BurgundyStreet

Vinfolio customers received the following email just a short time ago:

San Francisco, CA, March 17, 2010 - VF Wine Inc., a subsidiary of the secured creditor of the former Vinfolio, Inc., announced today that it has acquired Vinfolio’s assets and is joining with employees to re-launch a new Vinfolio built on its strength as a leading innovator in the sourcing, selling and storage of fine wine.

In January of this year, Vinfolio, Inc. was unable to meet its liabilities and entered into an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors process. Since then, the secured creditor has funded the company’s operations to allow the assignee to evaluate the best outcome for all constituencies.

“During the course of the last two months, we have not only deepened our understanding of the critical role Vinfolio, Inc. played in transforming the way people buy and sell fine wine, but have become more aware of the enormous contribution the business can make going forward,” said Jon Moramarco, a principal investor in the parent of VF Wine. “Rather than take the path of liquidation, we are working with employees to form a new company to continue pursuing Vinfolio’s mission of improving the way people buy, store and sell fine wine.”

“We are eager to combine the best of the former company with a newly-capitalized and stable financial foundation which allows us to return to the core principles of a fine wine business—serving the needs of wine enthusiasts and collectors by sourcing, selling, and storing fine wine,” stated Ann Feely, Vice President of Wine Sourcing and Sales.

The new Vinfolio inherits an online wine store and Marketplace that have quickly become the world’s largest fine wine source, with thousands of wines available for bidding or instant purchase. Along with this, the new company will continue to provide the Bay Area’s only full-service storage and maintain the trademarked Vinfolio name in recognition of the brand equity that was built in large part by providing superior levels of service to a very loyal customer base.

“I believe that now more than ever, our customers will find Vinfolio’s team of employees has the skills and expertise to provide them with exceptional wines and service,” said Beth Thomas-Kim, Director of Customer Service. “We believe in the goals and focus of the new Vinfolio and are excited to have made a personal commitment to remain a key resource for wine enthusiasts and collectors.”

In the coming days Vinfolio plans to announce the hiring of a new CEO who will head the day-to-day operations of the new organization. “Vinfolio will staff this position with an individual who combines extensive wine industry knowledge with a commitment to customer service and a proven track record of financial discipline,” stated Jon Moramarco.

“The financial troubles of Vinfolio, Inc. have created a most difficult situation for its employees, as well as certain customers and suppliers,” continued Moramarco. “We look forward to a return to Vinfolio’s mission in a stable and focused way. While the new company has not assumed, and is under no legal obligation to provide for, Vinfolio, Inc.’s historical liabilities, it is not our intention to profit from the misfortune of others. More specifically, VF Wine intends to operate the business prudently and is committed to attempting to resolve any legitimate claims of Vinfolio’s community of wine suppliers and customers before VF Wine’s investors take any profit distribution, fee, dividend or other return of capital on the investment we are making to rescue Vinfolio.”

“I’m gearing up to file more in 2010,” said the 69-year- old billionaire wine collector, who is better known as the man who bought the infamous Thomas Jefferson bottles, found them out to be fakes, and is stark raving mad about it.  He’s been hunting down Hardy Rodenstock ever since, and looking to bring justice to the world of fine wine, which he thinks has been infiltrated by thousands of fake bottles.  Who can really blame him?  Spend that amount of money, and not be mad.   The whiny little bitches on the eBob Forum are upset over a ‘97 Harlan that they all bought a few bottles of, and now they crucify Parker ’cause they don’t believe it drinks so well???  Have i put things into perspective?  Not yet?  Keep reading:

“Koch’s complaints include more than 40 bottles for which he paid almost $1 million. He estimates he’s spent about $5 million in legal fees and on gathering evidence. Two wine experts he hired turned up several hundred suspect bottles in his own collection, he said. That works out to about 1 percent of Koch’s 40,000 bottles.”

Chateau & Estate, a distributor of fine wines in NY, that once owned the market for Bordeaux wine to the tune of $70M, has pretty much belly-flopped due to the recession.  Once upon a time, all NY retailers would have had to deal with them if they wanted the good stuff, which brought about a horrible culture of customer service at Chateau & Estate, where wine salesmen would walk into a store with a notepad to simply take an order.  No unions needed here, this job was once as safe as you could get.  

Then came the internet.  Major NY retailers started circumventing Chateau & Estate, and buying their wine directly from European sources like Farr Vintners, and other London brokers.  This slaughtered Chateau & Estate little by little over the years, as orders became MUCH fewer by the accounts that really mattered to them over here.  Name any major NY retailer, and i’ll show you a former major customer of theirs.  

This last week, it’s been reported that Chateau & Estate has been dumping their inventory at the lowest prices anywhere.  Due to the economy they have been dropping their prices so low, that major Bordeaux houses are buying their inventory BACK!  Petrus, and Gruaud Larose are two that have been doing this.  But the real reason this is taking place is the outrageous prices that Chateau & Estate had to sell these wines at.  They were never competing to begin with.  

What’s begun now, is a race to grab as much of their portfolio available.  Why i don’t know, but these small distributors are now fighting like piranhas to grab a portfolio that although might look good on paper, but is falls apart on price.  With Bordeaux wines, price is king.   Good luck to them.  It might be nice to go around and show Haut Brion on your list, but no one in their right mind will ever buy it for the price you must sell it at.  

Note to the consumer:  If you are in the NY area, ask your local retailer for the most competitive pricing on Bordeaux wines.  If they are dumping wines, the time to shop is now!

So i think i know a guy, who knows another guy, who can get me in contact with The White House Butler, who can then get me inside the place to look at the wine collection that I know exists there.

Actually, i’m assuming they had a cellar/wine fridges, whatever, all along regardless of W’s non-drinking habits.  I mean, it’s The White House.  Some one there must want a drink.

But the purpose of this mission is to see what’s on hand there.  Is it all just American wines?  I know that’s the traditional drink of choice at State Dinners, but is there Chablis on hand?  Rose?  How about snapping the rug underneath my feet with an expose of Gewurztraminers in the cellar?  Expect an answer soon!

For the longest time, i’ve been hearing a ton of people telling me that Alder Yarrow is the #1 wine blogger.  I actually like his blog, and i enjoy the well written posts.    I’ve also started hearing the same thing about Dr. Vino, who also has another great blog, with a HUGE amount of loyal readers.  The posts on his blog are written well, and the coverage is very fair.  Another great blog.  The “argument” is really between those two and another candidate, Tom Wark of Fermentation.  

Is everyone forgetting about Gary Vaynerchuk of the Wine Library in NJ?  Are we also forgetting of his Vayniacs who follow this guy on cruises??  It took a simple trip to Compete.com to measure the analytics between the three.  (i wasn’t able to measure Fermentation’s traffic due to the fact that he still hasn’t purchased a domain name in order to measure it on)  

Traffic is everything.  And the results are above.  It’s not even close….  So my question is this: how the hell does the “American Wine Blog Awards” overlook Mr. Vaynerchuk’s nomination?  It’s like Avatar not getting a nomination at the Oscars!  Ridiculous.

If you want to have a good laugh, then you MUST go visit Mark Squire’s Bulletin Board on the eBob Forum.  It basically is a group of wine collectors (lawyers, dentists, and psychiatrists)  who take themselves extremely seriously, and believe the number of postings they contribute to the forum might one day correlate to the size of their dick.  I’ve often found myself laughing hysterically at their avatars, quotes, and general “digital-toughness” that they exude while they try to type bitch slappings at each other about….. really, nothing.  Bottom line: you’ve never seen a group of people with soooooooooo much time on their hands.  These men are clearly ignoring their wives, but by the sound of their useless rants, their wives might appreciate the free time themselves.

However, on certain occasions these group of wannabe thugs actually stir things up, and make some news like last months Vinfolio issue that all started on the forum.  But this is a rare occasion.  Robert Parker should have known better than to get started in with these guys.  Parker recently defended his rating of a ‘97 Harlan that he gave a 100 points, and dubbed it “legendary”.  But he did it in a very “controversial” tone, that really pissed EVERYONE off.  Read the thread here.  Why was anyone surprised though?  Robert Parker is an emperor in the world of wine, and he is finding it harder and harder to deal with the liberties, and power that the internet is giving a casual wine drinker, let alone many collectors and wine “experts” that now have a voice in that damned forum of his.  He hates bloggers, and combine that with the state of the publishing industry, and i don’t know how this guy sleeps at night anymore since the internet is slowly killing his business.  

The solution was never to get involved on the thread to begin with.  Parker should let those suck asses keep discussing how much of an ass he is, but never get involved!  Parker’s comments just further inflamed the thread, and made it much more amusing.  I couldn’t believe these guys were jumping all over him like that.  Embarassing.  This would have been like Napoleon discussing and justifying his past war decisions with a cook or private 1st class!  (which he did at Elba)

TweetMeme is a service which aggregates all the popular links on Twitter to determine which links are popular. TweetMeme categorises these links into Categories, Subcategories and Channels.  BurgundyStreet has just been picked up as part of their Wine News Channel.  

After two years of working on BurgundyStreet (for free) this definitely feels good!  Our hope is to keep developing a site where one day every wine afficionado will turn to receive their wine news, like an online newspaper.  That’s the goal, and we plan on doing it one day at a time.  This means more exposure by a top link aggregator.  We’re excited….  alright, enough about us.

I’ve read a bunch of silly articles recently forecasting the “death of the cult cab”.  I’ve never read such crap.  They quote several forum members on the eBob site as their evidence.  Such. A. Bunch. Of. Crap.  What’s sadder, is that it isn’t just the NY Times, but fellow well respected bloggers that are writing such thoughtless dribble now too.  I guess they have nothing else to write about since the State Of The California has never looked so dismal.  

But the truth is i can only hope many people will read these articles, and unsubscribe.  This is happening of course, since people just cannot afford to purchase the required number of cases they need to.  So subscriptions have stopped and are easy to get, and lists that seemed impossible to get (like 10 year waiting lists) are now accepting people this week.  

Meaning: if you have any smarts, GET INTO THE TOP LISTS NOW!  Now is the time to do it.  The wineries will NOT forget this.  Want some Harlan?  Go get some more allocations!  Want some Screaming Eagle?  Maybach?  Go get some more of it!  If you seriously think that the temporary state of the economy will kill these cult cabs, you are dead wrong.  Are they tough to sell right now for the wineries?  Yes.  But not for long.  And when the business bounces back, where will you be?  In what position will you be in?  Hopefully in a better position than you were in ‘07/’08 before this mess started.

I know i’ve been kinda harsh on Parker and his tweets, but in order to cover the news of the world of wine, you gotta cover Parker.  And following Robert Parker’s tweets, is the closest you will get to listening to the thoughts of the real guy himself.  So yes, it is terribly important what the most influential wine critic says, or tweets.  

My problem here is that i guess i come from a very old school, where people keep their politics out of their profession.  It’s just the way i am.  As a subscriber to the Wine Advocate, i don’t really care what he has to say about politics.  I don’t feel he should get involved.  He has more to lose by getting involved, and his “bully pulpit” isn’t welcomed in this arena.  He isn’t an expert.  He shouldn’t stick his nose in anything that doesn’t have a bouquet.  That’s my opinion.  And although i’ve felt the need to certainly do the same thing here on my little bully pulpit, with my own political opinions, i think a pro in whatever he/she may be in, should stick to being a pro in that field.  That’s it.  Robert Parker is a pro when it comes to wine.  Other than that……  although i might or might not agree with him…..   stick to wine Bob.

The world’s biggest charity wine auction raised $8M this past weekend, marking a clear bounce-back of last year’s disappointing $5M total.  This is fantastic news as 2010 is ushering in a wave of high-totals for every major auction so far.  

Francis Rooney, Chairman of the Naples Winter Wine Festival, said “ ”People feel really good about the generosity that was expressed, that we haven’t let the recession stop us from helping children that need our help. The kids need all the money we can raise, and they need it now more than they ever would have.” 

The beneficiary for the Naples Winter Wine Auction is and always has been The Naples Children and Education Foundation.