Realm Cellars 2021 Fall Release

Hi everyone, we are ramping up for our 2021 fall release so thought I would open the floor for discussion, questions, commentary, etc. I really appreciate the dialogue and feedback on WB from past releases. As always, you’re welcome to email or call me anytime.

This year’s fall release includes 2019 The Tempest, Falstaff, The Bard, and Moonracer. A few comments on each:

The Tempest. 80 Merlot / 20 Cab Sauv. Merlot coming from our estate in SLD, Farella in Coombsville, and Orchard in Oak Knoll. The Cabernet comes from Houyi on Pritchard Hill. This is perhaps one of the more muscular versions of Tempest in recent years.

Falstaff. 50 Cab Franc / 38 Cab Sauv / 12 Merlot. Upper Range Cab Franc, Houyi Cabernet, Ecotone Merlot. This wine shows the unique character of Cab Franc - forest floor, herbal, tea notes to compliment the fruit. Lots of backbone, tension, energy here…but at this moment in bottle maybe showing a bit backward to me…so I recommend letting this one rest for a few years.

The Bard. 81 Cab Sauv / 14 Merlot / 5 PV. A little something from almost every vineyard where we source fruit – 20+ components went into this blend. 2019 The Bard seems to me more expressive immediately after bottling than, say, 2018. I’ll be curious to get feedback about how it’s showing this fall compared to impressions about 2018 last fall.

Moonracer. 98 Cab Sauv / 2 Merlot. Full spectrum of fruit. 2018 and 2019 vintages of this wine are very strong as we continue to refine farming and vinification. I love the layers to this wine.

I wrote this in the release email but I think someday it will be interesting to look back at the decade of the 2010s in Napa Valley. It was arguably the best decade yet. Even the more challenging vintages like 2011 and 2017 turned out some very good wines. I think the 2019 vintage will deserve its place among the best from this decade. Perhaps 2013 or 2016 will still eclipse this vintage in the future but time will tell. The rough start to the 2020s in Napa Valley is a reminder to be grateful for the blessings from Mother Nature that we all enjoyed during the 2010s.

The price of our first estate wine Moonracer has not changed since inception and continues to be $250 during the release. The 3 blends in this release will each see a $10 price increase – Tempest to $110, Bard to $120, Falstaff to $185. We have not increased the price for The Bard since the 2015 vintage…and I know I’ve written on this board many times about making sure that wine in particular over-delivers for the price. I still think we are doing that but as always I welcome any feedback. Consistent with the last several years, the release price is only available to members during the two-week release…afterward, the wines revert to retail pricing. We do this to align with our trade partners around the world.

The wines being offered in fall 2021 and spring 2022 will be part of the normal release cycle. After that, we are in uncharted territory with the loss of the 2020 vintage. Candidly, it has been very hard to deal with the loss of an entire vintage. It’s not just the producer or the grower who feels the loss, think about the ripple effect – no need to order barrels this year, an entire vintage worth of glass and corks not being ordered, zero wine for our trade customers whose livelihoods depend on supply. I think we are only now beginning to digest what it means to lose the entire crop (for some producers). The 2020 vintage divided the winegrowing community in a way that I haven’t seen before. But we will find our way through this…

Thankfully, we had a healthy crop at Realm in 2018 and 2019…and that will partly bridge the gap. We have held back a few unreleased wines, small amounts of library stock, and a generous mix of 3-Liters…and we plan to release those in various drops or offerings over the next 18 to 24 months. It’s an opportunity to experiment, to innovate, to once again reinvent ourselves.

The 2021 Harvest is underway and we are all hoping for clear skies and calm weather for another few weeks. Thanks to so many of you who have been part of the Realm journey. Your support is meaningful and we are thrilled to share the first part of the 2019 vintage with you next week!

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Hi, Scott,

Thanks for jumping in. Quick question - will allocations of the Fallstaff still be as limited as in the past or will there be more Falstaff to go around this release? I’ve been a mailing list member since the 2016 vintage and try to buy as much of your wines as I can, but have only been allocated at most 1 bottle of Falstaff each vintage. I understand it’s a very limited production wine, of course.

Thanks in advance.

Rafael

Thanks Scott

Just opened ‘18 Tempest today and it was incredible and more approachable than ‘18 Bard (also incredible). I have to find a way to get the ‘19s soon. Is being on the mailing list the only way to buy the new releases?

Thanks and hope you guys sell a lot.

Scott, appreciate the post.

Believe the 2018 Bard included cab franc and petite sirah, and was from something like 40 sites. Any additional color on what changed and why in 2019 vs.
2018?

On the price increases, no one likes them obviously, but between general inflation, no 2020 vintage, and no increases in four years, I can’t say I’m surprised or would feel justified being upset. The trick is at $110 for the Bard you were in one zone, with a group of Napa wine at say $90-120. If one gets much above that toward $150, you start to enter a different category and I’d guess some people who used to buy six may buy three or four. It’s an interesting topic that I’m sure you think a lot about.

Looking forward to some of the one-off releases to come over the coming years.

agreed! i cut my Napa wine clubs way way way back and Realm is the only one i am still a member of. The Bard at $110 was a steal, and i think $120 is totally reasonable. however, when you start to round up to “basically $150/btl”, it starts to be a different thought process!

still hopeful to come visit Realm in the near future, hands down my favorite Napa producer.

maybe not no one :slight_smile: perhaps no customer is the better phrase.
champagne.gif

Good morning!

Rafael, Falstaff is simply limited by access to the right Cab Franc source. We made a little more in 2019 compared to 18 which was a factor of better yields in the new blocks at Upper Range. But there’s still less than 4,000 bottles to go around so it’s tight. In some cases this release, we are able to increase the guaranteed allocation by one bottle based on ungranted wish requests from last year. It’s our attempt to ensure the wish function works as intended for you - sometimes within the same release, and sometimes in following years.

Owen, the number of specific lots each year will vary based on blending preferences but I think the more important variable is sites. The sites or vineyard sources for 2019 The Bard are roughly similar to 2018 with a few notable exceptions. No Petit Sirah in 2019 because all of that fruit was absorbed into the Beckstoffer Bourn blend (we made more in 19 than 18) and we felt it worked better there this year. We still like PS for what it brings to a blend, like one component of a spice rack…but it didn’t fit in Bard in 2019. Most of the CF went to Falstaff in 19. Most of the Dr. Crane PV went to The Bard this year whereas in some years more of it goes to the Beckstoffer Dr. Crane blend. Simply a factor of blending decisions based on palate impression.

Good thoughts all around on pricing and I appreciate the sensitivity around $150. The Bard release price isn’t going there anytime soon…and I know this group will hold me accountable to that! Steve, fair point…and I will heed the porcupine’s warning to tread “very carefully” going forward!!!

Sharad, we sell most of our wine through releases available to members of our mailing list. But we have increasingly enjoyed being able to have some representation, particularly for The Bard, in various wine shops. You can find a list of places (retail and restaurant) that carry our wines on our website. We try to update that list regularly.

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Scott, thank you for the information, insight and your participation here.

Hey Scott,

Thanks for the info and sneak peek into this release.

Over the weekend I saw a post on the Realm Instagram account, and then again this morning, of what appears to be a new wine. The label is similar to The Bard, but the highlight color is a lavender, different text, and I believe says “The Dream”?

Lisa then responded to a question about the post and stated it was a new wine called “The Bard Blair Edition”. Any insight you can provide, and will it be part of this release?
Thanks!

Nick, we produced a special edition of The Bard in 2019 called Blair Edition. The current plan is to release that wine in fall 2022 when we would have otherwise been releasing 2020 The Bard. There are several reasons behind this cuvee and I will tell the story more fully before we release it next year. It’s essentially a single vineyard wine from the Blair Vineyard in Calistoga. Blair was the original backbone of the 2012 and 2013 vintages of The Bard. It still goes into The Bard now but as we’ve grown, we’ve added other vineyards to create a more holistic/complex blend of Napa Valley. We wanted to create something that was a bit of a throwback to those early vintages. We also wanted to pay tribute to the family that owns the Blair Vineyard. Their son was a winemaker who bottled a few vintages of his own as Blair Vineyard in the early 2000’s before he unfortunately passed away. Since that time, the fruit has been sold to various wineries including us but no one else has designated the vineyard. That family is a big part of the Realm journey and we wanted to honor them. Lastly, as we were blending the 2019s in late 2020…we already knew there would be no 2020 reds. We first put the Blair components together (Cab + Merlot) and then decided to split the blend in half - half of that wine would go to The Bard (normal) and half would be bottled as a Calistoga single-vineyard version of The Bard. We used a different text for the label but kept the same concept. We found a late 1800’s edition of Lord Byron’s poems…turns out he wrote one titled The Dream which contains the line “And a wide realm of wild reality…” which matched the essence of the original Bard label. We used lavender instead of red color to highlight the line in the poem to further distinguish it ever so slightly from The Bard. The two wines are certainly related.

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Thanks Scott - loaded up per usual

Falstaff + wish for 2 more
3 Moonracer
6 Bard

Hoping to fill out the case during wish requests

Looking forward to my allocation. First year ordering and just needing to decide what to go with

3 Moonracer - love this wine!!
2 Tempest
1 Falstaff + wish for 2 more

First year ordering, went with Tempest, Bard, and Moonracer.

Thank you Scott for the insight into the release. Ordered place and look forward to the delivery later this year.

2 x Bard
1 x Falstaff
2 x Moonracer
1 x Tempest

Slammed with Detert, Christopher Tynan, Ultramarine, Beta, M. Etain plus a trip to France in November.

Took 4 bard, 3 tempest, and 1 moonracer and wishlisted 2 more bard, 3 falstaff, and 1 more moonracer.

Does anyone know if the scores came out for them?

JF

Yes, both Vinous and Wine Advocate published scores.