Got the dreaded/much anticipated email that the allocation is now open. $750 per, and $225 for The Maiden.
Cant stomach the former, so going with a 3 pack of the latter. I’m sure there’s a drop down in quality for the Maiden, but I cant see the main bottling being 3X more special.
Haven’t purchased in a few years but still got the offer.
$750 a bottle.
Not biting
Anyone still buying?
In reviewing my records, I initially e-mailed Harlan in August 2013, was almost immediately offered the 2010 Maiden in September 2013, bought a 2-pack (at $175 per). I got an e-mail the following August inviting me to purchase both the Maiden and Harlan Estate.
That 2-pack of Maiden is still sitting in my cellar, and I haven’t bought a bottle of wine from them since, but I receive e-mails each year inviting me to “request my ideal amount” of each wine. I don’t know if my “request” would be granted because I haven’t made any, but their e-mail sure makes it seem like I’d get some wine if I asked for it:
We invite your interest and are confident that should you elect to acquire these wines, your trust will be well rewarded – both in your cellar and on your table. We encourage you to request your preferred or “ideal” amount. Your final allocation will be based on a combination of product availability, along with your expressed interest, list seniority and purchase history. As always, we pledge to fill requests as fully and fairly as possible. > To receive priority consideration your request should be received no later than September 16, 2016. We will finalize and confirm your order by the end of the month and send you a receipt.
One year sure seems like a quick turnaround, especially compared to the “no soup for you” e-mails I’ve received from Cayuse and SQN for the past several years…although the Scarecrow mailing list didn’t take much longer to crack.
For the group: have you ever had a request for Harlan Estate denied? Have you ever received fewer bottles than you requested?
And from a historical perspective, was Harlan Estate ever difficult to get (and I mean difficult in the SQN “you will wait awhile” sense, not in the “it’s $750 bottle, so yeah, it’s a bit of a challenge to purchase” sense)? For me, the barrier is the price, not the wait, and I’m wondering if their “cult” status is due to price rather than exclusivity (and not both, like Screaming Eagle).
The e-mail I received didn’t indicate how many cases of either wine were produced…
Dropped off a couple of years ago and never looked back.
JD
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but is this a 100$ price hike compared to last year?
My notes from last year show $750 for estate and $215 for Maiden. Bought neither last year, in for a 3 pack of Maiden this year.
I am wrestling with the same dilemma. I will prob do a three pack of the Maiden as well. I do know Harlan makes no more than 2000 cases of total production.
Prices are up again. The 2013 Harlan was $700 last year. The 2014 offered now is $750.
So the last few vintages:
2007 - $500
2008 - $500
2009 - $500
2010 - $500
2011 - $600
2012 - $650
2013 - $700
2014 - $750
I can buy a lot of good wine for $800!!!
That looks like monthly rental rates of small apartments in some cities… crazy!
I dropped out in 2011, and I don’t think they’ll stop with the increases until they get to release price parity with Screaming Eagle.
I stopped at $450 and thought that was a crazy price. More power to them if they can get $750 but not from me.
One thing is for sure: They cut their waiting list time to ZERO. A few years ago I practically got on the list overnight.
I think one could say with confidence that if SQN charged $750 a bottle for their wine it would solve the no soup emails in short order.
This will be a true real life experiment in Price Elasticity from Econ 101. Too bad I spent the entire semester trying to bed the shy hottie from North Carolina. (I did- 2nd semester 
)
That being said- Harlan always comes down to a QPR standpoint (like all things I guess). 2 bottles of Upper Top Tier juice or perhaps 5 bottles of outstanding wine at two hundo per?
I guess most of us have it okay if these are the decisions we are spending our time deliberating over…
Maybe so, but Screaming Eagle is up to $750 per and still a looooooog wait. And SQN is better wine. So there’s that.
I wonder if people are really buying Harlan at these prices. Everyone I know has dropped off the list years ago.
From a historical perspective Harlan Estate was very difficult to get from around 1996-2007. There was a long waiting list which fueled a strong secondary market. Harlan and others didn’t like the so called flipping of their wines so they increased prices at an unprecedented rate. Then the recession hit and waiting lists vanished quickly. Harlan has been wallowing in the melancholy aftermath for years.
Look, someone is buying this wine, somewhere. It is regularly on restaurant wine lists and the 0.01%ers out there in Santa Rosa wouldn’t blink at getting a few cases of this stuff every year. However it does seem that eventually regular enthusiasts (or to use another term, nuts) who frequent these boards have pretty much given up on these wines like first growth Bordeaux in new releases.
The best measure of the true value of any wine is the auction market for older vintages. you can easily pick up good vintages of this wine at 20-25% less than current release prices. Why would anyone continue to chase these bottles from the winery? Retailers who carry it probably quietly discount the wine from time to time to move it through the pipeline.
Andy Jefford had an on line piece recently that clearly took the clothes off the Emperor. He simply, and courageously, published his average yearly income over the last several years and documented why, with a family to support, he simply does not touch high end wines for personal consumption. While he is no 1%er, he makes a quite respectable income in the UK and is above something like 70% of all earners. He only gets to drink the flagship wines from any area at tasting events and other freebies that he has access to as a wine writer. His personal criteria for purchase is a wine that has interest, individuality and craftsmanship.
No Harlan is done for me. I have several bottles in the cellar from the $250 days, and that was pretty much out there in the early 00’s. I may consume them at some point. I do miss the labels, they are quite novel and look pretty on the table!