An $8000 bottle of wine

Over the weekend, Carmela and I left the Heritage Oak tasting room in the hands of trusted friends and went to Carmel, California. There we hooked up with Beth, David, Bob and Peggy, also from the Lodi area.  We had a picnic at the beach, walked up and down Ocean Avenue and did the tide pool thing.  It was all great, even the part where Bob and David tried to teach Carmela and me how to play poker.  I guess some things you just have to learn at a younger age.

One of the highlights was dinner Saturday night.  David took us to Cantinetta Luca, located on Dolores Street between Ocean and Seventh.  It is a casual Italian restaurant but with a beautiful ambiance.  The food was wonderful and service fun and engaging.  I had a pizza shaped as a crescent with arugula salad placed in the inner part.  This was probably one of the top five pizzas of my life.  I had a real hard time sharing it with anyone at the table.  (“How’s the pizza, Tom?” “Mmmuh,” <Chewing sounds> “It’s okay.”)

I was fascinated by the wine list.  It was thicker than the menu, six or eight pages long.  And it was all Italian wines, listed in Italian by wine region.  Cantinetta Luca has gone to great lengths to collect wines from every wine producing region in Italy. 

The prices were humbling.  I think less than half of the wines were under $100 and, (I’m guessing here), the average price was above $200.  We asked the sommelier for some assistance. He was a friendly guy, with an obvious passion for what he does.  He helped us select a white and red that we could afford.  He knew these wines, where they were from and what they tasted like. He was pretty much right on the mark with his description of the flavors.  

What really caught our eye was one bottle listed for $8000.  Something like that naturally stands out, right?  We asked the sommelier about it and he said it was a three liter bottle of white wine, the equivalent of four of the standard 750 ml bottles.  He told us the vintner took extreme efforts to make this wine, carefully laying the ripe bunches on straw for several weeks until the sugar intensified.  They were then crushed and made into a wine that had an alcohol level of about 17%.  It was of very limited production. He agreed that it was a pricey bottle, but said he had tasted it before and it had been an experience he would never forget.  The fragrance, the texture, the finish, everything about it was incredible. There is no other wine like this one, he said.  And yes, he had sold one of these bottles before.

We all agreed buying three liters of liquid for a sum that could feed an entire African village for two years would be experience no one would be likely to forget.  And if anyone did, their spouses would most certainly remind them.  So this got me thinking.  Who decides what a bottle of wine is worth?  Why is this three liter bottle worth so much more than any other three liter bottle? 

The answers are complicated.  On the surface, it comes down to the value of the wine being determined by an agreement between the vendor and the customer.  If the former proposes a price and the latter agrees to it, then there you are.  It is set.  That is the value. 

However, there is more to this than simple rules of negotiation and trade.  Craftsmanship certainly has a lot to do with it.  If you are going to put a tag like that on your bottle, you’d better know what you are doing. You’ve got to know how to make “an unforgettable experience” out of grapes.  Then you’d better be darn sure what you are putting into the bottle is the same thing your customer is going to pour out.  Unintended bubbles at that point, for example, would not be good.  

Scarcity is another thing.  Not only do you have to make a wine that no one else is making, you’d probably want to keep your own production on the light side.  And your success will unavoidably attract a lot of attention, so keep your $8000-a-bottle recipe a secret.  It is the type of secret that could drive you crazy.  (Don’t tell your wife.  Don’t tell your kids.  Better be listening when they are talking to the neighbors.  Check their emails.   Slip out of bed and sneak over to the neighbor’s and tap his phone.  While you are over there, might as well duck into his winery and see if he is copying your secret.  Don’t worry about those snakes crawling on the ceiling.  Its normal to see those.)  You’ll need a plan for keeping your sanity.

Another side to this is who you are.  To charge and receive $8000 for a bottle of wine, you personally have to have reached celebrity status.  You can’t just have a name, your last name has to be an everyday household term.  You need to be THE guy, the one they are making statues of to put in the park.  You need to have a villa on a mountain top.  No, several villas.  With high walls and big gates in front where tour buses slowly drive buy with speakers squawking: “The is the palace of renown wine maker Jose Guillermo Comosellamaba” 

So the price of your wine boils down to who you are, how much you know, and what you are doing at a time when no one else is doing it.  Getting to that point is the hard part.  At some moment, you’ve got to step away from the crowd.  You’ve got  to go with your gut and not listen to the others.  Don’t be afraid of risks or taking chances.  You’ve got to whip the competition.  No Mr. Nice Guy. You’ve got to learn how to play poker and know the game so well that there isn’t anybody that is better than you.  

I’m a ways off that mark.  For one, I’m just like anybody else.  For two, I’ve never claimed to know what I’m doing and, for three, there are 300 other bottles of wine next to mine on the shelf in the supermarket. But at least now I’ve got a starting point.  Poker.  Didn’t we used to have a deck of cards around here somewhere?