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Mailing List Wines & Whines
Today, wine can be purchased in all kinds of ways—in stores, at auction and, increasingly, online—but the most psychologically satisfying means of acquiring it, I’ve decided, must be through membership on a mailing list (preferably one that your friends can’t get on).
The mailing list phenomenon began some 10 years ago with small-production wineries, mostly Californian, that were (mostly) selling cult Cabernets. Only a chosen few could acquire these bottles straight from the winery; the less fortunate had to wait years for a chance to buy (or pay a premium in a restaurant, the only other place where these mailing list wines could usually be found).
Today, there are still plenty of people willing to wait. According to Manfred Krankl, coproprietor and winemaker at Sine Qua Non, there are about 4,000 people on the waiting list for his mailing list—and about one-fourth that number on the actual mailing list. Even though Sine Qua Non is one of the greatest producers in California (of Syrah, not Cabernet, as a matter of fact), I have to admit I was surprised by the numbers—especially since the competition for collectors’ attention has grown so fierce over the years, not only from established regions in Bordeaux and Burgundy, which have both had great vintages recently, but also from promising regions like Argentina’s Mendoza and New Zealand’s Central Otago.
There’s also a lot more competition at home. According to Eric Binau, whose company, Cultivate Systems, keeps track of such things, there are around 250 small-production mailing list wineries in California today—as opposed to about 30 a decade ago. And plenty more are soon to appear. "For every powerhouse like Bryant Family, there are five new Sloans, Scarecrows or Levy & McClellans coming online," he said, naming a few of the hottest properties— all, by the way, producers of Napa Valley Cabernet.
And price doesn’t seem to matter much in any case—whether for established stars or newcomers. For example, even though Sloan has been making wine only for the past few vintages (starting with 2000), its current release price is a not-immodest $245 a bottle. And its mailing list is full. And there’s no wine in sight for anyone on its waiting list, either. When I asked Marsha Chandler, Sloan’s customer relations manager (a title that seems better suited to Wal-Mart than a boutique Napa winery), how long it might take for someone on the waiting list to be eligible to buy a bottle, she wouldn’t say. One year? Two? A decade—or more? "We can’t really give an exact time," Chandler replied.
Nor could Janet Pagano, CEO of Ovid Vineyards, a California winery that has yet to produce its first wine. All Ovid has right now is an all-star production team (consulting winemaker Michel Rolland, vineyard manager David Abreu), and yet there’s a waiting list for its 2005 Napa Cabernet. "We haven’t even put together the final blend of the wine, but we’ve been inundated by people asking to be placed on the mailing list," said Pagano. Did any of the callers ask the cost of the wine? I wondered. "Not one," she replied. She couldn’t have told them, anyway, because the price isn’t set; yet they signed up all the same.
This kind of blind commitment is a big vote of confidence for California wine (though it pales in comparison to the $250 million commitment David Beckham got to make California soccer look good). Or is it? Especially when the wine is untasted, or even unmade? Are buyers of wines such as Ovid the vinous equivalent of seasoned horsemen buying on pedigree alone, or are they just speculators looking for the Next Big Thing? Perhaps they’re counting on Ovid to be worth three times its release price—whatever that turns out to be—as with Screaming Eagle. After all, even though a bottle of Screaming Eagle goes for $500, mailing list buyers can make that money back three times over (at least) by turning around and reselling the wine the very next day.
The collectors I spoke with insisted that passion, not profit, impelled them to put their name on a mailing list, though I’m sure there’s a touch of pragmatism in even the purest heart. As my friend Martin (not his real name) said, "I’d be a fool to get off the Screaming Eagle list when the wine is still selling for so much." Martin, who lives in Los Angeles, confessed he had considered selling his allocation from time to time but hasn’t so far. (Martin asked me not to print his real name, afraid he’d be punished for expressing such heretical thoughts, as wineries dislike collectors who buy and "flip" wines—and it’s not always legal.)
Of course, there are collectors who do more than just harbor such thoughts, and they often reap some very tangible rewards. For example, Martin has a friend who, it seems, sold "a vertical of Screaming Eagle a few years ago and bought himself a spanking new Corvette."
Retail stores are usually the buyers of such collections, and while some will make the transaction, others, like David Stevens of Acme Fine Wines of St. Helena, California, will not. "We have had people try to sell us their allocations," said Stevens, "but we always say no. If we sold it at the regular retail markup, it would look like we were gouging people."
David and his partner, Karen Williams, have their own allocations of such hard-to-get wines thanks to their long friendships with producers (they specialize in finding future California superstars), but they don’t necessarily sell all these wines. For example, "In our first two years of business, in 2002 and 2003, when Screaming Eagle was $300 a bottle, we’d just wrap the bottles up and send them to our best clients as a thank-you," Stevens said.
Most Acme clients are collectors who simply have a great passion for California wine. [april 2007]
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