Originally published on May 8, 2009
For those of you that read this blog that don’t subscribe to the newsletter (could such people really exist?) I wanted to let you in on our La Lagune offer.
Mention this blog, and you’ll get 10% off any purchase of Chateau La Lagune 1998, even if it’s just 1 bottle. Buy an entire case and you’ll get 15% off (we generally offer only 10%)….if you mention this blog, or the newsletter, or the twitter feed. That sounds so infomercial-ish, but what can we say…there are so many ways to make an offer that involves a certain amount of dollars off a purchase. At least we’re not hauling in a bunch of fading pop stars for “before and after” pictures (hello Proactive!)
Now usually when I see these sorts of offers, I always wonder how many cases a retailer is sitting on. In this case, we have three cases. I thought this was all that was left in New York, period. Then yesterday, my distributor rep lets me know she’s found another 3 cases. So in total, there are 6 cases left in the New York City area which really isn’t much for a city of 8 million people.
Onto the wine on offer – Chateau La Lagune 1998 (Haut-Medoc, Bordeaux, France): It’s not inexpensive, but for a classified growth with some age on it, it’s a great value at regular price = $52.99. It may not be one of the biggest names of Bordeaux, and it may not drive master-Bordeaux critic Robert Parker wild with point-slinging desire, but among certain Bordeaux fans, La Lagune is considered to consistently play above its third growth station. (For those who are wondering what these “growths” are, check out this summary by the Wine Doctor.)
One of our sales reps introduced us to this particular vintage before heading off to Scotland to open a fancy hotel. He had tasted through all the older stock the distributor had squirreled away and told us this one was worth a purchase. We tasted it and agreed and have slowly been draining the distributor’s stock down to zero, or more specifically, draining it down to the 3 cases my new rep just dug up.
At 11 years of age, the wine still has wonderfully ripe, pure red fruit as well as the cedary, tobacco notes so typical of aged Bordeaux. It has a really lovely, silky, almost creamy texture, which combined with the lovely fruit and almost exotic spice notes, make this wine a great example of an elegant, old-school Bordeaux. Drinking beautifully right now, it doesn’t have the structure to go on forever, but you could probably eek another 5 years out of it. Maybe 10 if you like a really developed wine style. If you ‘ve ever wanted to buy a few bottles of something and see how it ages, this is a great one for that.
Intrigued? Like I wrote above, come into the store and mention this post and you’ll get your discount. I’ll go even more high tech….order on-line, mention this blog in the comments section at check out, and we’ll credit your final amount with the 10% (or 15% if you get 12 bottles) discount.