Chambers.nyc

originally posted by mark e:

In days of yore, the Poliburo might have tagged this comment as immoderate or perhaps violating the unwritten rule of not touting one's self-importance (or for being a bit Plotnicki-like). BTW, it is "you're" not "your." -:)
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Oops sorry you're right that did not come across well. The sommelier is well known for his daily notebook offering of cherries and I thought it was cool that a few winemakers I visited sent him notes telling him that I was coming in so I could get the notebook. In fact only one of them could be considered famous. And I doubt having a winemaker in Winningen send word ahead signifies self-importance. I just wasn't thinking of it in the way that it came across.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
As for other wine regions, they did get attention (one of the positive things to be said about Robert M. Parker, Jr.), it's just that the general level of quality usually wasn't that interesting, and for the leaders (e.g., Giacosa, Mascarello, Cappellano, Chave, Gentaz, Verset, Clape, Allemand, Rayas, etc.), there just wasn't that much demand -- those in the know bought them, but the prestige seekers didn't.
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Nicely said. I also think a lot of prestige-seekers who did not previously care about wine have been converted to it by the babble.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
As for other wine regions, they did get attention (one of the positive things to be said about Robert M. Parker, Jr.), it's just that the general level of quality usually wasn't that interesting, and for the leaders (e.g., Giacosa, Mascarello, Cappellano, Chave, Gentaz, Verset, Clape, Allemand, Rayas, etc.), there just wasn't that much demand -- those in the know bought them, but the prestige seekers didn't.
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Nicely said. I also think a lot of prestige-seekers who did not previously care about wine have been converted to it by the babble.
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I'm not sure I even want to say prestige seekers. They are in a social media environment where certain wines are the quality wines and those are the ones to seek out, so if you see them on a list, you order them without thought to what you are eating. We had the Dard & Ribo Crozes blanc because our dining companion thinks that low acid whites are best with Rouget which was the course it was pairing with. I almost ordered the Mirrroirs but was forbade.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by VLM:
...I was at a restaurant with very well priced Selosse, Rousseau, Raveneau, Overnoy, and Mirroirs among others. I was very tempted by the Selosse, Overnoy, and Mirroirs and we discussed what "insta kids" would have done. We ended up drinking aged Bongran Levroute, Dard & Ribo Crozes blanc and a beautiful Gramenon Pascal. We had a great time and one of our best meals in France and the wines all showed fabulously and were great with the food. The wines we chose were cool, IMO, but not insta cool the way those others were.
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Cool is subjective. Dard & Ribo was the cool new wine 20 years ago, so maybe it's a generational thing and in another 20 years the current "insta kids" will be drinking Miroirs and lamenting the latest entrants.
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Dard & Ribo may have been "cool" in the way that Tue-Boeuf was "cool" but it is not and has never been #unicornhunting (especially not the regular Crozes blanc).

originally posted by Rahsaan:
...how to solve the issue of wine list ravaging. Maybe have a reserve list again and limit it to 1 bottle per table from that list per visit but that gives a policing burden to my staff. The only other option is to price those wines to market, but I don't love that solution either. You have to do so much work to get just a few bottles of these wines and you hope to be able to spread it around to multiple guests...
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As it was recently discussed in the thread about N&S and their persnickety list, this is a thorny issue with no easy answers. It's also fascinating because it reveals so much about what a restaurant values and how it chooses to engage capitalism.
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As a restaurant owner, I'm engaged in capitalism by definition. If I were to engage with capitalism progressively, I'd mark up the cherries to high heaven to tax the wealthy and sell my villages Beaujolais at 1.5x wholesale. Not sure how long I'd stay in business like that but it is an interesting thought experiment. However, I don't think many plutocrats eat at Rue Cler. I think that my non-linear pricing function (which I published here previously) is an effort to allow "middle class" wine lovers to enjoy value on exceptional wines.
 
originally posted by VLM:

... I've been thinking about how to solve the issue of wine list ravaging.
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I'm fascinated by this idea of "wine list ravaging." How widespread is it? Is it confined to particular wines that catch fire in social media, does it include Parkerator 95+ in general and/or classic "blue chip" high end wines? Do the Insta-kids wines get ravaged mainly by wine aficionados or does it spill over into foodies and Instagram jetsetters more broadly?

I suspect there's no representative, quantitative evidence on this, but even anecdotes or personal experiences from the on-premise folks here would be very interesting.

As an aside, hidden reserve lists do predate the internet. We had the equivalent at Windows on the World back when mammoths roamed the earth, although it was open to anyone who asked. On the other hand, "wine list ravaging" is made much easier by the publication of menus/lists on restaurant websites.
 
Rare wines at good prices will sell out quickly to those who get there first. Rare wines at high prices will sell to rich people. Both those who get there first and rich people are likely to include people who appreciate the wine and people who know it only as a prestige item. There is no method for distributing rare wine only to those who will properly appreciate it, which group includes, of course, only me and thee, and maybe not thee.
 
originally posted by VLM:
I think that my non-linear pricing function (which I published here previously) is an effort to allow "middle class" wine lovers to enjoy value on exceptional wines.
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i was at a place (in frenchy land) in teh past couple of days where insta wines were priced using orders of magnitude rather than %ages as compared to the rest of a well-chosen list of comparable -- and often better, if less well renown -- wines.

as a solution, tbh, i was kind of down with it.

fb.
 
I was in a restaurant in Paris last week that had a fair number of Henri Jayer bottlings on the list -- first time I've seen Jayer on a wine list in a very long time. From talking with the chef (who also selects the wines), the provenance is impeccable as his father bought the wines on release. Prices were into the upper part of four digits, which is nevertheless probably less than the going retail/auction rate for those wines.* The chef says that he occasionally sells a bottle, and if he doesn't sell out, he'll just drink the wines himself.

*Alas, the prices of the other wines on the list compared to their retail prices were not so reasonable.
 
originally posted by Tristan Welles:
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:
originally posted by Christian Miller (CMM):
As an aside, hidden reserve lists do predate the internet.
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see lameloise circa 1992
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But 1992 doesn't predate the internet.
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Miroir miroir on the wall, since when did AOL chat rooms pimp Petrus?
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Actually, the AOL wine boards in '95-'97 were very active.
 
originally posted by Brad Kane:
originally posted by Tristan Welles:
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:
originally posted by Christian Miller (CMM):
As an aside, hidden reserve lists do predate the internet.
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see lameloise circa 1992
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But 1992 doesn't predate the internet.
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Miroir miroir on the wall, since when did AOL chat rooms pimp Petrus?
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Actually, the AOL wine boards in '95-'97 were very active.
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Compuserve and Prodigy both had active wine boards, too.

Mark Lipton
 
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