Discussion: Guide to cost sharing of bottles

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jfacciol
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Re: Discussion: Guide to cost sharing of bottles

Post by jfacciol »

Let's be concrete and take the bottle of 1970 Vargellas that was requested from me for the 1970 UK tasting. I priced it at what I believed would be the market price, not at what I paid for it. This seems to have offended Axel and not to have offended Alex.

There seems to be a split in the "culture" of TPF. If the expectation is that the price paid by the participant is what is charged to a group tasting, then I am a willing participant if everyone is bringing something to the table (so to speak), either at that tasting or at a future tasting. If this is the expectation regardless of whether everyone is expected to (in some rough sense) contribute equally over time, then I am only interested in tastings in which other TPFers contribute and I do not. I will then receive the benefit of their buying prowess and not have to compensate them for storage, etc. costs.

I am not in favor of behind the scenes discussions of costs. Let if be out front where the discussion is transparent. And let there be an objective standard of measuring value, which I take Wine-searcher to be. The fact that a bottle can be purchased at auction for less than from a retailer does not deal with the fact that the true value of something is what it can be purchased at on a regular basis. And that is the retail, not the auction, price. Someone might have to wait a year or much more for a particular bottle to come up at auction. This is not a market price. In other words, liquidity is as important as price and auctions do not provide liquidity-retailers do.

There is a separate, but related question, of what reasonable price ranges for a tasting should be. I don't see how it is possible to have a vertical or horizontal of vp with ten or so bottles that includes anything but the most everyday vps for less than $150 to $200 a participant (assuming that there is one participant per bottle). I know that this is not a small sum of money but I am at at a loss to understand how intellectually interesting tastings can be put together for less.

We all have our price limits--I passed on a multi-thousand dollar tasting, for example. But price limits and fair pricing are two different issues.
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DRT
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Re: Discussion: Guide to cost sharing of bottles

Post by DRT »

jfacciol wrote:Let's be concrete and take the bottle of 1970 Vargellas that was requested from me for the 1970 UK tasting. I priced it at what I believed would be the market price, not at what I paid for it. This seems to have offended Axel and not to have offended Alex.
Jay,

Knowing both of these guys personally I think you are perhaps reading something into their words that isn't there. My understanding (and they will correct me if I am wrong) of their views on the price you quoted for the 1970 Vargellas is that Alex thought that the logic you used to determine the price was sound whereas Axel simply thought that the price was too high to justify the extra expenditure to the group as he had already confirmed the cost of the tasting and collected the money from everyone.

I would venture to suggest that had you been attending the tasting and had been involved in the initial gathering of offers of bottles and costs your bottle of Vargellas 1970 would have been at the tasting and you would have recieved the value you placed on it. The fact of the matter is the money available had already been spent on numerous lesser beasts and the Vargellas idea and your kind offer came too late to make it economically viable.

I agree that the finances of all tastings should be transparent to those attending but do not agree that they need to be laid out for the world to see on a public website. I think doing the negotiation phase in public puts people under pressure to comply and perhaps commit more than they would be comfortable with spending or donating. That is parhaps just a cultural difference between the USA and UK as others have mentioned.

As to cost limits/thresholds. There have been many intellectually stimulating tastings on this side of the pond at costs that are well below what you suggest is an appropriate lower limit. I think the best approach is to have a balance of a few high-end and relatively expensive tastings per year but the majority being focussed on more generally accessable and less expensive wines, such as the 1980 horizontal we held last summer.

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jdaw1
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Re: Discussion: Guide to cost sharing of bottles

Post by jdaw1 »

jfacciol wrote:This seems to have offended Axel and not to have offended Alex.
An email purge means that I have lost the correspondence, but this sounds like I might have misreported our discussion. My recollection is that nobody was offended.

Back to Jay’s more substantive point, then, as has been said earlier, all are welcome to choose a price at which they are willing to part with their own bottles. Your strong preference for wine-searcher seems entirely fair to me (with a small caveat below). Either people bring ‘equivalent’ bottles, or there is a $ rebalancing this is noted, and entirely fair. (Caveat: for very rare bottles, that are not sufficiently widely available for there to be a market price, some estimation might be required. E.g., and I’m ad-libbing here, we might estimate the cost of a late 1800s Croft as being 80% of the cost of the same-year Cockburn, or the Cockburn as being 1Â¼× the Croft.)
jfacciol wrote:There is a separate, but related question, of what reasonable price ranges for a tasting should be. I don't see how it is possible to have a vertical or horizontal of vp with ten or so bottles that includes anything but the most everyday vps for less than $150 to $200 a participant (assuming that there is one participant per bottle). I know that this is not a small sum of money but I am at at a loss to understand how intellectually interesting tastings can be put together for less.
At US pricing, I completely agree. However, some intellectual interest can be sacrificed whilst still having a fun evening, and at lower cost. I am amenable to either type of evening.
jfacciol
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Re: Discussion: Guide to cost sharing of bottles

Post by jfacciol »

I reprint the statements below. Axel said
I do not think that there should be any kind off such thing as market value. We just encountered this with the Vargellas 1970, which would have increased our costs a lot. For those who bought it in the good old days, it was rather a bargain.
Alex wrote
Jay's offer for the Vargellas was fair and did not cause any complaints from this side of the Pond, but we simply decided that the tasting was already so large and expensive without the Vargellas that we would prefer to call upon Jay's generosity at another time - perhaps in a Taylor & Vargellas complete 20th Century Vertical.
Maybe I am reading something into these statements but they do seem to me quite different in tenor, hence my comments about different cultural expectations. Axel seems to be objecting to paying a market price while Alex appears to be reporting a cash flow issue, with which I have no quarrel (not being rich myself). These two comments seem to me to illustrate two different attitudes.

I also have no quarrel with Julian's comment that different types of tastings (formal and informal) can each have their own pleasures and their own economics.
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DRT
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Re: Discussion: Guide to cost sharing of bottles

Post by DRT »

jfacciol wrote: Axel seems to be objecting to paying a market price while Alex appears to be reporting a cash flow issue, with which I have no quarrel (not being rich myself). These two comments seem to me to illustrate two different attitudes.
I suspect that Axel was expressing a view which he thinks should apply to those who are attending the tasting. I agree that Axel and Alex seem to have different views on that but I do not think Axel would expect someone who is not attending the tasting to give away a bottle for less than what they valued it at.

Either way, as JDAW said, I do not believe anyone was offended by your offer. I just think it was turned down because it didn't make econmic sense to include the bottle at that price given the point we were at in the organisation of the event.
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Axel P
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Re: Discussion: Guide to cost sharing of bottles

Post by Axel P »

Good to see that there is a discussion going on what everyone thinks I was thinking outside my shrinks office :D .

No worry. I was just reflecting the way I experienced the UK tastings to run, but I thought it to be totally fair to think otherwise. As I said, I do strongly believe in the fact, that it should give everyone big pleasure to drink good port with those who love port, but if one does not even participate then I think it is very kind to offer the Port in the first place and totally up to the person offering to demand the market price, more or less. So there was absolutely no offence here.

I actually had a chat with someone from Taylors, who explained to me, why a VP and a Vargellas was produced beforehand. Furthermore I asked their opinion if a Vargellas should be included into such a tasting.

Therefore and for the fairly high (market-) price (compared to all the other Port except the Nacional), I rejected to include it, as all the financial stuff of the tasting was already settled before the Vargellas became a topic.

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SushiNorth
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Re: Discussion: Guide to cost sharing of bottles

Post by SushiNorth »

jfacciol wrote:I don't see how it is possible to have a vertical or horizontal of vp with ten or so bottles that includes anything but the most everyday vps for less than $150 to $200 a participant (assuming that there is one participant per bottle). I know that this is not a small sum of money but I am at at a loss to understand how intellectually interesting tastings can be put together for less.
DRT wrote:As to cost limits/thresholds. There have been many intellectually stimulating tastings on this side of the pond at costs that are well below what you suggest is an appropriate lower limit. I think the best approach is to have a balance of a few high-end and relatively expensive tastings per year but the majority being focussed on more generally accessable and less expensive wines, such as the 1980 horizontal we held last summer.
We had a lovely, and somewhat intellectual, tasting this past friday whose focus was lesser known 20-yr tawny's. It was not all-inclusive, and at only three bottles many might deem it even humble. (Had the tasting been 8 bottles, we would have paid not more than $50/pp for port.) We also had a great time with fellow port lovers, and I remember each of the bottles clearly.

Meanwhile, we had a lovely tasting, and highly intellectual, at Jay's two weeks ago. With 10 bottles, and at $165/pp, we were able to compare a great many years of Graham's, but I do not remember half of them. We also had a great time with fellow port lovers.

I believe our tastings have grown too big -- both in intellectual depth and financial requirement -- and I'd like to see a return to some of the smaller tastings. I'd like to have a great time with fellow port lovers, but at the rate we're going I'll be priced out of that market.
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Axel P
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Re: Discussion: Guide to cost sharing of bottles

Post by Axel P »

In my opinion there is a time for smaller tastings and there is a time for bigger tastings.

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g-man
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Re: Discussion: Guide to cost sharing of bottles

Post by g-man »

indeed Axel, and usually depends on the willingness of fellow participants to agree upon such tastings.

Smaller tastings are definitely more informal, but I would liken them more for drinking while taking notes as oppose to seriously tasting with a side of drinking.

Large tastings that we hold amongst ourselves are quite enjoyable, if anyone has attended a "formal" tasting set up by the commercial companies will see, alot of the pours are tiny and doesn't leave much for thirds at the same price range usually.

I feel, Jay is correct in saying that tasting flights of top rated port is never cheap and 165$ is very reasonable for tastings like these.

The most important thing, is the person who owns the bottle should decide on what price they'd be willing to let it go.

I bring up the topic because I feel that there might be times where a bottle may be introduced into a tasting, at a price range I wouldn't feel comfortable picking up. For example, I can see a Fonseca 77 pass retail at 200$, but I know I can and will get it at auction for 110$/bottle-125$ with premium (after all a 75$ savings on a bottle is a Fonseca 85 that can be picked up). For that rather selfish reason, I would not agree with utilizing wine-searcher for these particular bottles, but at the same time, it is unreasonable to say "at auction it's this so that's the price we should charge". With the rarer bottles though, I'm in 100% agreement with Jay and Julian where the replacement costs of such bottles would probably be unreasonable and we would probably have to look to the retail market for a more fair price.

Specifically relating to the TFW tasting, if we were not trying to diminish's Julian's stock in the US, I would be actively pursuing the bottles in the tasting. And I would feel more comfortable with wine-searcher prices if I couldn't land the price at auction due to, size of the lots, bad conditioning of the bottle, or inconsequential price differences from retail (ie, 20$ difference for a 200$ bottle is not one that warrants effort trying to find)

Of course, once I lose my main source of income and go back to school, further draining me of my resources, I may have to attend the smaller informal tastings from existing stash.
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Glenn E.
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Re: Discussion: Guide to cost sharing of bottles

Post by Glenn E. »

Axel P wrote:In my opinion there is a time for smaller tastings and there is a time for bigger tastings.
Absolutely.

And I think that each tasting - whether small or large - will probably have its own cost sharing algorithm because each tasting will have its own special set of circumstances. I think it is good that we discuss the issue in a general sense, but I doubt that we can come up with one perfect system that works for every future tasting. It's best to have a general rule of thumb, then deviate as necessary for each tasting.
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Re: Discussion: Guide to cost sharing of bottles

Post by DRT »

Glenn E. wrote:It's best to have a general rule of thumb, then deviate as necessary for each tasting.
TPF Off-line Guide wrote: Q: Port can be expensive: how are bottle costs handled?
We have done everyone-brings-a-bottle tastings. We have done one-person-brings-all, the cost being shared. We have also done an adopt-a-bottle program, that is, everyone is deemed to bring a bottle, but that might happen because you ‟adopt” someone else’s port with private settlement between the two of you. Whichever of these it is, generally there is prior agreement about who is bringing what, to ensure that everything matches the theme without duplications. But with regard to sharing costs, the rule is that something fair will happen.
:D
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JacobH
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Re: Discussion: Guide to cost sharing of bottles

Post by JacobH »

DRT wrote:
Glenn E. wrote:It's best to have a general rule of thumb, then deviate as necessary for each tasting.
TPF Off-line Guide wrote: But with regard to sharing costs, the rule is that something fair will happen.

:D


Are you suggesting we deviate from the rule that something fair will happen? If so can I think we have the financing of a complete Taylor vertical to discuss... :)
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