Is Hannah Nicole Meritage California 2005 a PLCB Dump Wine?

PLCB is often accused of being a dumping ground for bad wine. Is Hannah Nicole Meritage California 2005 a PLCB dump wine? Evidence is bad reviews on CellarTracker.
http://bit.ly/bFdyHB

I'm often puzzled by this argument: of course the Chairman Selections are a "dumping ground". It's what the program essentially is. If the wines were in high demand, we wouldn't be able to get them at fire-sale prices. But the presumptive rationale is that the discounts are steep enough that the wine that would be a terrible deal at $30 can be a very attractive buy at $10. I'm not sure the Hannah Meritage qualifies as attractive at any price, on the available evidence, but to slag it on those grounds is to entirely miss the point.

I'm inclined to agree with Cap. I don't agree that the entire PLCB is a dumping ground, but certainly that would be a valid although not very flattering characterization of the CS program.

Mika would've been a huge disappointment at the "regular" price of $85, would've been just OK at $20, but was worth stocking at $8.50. Tons of other examples are out there as well.

In times like these there are wineries so desperate they'll gladly take an infusion of cash even if it means "dumping" their slow or non-moving inventory regardless of the quality.

You can read all you want about a wine but you won't really know if Hanna Nicole is worth it or not until you try it. When you do, enter a rating and when a consensus starts to build then we'll all know. Personally, I want to know whether or not it makes ecola mad!

Undoubtedly the industry is going through a correction, and if/when the overproduction goes away it will be interesting to see how the CS program fares.

No, the idea was that PA was going to use its buying power as largest purchaser in the country to negotiate good deals for quality wine. It's not supposed to be a crap shoot whether the wine is good or not. Of course there's no substitute for tasting, but no one has unlimited money to try everything for themselves. When you buy a CS wine it should at least be decent, and we shouldn't be misled about how big a bargain it is. Below are some quotes from past newspaper articles that touch on the issue. Even PLCB head Stapleton admitted the "dumping" phenomenon is a problem. --PWF


No program in recent memory has been a bigger hit than the Chairman's Selections, which uses the state's massive purchasing power to buy wines at discounted prices.

Started by Mr. Newman in 2004, the program greatly expanded after his departure a year ago. Where there used to be 20 to 30 Chairman's Selections at one time -- all personally tasted by Mr. Newman -- the individual listings numbered more than 175 at one point last year.

But wine experts say that's a case of quantity outpacing quality.

With more selections, the odds of getting a clinker go up. Bargain hunting saves money, but it precludes getting the best wines because wineries won't discount what they can easily sell at full price.

"If you look closely at those [ Chairman's Selection ] deals, the best ones are in fact wines that were under-producing, where the wine was not in demand, then Pennsylvania walked up with its checkbook and offered to buy the whole lot," said Mark Squires, a Philadelphia attorney and wine writer who runs an electronic bulletin board on Mr. Parker's Web site, www.eRobertParker.com. He did say that Pennsylvania's state stores can offer great deals "if all you really want is to buy wine under $15. But on the best wines, the hot wines, the wines that are getting people excited, they don't get a deal on those

Just before Christmas, the PLCB advertised what appeared to be a great deal on a Sommelier Collection: a 2000 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Reserve with a suggested retail price of $150 that the state stores were selling for $59.99. During the Christmas season, the tissue-wrapped bottles were prominently displayed in a special blue rack near the cash register at the Liberty Avenue store near Fifth Avenue Place.

But an Internet check one day in December found posters on Mr. Squires' site reporting the same wine being sold for $30 through a special discount by one retailer, while other sites priced it at $90 and up to $150.

Mr. Stapleton said LCB staff members do check the Internet before putting price stickers on placards. Usually they are the lowest or, if not, they are very close, he said.

The problem, said Mr. Squires, is that the listed suggested retail price "is usually a joke. The reason is that usually the winery had delusions of grandeur [when it set its prices]."

The Mondavi Reserve scored a 91 on a 100-point scale, which Mr. Squires termed "a good performance in a bad vintage. But at $150, you expect something truly excellent, not just a bit above average."
WINE LOVERS CALL OFFERINGS A MIXED BAG
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA) - Sunday, January 27, 2008

Stapleton noted that some of the Chairman's Selections were "fabulous successes and others were not so successful." He said "a lot of wineries in California and elsewhere looked at Pennsylvania as an opportunity to rid themselves of wine" they didn't want or couldn't sell.
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - Friday, January 5, 2007

The PLCB this year has already tasted 5,000 bottles and sampled nearly 200 this spring season - a busy job for them. But what's most exciting about the wine advisory council, helping to select the chairman's selection wines program, allows all of its customers to limit their buying options to no-risk wines. The wine advisory council will be picking premium wines at incredible prices."
Hershey Chronicle (PA) - Thursday, May 22, 2008

Newman's seven-year tenure with the PLCB is probably most famous for his introduction of the Chairman's Selections in 2004. Newman would negotiate for Pennsylvania to purchase large quantities of premium wines at highly discounted rates. The savings - and fine wines - were passed on to Pennsylvanians.
Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - Thursday, May 15, 2008

Well, it's hard to see how "purchasing power" comes into the equation if others are willing to pay asking price. By definition, what the program has always done is track down excess stock, and offer the producer or wholesaler quick liquidity against a deep discount. It is possible for those wines to be very good, because there are reasons besides low quality for a wine not to sell, and there are reasons for a seller to want to cash out quickly even though they could sell the wine for far more over the long run - wineries being sold or going out of business come to mind, and some of the best deals in the program have come from those.

But the problem is that those are never going to be numerous enough to sustain the CS if they're going to try to offer as many selections as they currently do. In addition, others have jumped on board, notably Mr. Newman himself, who in fact often targets the wineries he did business with as PLCB Chairman. So the competition is much greater, even if the economy is also generating more deals. My sense is that the current team is grabbing wine fairly indiscriminately, but that may be an artifact of my limited perspective: we don't see what they reject, and we don't see the buying process.

(Note to PLCB buyers: greater transparency, in that regard, could do wonders for your image.)

Personally, I like having a large list to choose from - it may be hard for some to navigate, but given that I'm willing to do the necessary due diligence, that usually works in my favor. Mind you, I can see how that would be a minus for someone who wants to be able to just walk into a store and grab a bottle, and have the CS signage be a guarantee of QPR. In my opinion, though, that's just another unfair standard to hold the PLCB to: I cannot do that with Cinderella, with WTSO, or with any of the various competitors who have sprung up. So why are we asking this of the Chairman Selections?

I drank the Hannah Nicole last night, it's okay wine for the price which I think is $9-$12. Let them dump away.

my review
http://www.pawinetalk.com/detail/?id=1001191

Thanks for the review J2K.

Wine blended from those grapes is not supposed to be light, so this one does seem to be "flawed" in that way, no matter what the price.

http://www.phillywinefinder.com/

I have never seen a case where their purchasing power has lead to a great wine at a great price. Ocassionaly a good deal will come along when they fire sale things, but rarely. Rudd at $70 was very good, Bramare at 19.99 was awesome. But those deals take forever to come by.
Does anyone know how they actually figure out prices for highly allocated wines? I saw 06 Scarecrow on the website for five hundred something? That is beyond ridiculous. You can find the 06 in the open market for under 300 if you know where to look. The release price was $175. How do they come up with $500? I remember they had a mag of some off year Screaming eagle listed for 8,500....what? Same thing for bordeaux, yquem, etc. The prices make no sense whatsoever. Distributors ripping them off? Mark, do you know how that happens?
Tantore

@Tantore:

I have some guesses, though that's all they are: Scarecrow and Screagle do not go through distributors: as far as I know the wineries sell only through their mailing lists. So any bottles the PLCB gets their mitts on are bought on the secondary market. We do know that dealers have ways of getting their hands on them, but that means you're dealing with dealer's markup on the original release price, so you cannot look at that as a retail figure: it is, in effect, the wholesale price. Moreover, given what the PLCB have offered, and when, I suspect these bottles may have passed through not just one but a number of hands before hitting Pa shelves, and each of those entities will charge a markup.

As for how the PLCB figures out retail prices, I have somehow acquired the belief that it's done by applying a fixed markup to their cost. But I don't actually recall how I came to believe that, so let's call that unreliable information until someone confirms or denies it.

@Phillywinefinder:

Color is primarily a function of how long the juice is left in contact with the skins. Bordeaux were certainly much lighter when I started drinking them than they are today, though you can still find some old-fashioned ones among the Crus Bourgeois. Not Pinot-light, though, but I can easily imagine a well-crafted Meritage being much lighter than we've come to expect.

Which is not to say the Nicole is that wine: I still haven't tasted it, and I probably won't, so I have no idea. But the color is not a very reliable indicator. And, as J2K mentions, it's a $9 wine. Waddya want for nine bucks, right?

In fact, there's been a small flurry of discussions in various venues about the industry's belief that the public sees dark color as a mark of quality, and the many ways winemakers try to meet that perceived preference. Many of those, like coloring grapeskin extracts, or really absurdly long macerations, are not especially sound winemaking themselves.

Yes Cap that's correct, they apply a fixed markup. Don't know what it is though. Chairman's wines usually are bought directly from the winery, but not always. Kilikanoon was one such exception when they switched distributors and the old one wanted to unload their stock. Actually now that I think about it they buy most domestic wines from the wineries, and most imported wines from distributors. Again there are probably exceptions, and I'm only referring to Chairman's.

@Capaneus: Ok, fair point about the color, I thought J2K was also referring to the body of the wine as being light as well.

What do I want for nine bucks? Ideally, for a Chairman's Selection "quoted at $33.00" I want a $33 wine for $9! Is that too much to ask? Or at least, given some leeway for it not selling at $33, a $20 wine for $9. If I know that it's only a simple $9 wine (or worse), maybe I'll save my $9 and put it toward something more interesting.

http://www.phillywinefinder.com/

Many years ago there was an Inky article about PLCB pricing. They were complaining about the state stores adding a dollar a bottle to wine prices because the 28% markup wasn't enough. Of course that was on top of the 18% Johnstown flood tax!

Best,

Mike

You know, Mike, I'm not sure you realize it, but you do a fine job of making the pro-PLCB case, all by yourself: I'm pretty sure a markup of 46% is on the low end of the range of markups mandated by various States: Ohio, for instance, has a 50% mandatory markup, or did as of the publication of this article:

http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/wine/entries/200 6/01/09/eliminating_ohi.html

Again, that's my experience: PLCB prices are competitive across most categories - sometimes extremely so. Where they fail to compete is on popular bottles, which elsewhere are often discounted for the sake of volume - presumably by retailers in States that do not have minimum markups.

Heh. Different wine - the Vignerons de Charactere "Chemin des Rouviere" Vacqueyras - but:

"This deal is almost unheard of! This wine is a product of the unbelievable 2007 Rhone vintage. A vintage rated 95 points by Wine Spectator!

While tasting through some 2007 Rhone offers in the office a few months back, we stumbled upon this Vacqueyras offering from Vignerons de Caractere below. It turned out to be one of our top picks from the tasting and in addition, learned that the Wine Spectator rated the wine 90 Points.

However, the most shocking aspect of this wine ... was the price. At just $12.98 per bottle, this would without a doubt, represent one of our biggest and best Rhone values from the huge 2007 vintage. The wine is in stock and many of you should look to lock up a couple of cases on outstanding bargain of a deal."

The PLCB flogging a dumped wine? Why no! It's bargain-lovers' darling WineLibrary - offering the PLCB price as their deal - plus shipping, of course.

Hot off the press! The scuttlebutt in the state stores is that with a republican gov in the fall--Guess who's coming back?


Pedro,
I don't have a problem with PLCB pricing, I just don't think the state should be in the liquor business. That said, I like my world. I have a guy in Jersey that floats me some great deals. Less than an hour to Del for pretty good pricing and no tax. Winebid to pick up the slack. Life is good.

Best,

Mike

"Republican Governor". Getting happy-happy ahead of schedule, are we?

I'll grant that it does look a lot like Corbett will be it. I'd heard that rumor myself. Not sure that there's much more to it than that, considering that Newman's made a whole life for himself elsewhere. And what about the removal of whossisname, Conti, as Chief Executive? I can't recall if that was done by the Board or if it had to go through the Legislature, bur I'd think that would be non-negotiable, and Conti has a lot of friends.

As for happiness, I guess we agree on how this affects the smart consumer, since our purchasing seems to follow very similar lines. Except, of course, that I have no philosophical problem with the Proletariat's ownership of the Means of Production... I mean, moderate Government intervention in the Economy. Yup. That' s what I meant.

I'm glad it's all moot: it'll take some circumstance quite beyond my imagining for Pennsylvania to privatize alcohol sales.

Just got back on the field from being benched for a week from a cold. Who the f gets a cold in August? No juice for seven days, longest drought ever for me. Did discover that Jersey Shore is the greatest show ever though. Just had the Hannah and for ten bucks it ain't bad. Read the review and guess the movie reference.

Hmm...someone needs to help me out here. The PA Wine is listed as Caractere Chemin des Rouvieres Vacqueyras 07 on the "Chairman's Selection Now in Stores" page and shows an Advocate score of 86-88. Spectator has a 90 rating for VIGNERONS DE CARACTÈRE Vacqueyras Chemin des Rouvières Perfection du Rhône 2007 which I would assume is the rating that the WL references for their wine.

So the question is - is this the same wine? Or is the PA Monopoly store selling a lower level wine at the same price WL offers the better wine?

Capaneus????

ps - the point of this post is not to continue the debate concerning state owned stores. I am firmly in the camp of the state has no business in any retail business. That being said, I make the best of my situation which includes taking advantage of good deals in PA monopoly stores when they are available. My point here is my confusion over the different names - and may be due to my admitted lack of knowledge of French wine labels. However I find the following names in CT:

2007 Vignerons de Caractere Vacqueyras Chemin des Rouvieres
2007 Vignerons de Caractere Côtes du Rhône Perfection du Rhône Grés du Soleil
2007 Vignerons de Caractere Gigondas Perfection du Rhone Les Coudoulieres
2007 Vignerons de Caractere Vacqueyras Perfection du Rhone Camps des Garrigues

FWAGS:
2007 Caractere Chemin des Rouvieres Vacqueyras

WS:
2007 VIGNERONS DE CARACTÈRE Vacqueyras Chemin des Rouvières Perfection du Rhône

I get that Vacqueyras, Cotes du Rhone and Gigondas are appellations and that these are red rhone blends. But given that only the two listed above in italics are close in name, I'm trying to figure out how to ensure I am comparing apples to apples - or grapes to grapes?

don-

I believe (said cautiously) that the wine currently showing as a CS at the FWAGS near you is the same as that listed in italics from CT & the one on Wine Library that gets the Tanzer 90. The PLCB description deletes the Vignerons reference but a look at the bottle shows all the elements of the name - albeit in different parts of the label.

Let's hope so since there are other Chemin de Rouieres rated on CT at a lofty 77-79. I guess you plunk down your $12.99 & see what you see

Thanks Jeff.
WL indicated, at lease in the quote above, that this wine received a 90 from WS. Perhaps they meant IWC. The 90 point WS score went to the "Perfection".

Hmmmm.... Well, I've got good news and I've got bad news. I think.

Good news is that I'm reasonably sure that the wine reviewed by the Advocate, the wine reviewed by the Spectator, and the wine reviewed by IWC, are all the same wine (kinda - keep reading), and the same as both WL and the PLCB are offering. When I went to the different retailers' websites, the actual bottle images all had "Perfection du Rhone" in a black band at the top of the label - you can check our very own PaWineTalk listing for an image of the PLCB's offering.

I think that was the name of a product range Vignerons de Caractere had in '07, not a premium cuvee.

Their own website doesn't shed much light, they seem to have shuffled their line, and none of the '09s seem quite right. Or maybe this was always an export-only line. Lots of those, particularly in the Rhone.

Bad news is that I think the other CT "Rouvieres" is also the same wine, 73-to-79-point scores and all.

And none of it is the PLCB's fault.

Best guess as to what's going on: Vignerons de Caractere is a very large co-op, and they put out a lot of wine. From poking around, I'm guessing this was a cuvee they made for the American market - a pretty large one - since I can't find any of it in the large European retailers (never a sure thing, but there you have it).

Now, one of the dirty little little secrets of the wine world is that any large production wine is, in fact, a whole bunch of different wines, different cuvees, blended from different vats, from grapes picked in different places (eighty producers make up this particular co-op), frequently vinified at different times. Skillful winemakers can maintain a uniform flavor profile across the range. But there are a lot of less-skilled winemakers out there.

Mondavi once said about one of his whites that, early in the season, the fruit could stand on its own. Some of the latter production, however, required some oak to fill in the hollow midpalate. You get the idea.

So we are, in effect, talking about a bunch of different wines here. The cluster of bad scores on CT have a peculiarly uniform feel to them. It's possible that they all got hold of a particularly poor batch, or, since the couple of reviewers I could place were Western, it was a transportation issue. Or there could be a bit of bandwaggoning going on, hard to tell. And then I realized there's also no way to tell what exactly IWC and the Spectator actually reviewed, or how exactly it relates to the wine we have at hand.

I also find it peculiar that the PLCB quotes Parker, with a lower score of 86-88, rather than either of the better 90-point reviews. Maybe a late-life fit of honesty, maybe they know something we don't.

A mess, is what this seems to be.

The answer to your question is that these are, theoretically, all the same wine, as far as I can tell. But there seems to be pretty severe bottle variation, for whatever reason. Bottom line: don't dive in. Try a bottle first. If you like what you get, odds are reasonably good the rest of the stock will match that bottle.

You know, this was actually pretty good fun to research.

Interesting...

That's why I am a contributor - this site is full of great information!

Label in question and link to CT reviews...

www.grapestories.com/wine.asp?iWine=750155

Matched to CT via bar code since the names are so confusing.

Ouch. It's still strange that they managed to make that bad a batch, with the kind of fruit they had in '07.

Retailers have been known to quote reiews/scores for the wrong wines, and certainly in the case of these confusingly-similar wines it would be understandable.

Does anyone have a subscription to WS and/or IWC online that can check? Can't post the review here (copyright) but could see if the score quoted in the PLCB and Winelibrary descriptions are for the correct wine.

The exact name of the product reviewed by WS is:

VIGNERONS DE CARACTÈRE Vacqueyras Chemin des Rouvières Perfection du Rhône 2007

which seems to match up exactly with the label of the wine purchased at the state monopoly store. There is no label picture on WS, so hard to be sure it is the same wine.

WS gave the wine a 90 - I don't believe the PLCB quotes WS.

Some wines are being dumped (kile when they come up with "special" Chairman labels- but some are a true bargain. Like some California wines that I buy and ship to California. Some recent deals - Pahlmeyers Red, Montes Alpha 1, Ponzi Pinot, etc. Yes! these are about 5% of all the offerings but that's why they call them "a find".

At the risk of offending any Francophiles out there the problem could also be the source of the wines. The label had been American-ized (grape content listed) so there was intent to export. Maybe just inconsistencies in the labeling (adapting a label designed for EU consumption) that account for the different takes on the same wine. That doesn't account for the distinctly different tasting experiences. Could be some sales rep at Caractere is laughing his butt off at peddling some badly stored wine off on the PLCB. Who knows.

I had the wine quite a bit above 77-79 range but not nearly 90 either. Since dontime & I tend to rate things in the same range I was intrigued by his 1-. We need some wine detective to sort this one out.

@jlburd: See above re: detective. Came to essentially the same conclusions.

@Mark: when I went looking, I became pretty sure that there is only one wine, but that different people quote different portions of the label - when I clicked through to websites, the bottles invariably had all the information on the label. Couldn't find any wines with just a portion of the information. Oddly, the PLCB signage quotes the WA review, rather than the higher-scoring WS or IWC reviews. Someone local told me that "they" thought people responded better to WA reviews. Heh.