Ravenswood library offer

Got a notification of an upcoming offer thru the Once and Future site. Hopefully I can get in on some aged Zinfandel.

Just read the email. Should be an interesting day Tuesday.

I’d just paid off all my credit cards, today, and that e-mail hit. If the pricing is so outrageous that I can’t afford it, I’ll be OK. However, if the pricing is not outrageous enough, this could be trouble.

Prepare to be troubled Mark!

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Given that constellation had it all marked at zero I imagine the prices will be good. This is very exciting.

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

Curious and interested.

Exciting, yes, but, possibly, very bad for my credit card. Thankfully. Mrs. Larson is very understanding.

There’s been some floating around. He sold some to Dry Creek Kitchen a few years back and they feature it in their wine list.

A couple releases ago he poured and offered Mags of Wood Rd Belloni Zinfandel and I think Dickerson Merlot on pick-up day for. C-note each.

Too bad he isn’t offering white wines eh?

I was surprised it wasn’t all Zin. He mentions Cab Franc, Cab, Merlot. Some rare stuff in there too. Should be fun.

Really really excited for this based on the things Morgan has been opening and posting on Instagram.

Do you think it will be an open link, or only to club members?

Can someone break the secret code here and give me the URL?

Here’s the email I received:

Dear Once & Future Fans,
A couple of years ago, I received a call from one of the accountants from Constellation Brands. He had been put in charge of getting rid of “excess” inventory, which apparently included the wine libraries of Simi, Robert Mondavi, and Ravenswood. The accountant asked, “What is this item called the Ravenswood Stash in the Lodi warehouse?” I informed him that it was the Ravenswood library.
When I started Ravenswood in 1976, I was well acquainted with aged wine. Some of the best wine experiences that I shared with my fellow wine enthusiasts were older wines. These wines were relatively available and not particularly expensive. We were able to put together verticals of wine like Petrus as well as other first-, second-, and third-growth Bordeauxs going back to the 1920s. We did the same for great Burgundies, and for Rhone and German wines. It was far more difficult to do for California wine. Prohibition certainly had something to do with that, of course, but there was also the sense that California wine wasn’t made to develop with age like European wines. There were exceptions; occasionally an old bottle of Hallcrest Cabernet or la Questa or Rixford vineyard would show up. There were also John Daniel’s Inglenook wines and some older Simi wines from the 1930s. The best of them were quite good and all were interesting to taste.
At Ravenswood, I made wine in a very traditional fashion: small open-top redwood fermenters, hand punch downs, native yeast and malolactic fermentation, extended maceration, as well as substantial time in small French oak cooperage. I also worked with exceptional vineyards. Beyond just making flavorful, interesting, delicious wine, I wanted to make wine that would evolve and gain complexity with age. In my mind, part of what made great wine great was that, if stored properly, it would change and evolve into exceptionally interesting bouquets and flavors that could be experienced in no other way than leaving the wine in the bottle for a number of years. A few of the older California wines I tasted seemed to indicate this was possible.
The result of this belief was that we held back a few cases of the 1976 Ravenswood Zinfandels. While a few collectors in those days had cellars where they aged wine, they were the exception, not the rule. The general wisdom in those days, and even today, is that the average lifespan of a bottle of California wine is about three days after it leaves the store shelf. It seemed clear that if I wanted to see how my wines aged, I would have to do it myself.
Each year, we would put down five to 10 cases of wines that seemed worthy. Since I didn’t have a winery or library space in the early years, this created some serious logistical and storage problems. I made a number of serious vineyard-designated wines. If I chose just four of those to put in the library, that could be up to 40 cases per vintage. In the early years, Reed Foster, my business partner, kept them in San Francisco. When that less-than-perfect space was filled, we moved the whole thing to Ravenswood Gehricke Road. As that filled up, we moved everything to a larger space at our newly built Quarry facility, and when Constellation bought Ravenswood, some of the wine was moved to a climate-controlled warehouse in Napa and then Lodi. Another stash of it remained at the Quarry facility.
The library contained most of the significant wines I had made between 1976 and 2001, when Constellation took ownership. During the accounting gyrations that always accompany a winery sale, Constellation saw some advantage in writing the value of this wine down to zero. This meant the company couldn’t sell the wines without some fairly fancy bookkeeping but could give them away to charity events and use them for tastings. Any of you who have attended ZAP over the years have been beneficiaries of this policy. Over the years, I have opened many older large-format bottles at ZAP events.
Back to the call from the accountant, where I started this story, he told me we weren’t using the wine fast enough to justify its existence. Besides that, he said “the wine is all outdated” (he must have been in charge of Arbor Mist before he was assigned to this job). Hence, he had been authorized to destroy the wine. You might imagine my reaction. At that point, I offered to buy the wine and remove it from Constellation’s inventory. The accountant seemed pleased, but incredulous, that I would want that “old, outdated wine.” I assured him that a few drinkable wines probably were in the lot. There were a few other twists and turns before I suddenly I found myself in possession of around 1,800 cases of well-aged, interesting Ravenswood wines. It is an amazing stroke of good fortune that these wines still exist and are in my possession.
My next job was to re-case the wine, examine every bottle for condition, and taste every individual lot. Thank goodness for my able, organized assistant, Erika, who was instrumental in making it all happen. We found that the wines were in generally good shape. There were a few leakers and low fills, but that was the exception. How do they taste? They surpassed my expectations. Some of the wines from the late 1970s that had seen rough storage in San Francisco seemed a little old before their time, but starting with the wines from 1981, there are some real gems. The wines from the 1990s are downright exciting. It was fun to relive the vintages as I was tasting them. Based on these wines, whoever said there was no evolution, vintage, or terroir distinction in California was clearly mistaken.
These wines are mature. As such, they have sediment and require special attention when removing the cork. When you receive your wine, let the bottles rest for at least a week before opening them. Stand them up for a few hours to let the sediment drop to the bottom of the bottle. For the most part, these wines like a little air. Decanting is suggested but not mandatory if you don’t mind a few clouds in the last glass poured and prefer to watch the wine evolve in the glass.
Special care should be taken when removing the corks. They are generally in good shape but have become soft with age. It is easy to break or shred the center of the cork with a regular waiter’s corkscrew. If you are handy with an Ah-So, that device can work well. Best of all is a cork remover called the Durand. It is essentially a corkscrew and an Ah-So that work together. I have never lost an old cork with one of these.
There are lots of reasons that you might want some of these wines. Maybe you or someone you know was born in the same year that the wine was made. (It is a little disconcerting to think that I have been making wine that long.) Maybe you had a bottle of a particular wine when it was young and would like to try it again in its mature state. Maybe you have never had old California wine and would like to investigate the pleasures to be found there. Or maybe you already know and love older wines and would like to add some of these gems to your tasting repertoire. And finally, library wines make wonderful holiday gifts! This is a great opportunity to get older wines of known provenance that have been screened by the winemaker who made them and can certify that they are what he hoped they would be.
Most of the wines in this collection are vineyard-designated wines. Some of them, such as Old Hill and Monte Rosso, are exceedingly rare. Within the list, you will also see county series wines such as Sonoma County Zinfandel, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc. They are all blends of unique and delicious vineyards. For instance, the Sonoma County Zinfandel is a very high percentage of the Teldeschi vineyard. Even though I had wanted to vineyard-designate that wine in the early 1980s, the Teldeschi Family would not let me do so until 1997. Hence, all that great wine went into Sonoma County Zinfandel. These wines have aged very nicely and are exceptional values.

  • Joel

Yes, but can we buy them, and how?

Dan Kravitz

I’ve bought the previous Once and Future releases. I assume Joel is using that list for the offer.

I’m also excited for this and hope I can reload a mixed case or two. The SC Zin may be affordable, I assume Old Hill could be prohibitive.

GLENN LEVINE IS A DAMN LEGEND.

He had been put in charge of getting rid of “excess” inventory, which apparently included the wine libraries of Simi, Robert Mondavi, and Ravenswood.

WTF?

[wow.gif]

They have reached peak stupid.

How to get some of these. I’ve never heard of the Once and Future list, but just signed up. I knew he was making wine under a different label, just didn’t know the name of it.

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