to savvy wine geeks who have already been well aware of the outstanding value of dry red wines coming out of the Douro. Nor will this be a shock to Port lovers as the Olazabal Family’s Quinta do Vale Meão vintage Ports have been raking in critical acclaim for several years now.

This wine is a blend of 35% Touriga Nacional, 34% Touriga Franca, 20% Tinta Roriz, 6% Tinta Barroca, 3% Tinto Cão and 2% Sousâo and is almost a “baby brother” to the Quinta do Vale Meão Tinto 2013 that earned 94 points from Wine Spectator and 95 points from Robert Parker. The 2011 version of that wine was #4 on the 2014 Wine Spectator Top 100 wines list. For a $20 wine, this wine punches WAY above its weight and out-shined many bottles that were 3 to 4x the price.

Emilio Moro 2011 Malleolus de Valderramiro Ribera del Duero (90 points. Wine Searcher Average price $85) One of my Top 10 wines of the night. Absolutely stunning wine from one of the top estates in the Ribera del Duero. The nose smelled like dinner at an incredible restaurant with tons of savory meaty character mixed with fragrant Indian spices that can’t help but make your mouth water before taking a sip.

The mouthfeel is velvety with oak and black plums mixed with medium-plus acidity that continues making your mouth water with lingering flavors of fruit and spice for a finish that was several minutes long. And that was just from a taste! I can only imagine how many more layers could unfurl if I had a chance to savor an entire bottle of this wine.

Montes 2012 Alpha M (90 points. Wine Searcher Average price $64) Another great delivery from the Montes family of Chile. This is a Cabernet Sauvignon dominant Bordeaux blend with 10% Cabernet Franc, 5% Merlot and 5% Petit Verdot which gave this wine a lot of tobacco spice and cedar cigar box notes on the nose. Very Bordeaux-like but it was paired with a palate of ripe, juicy black currant and black plum with a velvety mouthfeel closer to that of a nice Napa Cabernet Sauvignon.

S.A. Prum 2010 Wehlener Sonnenuhr GG Old Vine Dry Riesling (90 points. Wine Spectator list price $47) At the beginning of the tasting the Champagne and white wine tables where crushed as people, logically, sought to try those wines first before moving on to the big reds. In order to maximize the amount wines we could experience, my wife and I made the strategy decision to hit the reds first and then towards the end hit the whites with the Rieslings and Bubbles being palate cleansers. It was a risky strategy but this dry Riesling from S.A. Prum made it a smashing success. Intensely dry with lively acidity that scrubbed all the tannins and extract from the 40+ red wines we’ve had by then right off the palate. It was like a B12 shot for the palate and it awaken my taste buds to enjoy the vibrant stone fruit of white peach and almost salty minerality. Such vivacious life for a 7 year old Riesling that still could go on kicking for several more years!

Sbragia 2013 Monte Rosso Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (90 points. Wine Spectator list price $65) From the legendary Monte Rosso Vineyard in the Moon Mountain district of Sonoma, it would be a sin to call this Cabernet “Napa-like”. Sure, it has the power of ripe black fruits of a great Oakville or Rutherford Cab but there is a freshness to this wine that I often find missing in Napa. It reminds me of an NFL linebacker who studied ballet. Power and grace. While the winery was founded Ed Sbragia, former head winemaker of Beringer, I learned that his son Adam now heads up winemaking duties. While I always enjoyed Ed’s wine, tasting this wine has me even more intrigued at what the future holds for Sbragia.

Ch. du Tertre 2011 Margaux (90 points. Wine Searcher Average price $42) A blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Cabernet Franc, 10% Merlot and 10% Petit Verdot from the 5th growth estate in Margaux. In the “Intermission Years” of Bordeaux between 2009/2010 and 2015/2016, the 2011 vintage would probably rank just slightly ahead of 2013 for roughest of this very rough patch. But as I noted with my comment on the 2012 Clos Beauregard, there are still gems to be found but wine lovers need to be realistic. These are not wines to lay down in the cellar for decades. A wine like the 2011 du Tertre has character and personality with its woodsy and black tea notes on the nose. The medium body tannins with blueberries, dark cherry and truffles and medium-plus acidity would shine with dinner featuring game, mushrooms or a hearty stew.

Caiarossa 2011 Toscana (90 points. Wine Searcher Average price $43) This is an exciting Italian wine project from Eric Albada Jelgersma, owner of the 3rd Growth Bordeaux estate Chateau Giscours and 5th Growth Chateau du Tertre. A blend of 30% Merlot, 24% Cabernet Franc, 22% Syrah and 4% Cabernet Sauvignon it is an unusual blend even by Bordeaux standards, much less something you would expect from Tuscany. But the Cabernet Franc and Syrah in this wine really sing with a mix of blackberry, violet and peppery spice. On the finish there is some intriguing dark chocolate and espresso notes that pop out. This is a wine tailor-made to impress wine geeks.

Ornellaia 2014 (90 points. Wine Searcher Average price $168) I was shocked to see this wine as I didn’t even realized it was released yet! One of the classic Super Tuscans, this wine is a blend of 34% Cabernet Sauvignon, 32% Merlot, 20% Petit Verdot and 14% Cabernet Franc. Huge, huge tobacco. There are many cigar bars in Vegas and this wine smelled like I walked into one. It has some interesting aspects but with the big, chewy tannins this wine needs a lot of time. If I had a bottle, I wouldn’t think of touching it for at least another 3-5 years but its best days are probably 10+ years away.

Volver 2014 La Mancha (90 points. Wine Searcher Average price $16) For many New World wine lovers, shopping for European wines can be a scary proposition with so many unfamiliar names, labels and grape varieties. One of the easiest thing you can do is to start learning importer names. Flip the bottle around and look at the back label for names like Kermit Lynch, Becky Wasserman, Alfio Morconi, Frederick Wildman and, if you’re looking at Spanish wine, Jorge Ordonez. The gems he finds are outstanding such as this old vine, single vineyard Tempranillo that had gorgeous juicy red fruit with a medium-plus body that gave the wine elegance and finesse.

Coming up next: The Heavy Hitters and 94+ rated wines.

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Behind the Curtain

Amber LeBeau in Shopping for Wine, Wine marketing

Published on November 29, 2016

Harvey Steiman of Wine Spectator did a write up about the unique marketing approach of a new Oregon winery, Alit. With the pedigree of Evening Land Vineyard’s co-founder, Mark Tarlov, and winemaker Alban Debeaulieu, formerly of White Rose Estate, Domaine Drouhin Oregon and Maison Joseph Drouhin, this new project was already guaranteed intrigue but, as Steiman notes, Alit upped the ante by releasing their Pinots for the absurdly low price of $27.45 a bottle.

Yeah, you read that right. $27.45 for a premium Oregon Pinot noir from one of the Evening Land guys and a former Drouhin winemaker?!?! Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.

The idea behind Alit Wines is transparency with the winery’s website (and Wine Spectator article) going into great detail to describe how they break down the cost figures that brings them to charge $27.45 for a bottle of Pinot noir sourced from acclaimed vineyards in the Dundee Hills, McMinnville (including Momtazi Vineyard) and Eola-Amity Hills. The hope for Tarlov and Co. is that they’ll be rewarded for their transparency with consumers, empowered with the knowledge of the nuts and bolts cost of production, seeing the advantage of bypassing “the middlemen” and buying directly from the winery.

Alit’s breakdown of the cost of wine. Credit: https://medium.com/@MarkTarlov

On the surface this sounds like a solid strategy and I was intrigued enough to put in an order myself. Potentially great wine at a great price is always a plus and its exciting to think about what could happen if more premium wineries followed suited with this focus on transparency. But as both a consumer and as someone who has spent over a decade in the wine industry (both production and retail), I don’t see this as a yellow brick road leading to a revolution in wine pricing.

I also can’t escape the nagging feeling that instead of just empowering consumers, that this peek behind the curtain of production costs will have the same effect on consumers that Dorothy’s glimpse behind the curtain at the Wizard had on her. Yes, it is nice to see what’s behind the curtain but do you lose a bit of “magic” when everything doesn’t seem to be what you once thought it was? Are you going to enjoy as much that $60 Pinot you enjoyed before now that you can add up in the back of your mind that it may really only cost the winery around $15 to make?

Pay No Attention To The Conspicuous Consumption of Wine.

Wine is weird. On one hand, it is a consumable agricultural good just like any foodstuff. So drilling the price of a bottle of wine down to the price of the raw materials, labor and cost of production and transport sounds like a simple endeavor. Yet, wine is also much more than that and, especially in the United States, it can also be considered a Veblen good–an item whose price and value often drives demand, instead of just necessarily the demand driving the price.

This is a big reason why I doubt that you’ll see Alit’s marketing model being readily adopted by other wineries. Of course, nearly every winery in the world would wholeheartedly support encouraging consumers to buy most, if not all, their wines direct from the winery. Not only does it allow them to control the consumer’s experience, making sure that they are getting their wines in the best condition possible, it’s also how wineries make the most money. That last point is key. Look at the prices that you see at a winery’s tasting room and then compare them to what you would be paying at a typical retailer. Are you getting the savings of “cutting the middleman”?

Most likely not.

In the Wine Spectator article, Alit’s Tarlov explains that this is because wineries don’t want to hurt their distributor and retail partners by drastically undercutting them in price. There is certainly truth to this because the wheels of the wine industry are greased by trust and relationships. However, the one thing more valuable than relationships in the wine industry is the perception of your brand. This is why retailers sometimes get in trouble if they price a winery’s wine “too low”. It impacts the “brand”. Wineries are loathed to ever lower the prices of their wine because it can lower the prestige and value of the wine in the eyes of consumers.

A heart is not judged by how much you love; but a wine is judged by how much it is loved by others.

And men are judged by how they wear fanny packs

Consumers are weird. We all want a great deal, but not too good or there must be something wrong. The placebo effect is alive and well as our brains are hardwired to get more pleasure from things that we perceive as being more expensive and ergo more valuable.

Now as wine lovers, who presumably want to get the most for our money, what should we do? Do we just chuck it all out the window and drink Two Buck Chuck from here on out?

Let me ask a different question. If you’re a fan of American football, what is more appealing to you? Spending around $50 or less for a family of four to see a local high school football game or spending an average of around $131.93 per person to see a team like the Cincinnati Bengals play home games against the Cleveland Browns and Buffalo Bills? No offense to the Bengals, Browns or Bills fans among my readers but there are certainly games where you can argue that maybe the high schoolers would field a better product for the money.

“Seriously??? 5 missed FG and 4 missed xp…costing us 2 games. Yeah…sounds like a keeper…”(11/29/2016) — Kyra Olson, author’s Facebook friend and Bengals fan since 1981

Now we can argue about the nuts and bolts of the talent and skills of football players, the quality of equipment, the stadium atmosphere and then craft metaphors about how that relates to vineyard terroir, winemakers, new oak barrels and such. But I think we can drill it down to a much more simple question: What experience gives you more pleasure?

What experience fills you with more sense of excitement and anticipation as you enter the stadium before the game? If you were given a gift of tickets, opening which set (to the HS game or the NFL one) would quicken your heart more? For most people, it’s the latter and that is a huge reason why seeing an NFL game is often 12x more expensive than seeing a high school football game–regardless of the end quality result on the field. The value of the product is judged by how much it is loved by others. With the typical NFL stadium holding around 70,000 spectators, there are quite a bit of people who are willing to pay top dollar to be one of the few who get to sit in those seats.

The same is true with a bottle of wine. For as solid and tasty that something like a $8-12 bottle of Columbia Crest Grand Estates Cabernet Sauvignon can be, the level of excitement and anticipation of opening it up just can’t match up to opening something like a $60-68 bottle of DeLille Four Flags Cabernet Sauvignon. There is the bare nuts and bolts value of the raw materials and cost of production but how do you quantify the value in that sense of excitement, anticipation and pleasure that comes from that? With only around 1,450 cases made each year of DeLille’s Four Flags, there are plenty of people who put high value on being one of the few who get to enjoy that sense of excitement and anticipation.

You, my friend, are a victim of disorganized thinking (as we all are).

Plus there is always great beer under $20!

While I do applaud Mark Tarlov and the folks behind Alit for being bold with their marketing plan on transparency, I do think it creates an unfortunate impression that wine pricing is a simple affair. It’s not because wine isn’t simple and, more importantly, people aren’t simple. Just as in Oz, when the Wizard chastised the Cowardly lion for confusing courage with wisdom, we also shouldn’t confuse the value of our pleasure and enjoyment of wine with the nuts and bolts cost of things. Just as our perception of taste is personal, so too is our perception of value. A wine is good is if it is good for you and a wine is worth its price if it is worth it to you.

If an $8 Cabernet gives you pleasure and is worth $8 to you, Enjoy! If a $28 Pinot does the same, drink up! But, likewise, don’t devalue your pleasure and sense of the wine’s worth if your mouth drools with anticipation at pulling the cork out of a $60 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot noir. It’s your palate, your wallet and your pleasure.

And if paying around $131 to watch Mike Nugent miss fields goals and extra points gives you pleasure, well you can talk to my friend Kyra about that.