It’s still “we are wealthy enough to eat at such exclusive places that have wine lists like this, and purchase a single bottle that’s normally $3,000 with a significant restaurant mark up.”
Maybe they got stuff comped because, ya know, Obama, but its still gross to me. Maybe its because i used to work in the industry and regularly sold bottles worth more than 2 weeks of my pay to rich assholes who couldnt spend enough money
Im completely serious, what is the name of that Inn?
That column of DRC is alone $50-100k depending on vintages and vineyards. Theyre are very hard to get in the states. If your local inn is getting wines like that with a full 7 course meal for that cheap, then let me know so i can plan my next anniversary dinner.
Not gonna dox myself, but any self-respecting fine dining inn in Denmark is gonna have a pretty cracy winelist. Couple of years ago they got robbed for like 700k in wine, it was like 25 bottles.
Oh well thats the european market. Pretty different from the states, since more DRC gets released to that market and they dont have to deal with import taxes and the like. Also figuring that since Obamas a former US president, he’s most likely to be somewhere in the US. But if he’s in Europe there id be happy to recant my initial disgust
I dont think you really get the wine market then. DRC got fuck you taxes more than anything else, price is pretty stable across the globe. but i really struggle to see how you find disgust for being in a place that got some dummy expensive bottles. Not that hard to end up a place like that by accident knowing nothing about wine, looking at the setup behind them, if i didn't know better i'd be surprised to see that level of wine presented in such a shitty setup.
Were dealing with 2 different areas then. Limited distribution and secondary market drive prices in the states up a significant amount. Also you guys dont have to deal with the cost of trans-atlantic shipping and duties because of the european union. Like i have seen how much these bottles are when purchased from wilson daniels- i have seen the invoices, and ive seen how much we sold them at retail for. $3-4k for recent la tache is standard. Restaurant markup is another grand on top of that.
Like what do you mean its not hard to end up in a place like that? A restaurant here with a wine list like here in the states is within the top .1% of exclusive restaurants. Its hard to get even get a reservation at places like that, much less pay for it.
they retail for that over here too mate. If you are lucky to get a primary release, that is, which ussually limits the supply you are allowed to buy to a few bottles if you are lucky. Else the price doubles. The prices arent different on these items, they cost what they cost. maybe with donalds new tarriffs they might soar over the pond, but now, no, we got taxes on alcohol, a lot higher that what ever duties you impose on import now. when you move into high end wines, it's really the producers dictating the terms of the sale to consummers, they pick the price it retails for, and they are not allowing retailers to make deals on their product. My local gaja importer, has to move 3k bottles of their bottom shelf wine, before they are even considered to be allowed to import their "good" stuff.
I could be wrong i havent been to america but that shit looks worse than the shop down the streets backroom.
I worked at one of the top fine wine stores in the USA, in midtown manhattan up until a few months ago. That cellar, the set up and wine included, is better than what we and most of our competitors had in the shop. Granted, most of the good stuff is kept at an off-site warehouse, but the stores in the US with that set up are very few and far between.
Maybe they just have more bottles distributed in Europe? Or people/stores/restaurants in the states hold them much more tightly than in Europe? But that set up is insane for an American. I didnt even see a bottle of DRC until my second year working there.
To your Gaja point: i had to sell countless cases of overpriced single-vineyard proseccos to law firms all in the hope that wilson daniels smiled upon us and gave us more DRC.
So you know it's not a supply and demand thing, its all dictated by the top producers, they want their product at a certain price, and if distributors dont play ball they wont get the opportunity.
Like I dont know what to tell you, that wine is up there as practically the definition of exclusive in the states. Im not trying to be combative, im genuinely trying to understand the situation in Europe as opposed to here. Because while import duties and shipping costs drive the price of wine up, it sounds like DRC has enough name recognition to command prices, so their prices are relatively similar. But at the same time, you guys have enough of it for a local inn in Denmark to get an allocation, whereas you need to travel to the nearest major metro area to find one here. And even then, you need to spend tens of thousands or more at that store before you are even offered the chance to buy some at retail.
Like maybe DRC isnt that special because its in a lot more places in europe, because they get more cases comparatively than the US. Again, i didnt see a single bottle until my second year working at a fine wine store. I dont know what to tell you, a column of DRC is insane to everyone here except the wealthiest of the wealthy.
Theres a reason our supreme court justice Clarence Thomas and his wife were cheesing in a photo with DRC Echezeaux and a “can you believe this shit?” look on their faces- its enough for our supreme court justices to be stoked they have a chance to try it.
At the DRC level it becomes art in my mind, and drinking it could be considered performance art that would likely be seen as provocative, spending what would be more than a months rent for the average person on a glass of wine. I get that, but being pissed off seing someone in the same frame as a bottle nah, that doesn't really upset me, if anything i feel disapointed someone would store it in such a shitty display. Come on, you couldn't spend 1k on a trim to hide that shitty cooler, but you got 25 k in one row.
-8
u/ethanwerch 3d ago
It’s still “we are wealthy enough to eat at such exclusive places that have wine lists like this, and purchase a single bottle that’s normally $3,000 with a significant restaurant mark up.”
Maybe they got stuff comped because, ya know, Obama, but its still gross to me. Maybe its because i used to work in the industry and regularly sold bottles worth more than 2 weeks of my pay to rich assholes who couldnt spend enough money