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I've just received the email about the launch of Sandeman's 'Scion' / 'Ne Oublie' offering, Cask 33. I watched the promo video. How surprised I was to see Luis and George quaffing from the cask using an IVDP square-stemmed glass! They didn't even open the Riedels, for a wine as special as this! They drank this ambrosia out of the same notched glassware that is currently holding the last drops of my bottle of G20YO! Takes all sorts.

An appalling sequence of visual clichés, made as for a long TV ad, but deeply ill-considered for the lean-forward click-away web. And the tinkle-tinkle music didn’t help.

The brief tasting notes contained a semblance of actual information, and believable. Hurray! — I approve of that. (Though why they included George’s indifferent shake of the upper body I don’t know.)

The “591 left” was an unusual touch.

jdaw1 wrote:An appalling sequence of visual clichés, made as for a long TV ad, but deeply ill-considered for the lean-forward click-away web. And the tinkle-tinkle music didn’t help.

I was also unimpressed and thought the way they spelled out quite so literally the words 'exclusivity' and 'collection' undermined the intended cachet of the thing.

jdaw1 wrote:The brief tasting notes contained a semblance of actual information, and believable. Hurray! — I approve of that. (Though why they included George’s indifferent shake of the upper body I don’t know.)

I thought he glugged it rather. He certainly didn't seem interested in savouring it. But maybe this is why:

jdaw1 wrote:The “591 left” was an unusual touch.

He's got a lot of it to get through. Check back daily to watch the numbers click down. Or not. Oops.

djewesbury wrote:the way they spelled out quite so literally the words 'exclusivity' and 'collection' undermined the intended cachet of the thing.

Agreed.

djewesbury wrote:He's got a lot of it to get through. Check back daily to watch the numbers click down. Or not. Oops.

The numbers don’t have to be correlated with sales.

That would be a mite disingenuous, no?

But the TN seemed good: I’d like to taste it.

If we haven't offended George too much, that would be nice!

Maybe it’s all quite cunning. Maybe we were being tricked into thinking that corporate slaves were compelled to make the video, but — perhaps to spite their masters — they chose really good juice as the subject. It tricked me.

I thought this was a very well made video short. Certainly unhurried (like the process of maturation) but I didn't find it dragging. Classic imagery - I would excuse the clichés - and I didn't find the music intrusive or offensive (the part I assume refer to as "tinkle tinkle" I took to be more of a musical clock tick, underpinning the unhurried time-passing/ageing theme. I loved the look of the old bottles. An interesting tasting note, and yes it made me want to try some.

The 'exclusivity' and 'collection' prompts scream "please buy me as a trophy" rather than for drinking; this may be the reality, but a shame not to pitch purely on its merits of taste. That said, part of me at least admires their honesty in this regard, while cringing to think how many bottles sold as trophies may not fulfil their destiny of being well appreciated when drunk.

PhilW wrote:...while cringing to think how many bottles sold as trophies may not fulfil their destiny of being well appreciated when drunk.

And possibly worse, the conditions these trophies might be stored in while not being drunk!

AHB wrote:

PhilW wrote:...while cringing to think how many bottles sold as trophies may not fulfil their destiny of being well appreciated when drunk.

And possibly worse, the conditions these trophies might be stored in while not being drunk!

Quite, I can picture the illuminated shelf in a warm room.

LGTrotter wrote:

AHB wrote:

PhilW wrote:...while cringing to think how many bottles sold as trophies may not fulfil their destiny of being well appreciated when drunk.

And possibly worse, the conditions these trophies might be stored in while not being drunk!

Quite, I can picture the illuminated shelf in a warm room.

On the mantel, of course.

Now on sale at £500ib at BBR.

That's a relatively low price point compared to some other recent releases. I would expect it to sell fairly well at that price.

djewesbury wrote:That's a relatively low price point compared to some other recent releases. I would expect it to sell fairly well at that price.

Now all is lost. When a man with the good sense of Daniel starts saying £500 a bottle for a wine from the sixties is a low price point then...

Need I go on?

This is not a low price point this is about as far as you can wring a long suffering public with a glitzy box. Daniel; take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror.

I observe that Daniel carefully used the word "relatively" to give his comment some context.

£500 for a bottle in a nice box is not cheap, but it is materially lower than £4,000.

DRT wrote:I observe that Daniel carefully used the word "relatively" to give his comment some context.

£500 for a bottle in a nice box is not cheap, but it is materially lower than £4,000.

Precisely. I'm not in a hurry to buy some, but maybe someone will bring one to a tasting one day!

But relative to say the Taylor 1964 single harvest tawny at £120ish, or indeed the Krohn bottlings that nearly got to £100 for a tawny from the sixties? But I may have misread the blurb on this wine and 'laid down in 1963' is not the actual vintage.

Yes, it's more expensive than these.
You're clearly getting the hang of relativity.

It depends to what you are relating this £500. Compared to £2500/£4000 then yes it is cheaper. But those are 19th century wines. The cachet on wines of this age has always meant that they get disproportionately dearer. What is new is such a huge mark up on a vintage which is still reasonably common and directly comparable wines are available for a quarter of the price. And that is Taylor, a wine which was fairly substantially marked up once they bought all the Krohn stocks. I do not dispute that people may and can shred as many tenners as they wish in pursuit of this wine. But it is not, relative to it's peers, good value. Unless like small children at Christmas you prize the box more than the contents, for it is a nice box.

LGTrotter wrote:for it is a nice box.

Purrrrrhaps LGTrotter is not the animal we think he is.

I think Daniel quite clearly was relating the price of this to the price of recent releases from other producers. His was not a statement about the value of such wines, merely an accurate comment that this incarnation of the "oh, look what we have found in a cask" phenomenon is much less exorbitantly expensive than other shippers have decided to pitch.

DRT wrote:I think Daniel quite clearly was relating the price of this to the price of recent releases from other producers. His was not a statement about the value of such wines, merely an accurate comment that this incarnation of the "oh, look what we have found in a cask" phenomenon is much less exorbitantly expensive than other shippers have decided to pitch.

And I think that what Owen is saying is that "oh, look what we have found in a cask" is a tad difficult to believe when the wine is from the 1960s as opposed to the 1860s.

It may be cynical of me, but I feel like what Sandeman discovered is a bandwagon, not a Port.

Glenn E. wrote:

DRT wrote:I think Daniel quite clearly was relating the price of this to the price of recent releases from other producers. His was not a statement about the value of such wines, merely an accurate comment that this incarnation of the "oh, look what we have found in a cask" phenomenon is much less exorbitantly expensive than other shippers have decided to pitch.

And I think that what Owen is saying is that "oh, look what we have found in a cask" is a tad difficult to believe when the wine is from the 1960s as opposed to the 1860s.

It may be cynical of me, but I feel like what Sandeman discovered is a bandwagon, not a Port.

Glenn! Such cynicism in one so young!

The other comparison is with the Graham 1952 single barrel thing which I think was about £250 a bottle. The box was oak and had a hinge. They did gallon bottles that I thought would be nice to have about the place, but as they were about £1800 I resisted the urge.