Featured Wine Summer, 2008

BARREL 27 Grenache Barrel 27 Grenache
"Rock and a Hard Place" Central Coast 2006 ($23)

Just tasted yesterday. I really really like this wine. Calls to mind a forward, rich Southern Rhone wine (and with the depressed dollar, I can really say this Grenache competes value-wise with its French counterparts). Barrel 27 is a joint effort of the owners of McPrice Myers and Herrman Story. The Grenache comes from three vineyards, the principals being a rocky vineyard (rock) and a vineyard hard to access (need I go on?). Mmmmm, what a nose of framboise, licorice, soy and allspice. It's like a flamboyant Rhone wines, really. Medium bodied, very forward, silky, pretty and bold. I really like this wine (yes, that's a repeat).

BARREL 27 Grenache
"Rock and a Hard Place" Central Coast 2006 $23/bottle
HALF CASE: $132 (5% discount)
FULL CASE: $249 (10% discount)

Order Today!

For all our current featured wines, click here!

Our recommendations are always very sincere. I'm not just writing this: I really mean it. The wines I recommend are without question of the highest quality. Read over my descriptions; maybe wine such and such doesn’t hit your fancy. No worries, for if you like wine, something I promote surely will.

Points given these wines by Misters Parker and Tanzer are often high, for these two gentlemen know good wine, do fantastic work and are also interested in the new, tiny wineries. My thoughts may coincide with them, but I don’t lean on their judgment to do my job. I recommend wines because I know they taste very good, not because someone else says so.

My featured California Wines has been dubbed "Double D's Wine Diary." The gist of this page is to keep (most of) you, my California wine customers, up-to-date with the wines that have or are about to come into Back Room Wines. Primarily this is a product of your requests to "let you know when something really good comes along."

The Imported Wines page features six wines from "other parts." These "parts" are France, Oregon, France, New Zealand, Italy and France :-). Check out the six I feature here. You may ask me for more suggestions. I hope you do.

Lastly, I give you “Dan's Next Day In.” (formerly known as "Dan's Big Day Out," but I don't get out too much now.) This month, I feature The Ojai Vineyard, one of the great Santa Barbara wineries. Owner/winemaker Adam Tolmach continues to make super-duper wines, red, white and sweet. Today I feature three Syrahs from the 2002 vintage, and they're just now beginning to blossom. The mixed case I suggest you acquire is sure to make your wine-friends jealous.

Once satiated with wine soliloquies, proceed to the Order Desk and tell me what I can get for you.

 

Cost of a Bottle of Wine

Written in my weekly email communique on 3/30/05
When I read the Napa Valley Grapegrowers' recommended grape prices for 2005 I figured you'd enjoy my doing a little figurin' for you: What's the product cost in a premium bottle of wine? Let's look at a bottle of Premium Napa Valley Cabernet that I sell for $50, OK?

The suggested price for a ton of Cab (this is what the grape grower charges the winery for his/her grapes) is $3900 to $4800 As many pay even more, I'll say this Premium Cab paid $5K for a ton of grapes. One ton of grapes makes about 50 to 60 cases of wine, so to split the difference, let's say this ton of grapes made 660 bottles (55 cases). Cost of the grapes in that bottle, then, is $7.58. Add $5/bottle for a nice bottle, label, cork and capsule. Put this wine in a real nice $750 new oak barrel (which holds about 24 cases of wine or 288 bottles), so add $2.60/bottle for the oak. With these numbers, we have a product cost of $15.18.

This doesn't include all the costs of doing business (labor, taxes, insurance, hopefully some profit). I reckon these dollars pile up pretty quick. Then I get my entrepeneurial hands on the wine, and I sell for X after buying for Y. And maybe Premium Napa Valley Cabernet Producer has help selling his/her wine to folks like me. If so, there's more folks making a living on the bottle. Once the bottle finally gets here, does a $50 price tag look so bad? Now, it don't mean squat if you the customer isn't buying. If you do not buy the quality, the value, and literally that $50 bottle. Can Premium Napa Cabernet Producer make a wine worthy of your dollars? That's the challenge, and my challenge is to identify those bottles that are worthy (wines of all colors and prices, mind you) and gain and keep your trust in my ability. (All comes back to me, hee hee.) The "Estate" wines, those vineyards owned by the winery, is a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

Replies from Napa Winery Owners:

From John Ruston, Ruston Family Vineyards, St. Helena:

It is always amusing to see when Wine Spectator, retailers, etc. discuss the cost of making wine in terms of the cost of one bottle from one vintage. These analyses usually show that the winery is making a huge profit since grapes, bottles, etc. are only a fraction of the bottle cost.
What the analyses rarely account for in any substantive way is the cumulative investment required to make wine over a period of time. For example, if you start with bare dirt, it is 3-5 years of investment in planting and managing the vineyard plus an additional 2-3 years of investment in making wine before any revenue is realized. The grower who is simply selling grapes must make a profit on grapes over a number of years to cover the cost of buying the land, installing the vineyard and managing it.
Once you are making wine, with an aged red such as high-end cabernet sauvignon, in any given year the winery is paying the costs of three vintages. For example, our 2004 red wines are resting in barrel, our 2003 wines are in barrel and getting ready for their final blend and bottling and the 2002 wines are in the warehouse recovering from bottling and gaining some bottle age before we release them. The 2001 wines, which we are selling now (moving into 2002s) ideally will pay for the three vintages in the pipeline behind them, otherwise we have to keep injecting cash into the business from an outside source. If the winery is growing, the one vintage you are selling has to pay for several times the cost of making that one wine; continued outside investment is probably unavoidable until production hits a plateau and enters the market. The rare case of a cult wine that sells for hundreds of dollars a bottle on a pre-release basis (sold before it is bottled) is probably an exception, but this is a tiny number of cases in the overall picture.
Finally, there is the element of risk. In winemaking, we are starting with an agricultural product and making a product that is an affordable luxury. One the farming side there are the risks of weather, insects, vine diseases, etc. On the marketing side there are risks associated with the wine press downgrading whole vintages or wineries as well as changing tastes, such as the shift of chardonnay and merlot from cool to uncool.
The other factor to mention is the effect of the three-tier system. For a $50 retail bottle of cabernet sold in a standard distributor relationship, the winery sees about $25 from the distributor. The distributor sells its to a retailer or restaurant at a mark-up, and then the retailer or restaurant marks it up and sells it again to the person who is going to drink the wine. So half the revenue from that $50 bottle that the customer pays for goes to the distribution system, rather than the winery.

From Larry Hyde, "Hyde Vineyard," Carneros:

Hello Daniel, our bottles cost more than $15, and you have forgotten that we only see 1/2 of that 30% for you, and 20%more to wholesaler -distributor or some Gov. concessionaire.