The system actually sounds fishy to me. First you can’t sell your wine under $125 of which he wants 26.5%. But then if you sell for $400 he still wants 26.5%.
It’s screwed up to me. Fix a price for the grapes. People will buy them. Then stop being jealous because one winemaker can get more than another winemaker.
Do they do this with high end beef? If you are johns pub you have to sell your burger for a min of x but if you are a steakhouse they want 26.5% of the sale of the plate.
I don’t know Joe, he owns a portion of the most valuable vineyard in the US – is he breaking any laws with this? Just the free market at work and I see no reason why he shouldn’t be able to capitalize on the shrewdness of his 1993 investment.
For the non-1% wine drinker like me though who barely affords Schrader right now, this really sucks as I imagine they (and all others I can’t afford) will raise pricing and when that happens I’ll be priced out.
Fresh porcinis at the farmers market are $48/pound. $96,000/ton.
I never said it wasn’t legal. I don’t actually know. He does have the right to charge what he wants for the grapes but it seems like he not only is getting paid for his hard work and the specific terroir but he gets a cut of the winemakers efforts and abilities.
It’s not, to me, a good system or a system I want to pay into. It’s a bit extortionist.
Ouch, wonder what the price for the 2014 Schrader will be.
Joe - you’re exactly right. He’s sticking his hand into somebody else’s cookie jar. There’s a reason he has never made his own wine - perhaps it was the extra investment needed, additional risk, a skill he didn’t have. Something. But he wants to get paid today like he’s the one that made the difference in the $350 bottle of to kalon over the $150 bottle made by someone else with the same grapes. IMO, his grapes are worth whatever the going rate is for the minimal price a to kalon wine is sold for - if wineries can sell their wine for more than the least expensive to kalon wine, that should be their bounty.
Still a greedy egotist by any measure.
I like Brookman in this space now.
He should make his own wine if we wants to keep all the $$$… Jeesh…
Otto, unless they start the increases early I think we should be safe through 2014…
(emphasis on “I think”)
But he’s just a simple farmer.
The answer, of course, is for wineries to stop buying his grapes.
Crazy silly. To Kalon is the SQN of Napa. It’s a vicious spiral - upward. People believe it’s “the best”, that feeds into pricing, feeds the grower’s ego and pricing, cycles back to the wine. So glad not to be caught up in that kind of hype cycle.
I say let the free market work. If he was correct in his assumptions, the makers will pay. If he was mistaken, he will see his grapes hit rock bottom.
It’s funny, we want capitalism, but we don’t want capitalism.
This doesn’t mean I support his decision, but I do support his right to make the decision.
^ +1.
I agree - let the free market prevail. If the wine makers believe the quality of the end product is all about the wine making process, then Pellet, Panek, or any other will work fine. If they “need” To Kalon grapes, then obviously he has demand and controls the supply so why shouldn’t the grower get a share? If he charges too much, the winemakers will walk…
As far as the To Kalons I purchase year in and out? I will not be happy with the price increases, but ask me if I like the price of DRC, Latour, Haut-Brion, and other burgs and bordeauxs of high quality? That is also all about the terroir as well, n’est pas?
Exactly.
I hear The paint manufacturer of gun metal grey will be increasing their prices for Apple on the iPhone 7
I don’t see any issue with him charging what he likes.
I’m the consumer and will buy, or not, of my own volition.
To Kalon seems to have become the SQN of cab grapes, for better or worse! 
Guess i’ll be buying a Samsung soon. ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
I’m in favor of things that speed the evolution of the California wine industry toward a genuine focus on differentiating sites of origin. And that is what this will do as a by-product of Beckstoffer’s aggressive pricing.
Identifying and celebrating the best, most distinctive sites inevitably means the wines will be expensive. I don’t buy Napa cabs, and drink them rarely, so I’ll leave it to others to say whether To Kalon is among the very top sites for cabernet sauvignon. The sentiment here seems to be that it is. So it should be rewarded for that. It’s sort of like grand cru burgs… if you want the very best, you’ll have to pay up.
The silver lining to that pricing cloud is that a genuine focus on terroir differentiation means that excellent sites (but not at the very top) go for a much lower price. Like premier cru burgs. IMO the premier crus are the most exciting strata of Burgundy… distinctive wines from distinctive terroirs and a lot less costly than grands crus. I think this is what Mike is saying in the quote above.
The pesky flip side of producing wines that evoke their terroir is that, in every winegrowing region, a majority of the vineyards possess less distinctive, less interesting sites. In Burgundy, for example, 88% of all vines are classed as generic bourgogne or villages level. These wines trade at much lower prices. That’s not good news for Cali producers who have billions tied up in installed infastructure. IMO this goes a long way toward explaining the California phenomenon of celebrating the rockstar winemaker who (they say) has the secret recipe for creating great wines. The sooner we can evolve beyond this, the better it will be for California wine, IMO.