EXCEPT! The names they were dropping lead you to think that the wines might be what’s considered to be called their first label of these big named wines. Now with all my time in the business and having had many a high end tasting to my credit, I was a little dubious that all these wines would appear. After all, some of them sell for well over $100 or even $200 a bottle. Let me tell you, those are difficult, although not impossible, to obtain for tastings. Knowing the shop as I do, it added to my apprehension of what was really to be poured.
As I said before, nothing that I’m mentioning is a reflection of the wine poured that evening, in fact, after trying all the wines at the tasting, I can honestly say that all of them were very good to excellent.
As one example, they dropped the name Rothschild in their email. Now a First Growth Mouton or Lafite Rothschild for 2015 can sell for well over $500 a bottle. Like I said, not likely that’s the one. There’s a Mouton Cadet that generally sells around $10, but I’d give the shop more credit than that. Turned out to be a winery named Chateau Clark owned by Baron Edmond de Rothschild, of Rothschild fame. There are some phrases that pop into my head about this time, but I’ll keep those to myself and let you draw your own conclusion. There were a couple more examples in my opinion of “stretching” the names used.
From a purely marketing standpoint, the email did what it was supposed to do, get me into the shop. Also, I did find a wine that I bought (that further down) that also made the ad effective. But I have to ask “at what cost?” For me, I’m going to be a little more dubious about their emails from here on. Not to say I wouldn’t go, I just won’t expect much.
I guess things like this have always bothered me. Being raised trying to live my life by being fair and honest, it hits me the wrong way when something like this comes up. I know it’s not so egregious (stole that from Captain Jack in Pirates of the Caribbean, and yes, I see the irony in my fair and honest while stealing the word) that I’m going to petition the shop or even make my opinions known to them (unless of course they read this and recognize themselves). No, it’s just my way of getting things off my chest and maybe bringing a little light on the subject.