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In France they don't say "don't judge a book by its cover". They say "l'habit ne fait pas le moine".
The robe doesn't make him holy.
Consider this...
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People will wait YEARS for the PERMISSION to buy a wine.
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Not for the wine. For the permission. The access. The invitation.
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You sign up. You wait through a harvest, then another one. One of my friends has been on the Cayuse list for nearly a decade with no permission...
Eventually an email arrives telling you which bottles you may buy and how many. Take your full amount and maybe next year you move up. Skip a year and you move down, or off.
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The industry has a word for this. Allocation.
It sounds like a gift. It works like a permission slip.
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And what's at the end of it? The chance to spend hundreds of dollars on a bottle with heavy glass, a big-shot winemaker, and a big score.
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Here I'll give ground, because I mean it. The wines are almost always great.
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Heavy glass feels good in the hand. Plenty of those winemakers are genuinely great. Bobby trained under one of them. And I like a good score. Who doesn't like flexing they brought a 99-point wine to dinner?
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None of that is the part I object to.
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What I object to is the waiting room. The tier. The letter that decides whether you're the sort of person who gets to drink this. That's the game many of don't want any part of. Or simply can't participate in.
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Because strip away the label and what's left is what was always there.
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We buy from some of these same producers. Same vineyard, same hands, different label, for a fraction of what the front label costs — often less than you'd pay in tax on the status bottle.
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Only we don't give you permission to buy the wine. We earn it.
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Our goal here was simply to open that door to everybody. Lower the bar.
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Wine was never supposed to require permission.
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We never asked for yours.
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Every release we have out right now is there for anyone to buy, and there's nobody to ask. See what's open →
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