wkl

"Gregg, where is that unfortunate link? I can't seem to locate it. " fg- you know it's funny, i saw this soup and sammies link on epicurious when i was looking around for a recipie. alittle later i saw this thread (maybe 10/15 minutes later). went back to epicurious to see it again, and it was gone. vanished. coincidence? i think not!

jim- do you source all your wines in florida and north carolina? you seem to have an amazing diversity of wines. i get to carolina a few times a year, but rarely see the wines you post about. does florida have that type of selection?

i wonder what would happen if you stopped just before the pa border ,approached a state trooper, and insisted on paying the tax due on your ill gotten goods. would they have a procedure for this? or just slap the cuffs on you and haul you away? or what if you offered the trooper a bottle of ridge monte bello cab? you know, to kinda grease the skids, so to speak

does anyone know the actual law about bring liqour across teh pa border? what if the wine is a gift? is there a bottle limit kind of like the limit at us customs at airports?

isn't the alcohol content on the label?

my bad, it was actually a letter. voila....... "Thank you for contacting the PLCB and for your interest in the chairman's selection program. The "chairman's selection" cuvee from Whitehall Lane is in fact the exact same wine as their estate bottling which normally sells for $45. There are two reasons we have a special labeling on the wine. The first reason is that the chairman picked out specific barrels from the 2005 vintage and chose them for his selection based on taste profile. He also chose to give his cuvee less oak aging to highlight the beautiful fruit of the 2005 vintage. The second reason is the winery did not want to upset surrounding markets by selling their cabernet to us for such a significant discount. To protect their brand equity they requested we create a specific label for the wine we were purchasing. We gladly agreed with the understanding that we would still be marketing it as their estate bottling, which is not misleading since the wine is in fact all from their estate. I hope this clears up any confusion. The combination of the very large 2005 vintage and the chairman harnessing the purchasing power of over 600 stores has enabled us to bring these incredible deals to the Commonwealth. Please take a look at the entire list of upcoming selections to see the amazing selection we have coming for the holidays." if you can't see how this is misleading, we will just have to agree to disagree. as to not taking the retail prices the plcb quotes seriously, in some business qouting a price that is not factual is illegal.

you guys both realize there is an email from the lcb that states in no uncertain terms that this was in fact the same wine as whitehall lanes premiuim offering? i am hardly a jackal, and i believe my brainpan is in the right place, so sorry the facts ruffle your feathers to the point of insulting others.

"Everyone knows that wineries produce different bottlings every year." different vintages, yes. different wines? do you have specific examples of this? the wineries i buy from rarely have a different or new wine every year.

this wine was only available in the pa market. to my knowledge, this blend had never before existed. to say it was a $45 bottle of wine selling for $15 is incredibly misleading. $45 is what whitehall lanes higher end stuff goes for. their higher end cab and merlot was no doubt still in barrel when this was released. some had the impression it was the same wine because of the quoted retail price. apparantly, previous poster dennis thought this and so did alot of others. just because it says chairmans selection doesn't mean it is a different wine or blend. aren't many chairman's selections just wines bought at good prices, not wines the chairman "blended"? matter of fact, aren't just about all of them? and yes, people take the retail prices seriously, that's the whole point of the chairmans selection program, the precieved savings the consumer is getting.

"If you must have cutting edge food to make you happy, take a vacation where you will find it. If you have cutting edge food in your neighborhood, maybe even that will make you jaded." i don't think this discussion is about cutting edge food in philadelphia. chicago, for whatever reason, seems to have that market cornored. philadelphia really doesn't have "cutting edge food" like alinea, moto, etc. and i don't think we are lamenting that either.

wow. keep that dude away from any bridges...........

Mr Newman is a poster here and has been lurking around recently. Maybe he can shed some light on this.

thanks dennis, that is an interesting email. cleary not a $40 something bottle of wine.

hey v- is the liqour license thing and the preponderence of byo's in the city keeping talent from coming to philly? what's the "word on the street" ps: i'm not dissing byo's, i love them too, but really wonder what type of impact they have.

sorry, i'm a little clueless sometimes, okay alot of times, but what the heck is a "kitchen-sink libertarian"? also, are you sure byo's would go away if the plcb went away? lots of cities have them and have a privatized liqour distribution sytems in place. chicago comes to mind.

not sure philly is on a par with san francisco or chicago. certainly, not far behind, but i'd give the nod to either if i had to rank the three. "Maybe it's that characteristic Philadelphian reluctance to toot one's horn too loudly? " sandy, you obviously don't hang with many eagles fans!

i think philly has done just fine also. but to take the article's point a bit further, where do you go for really "fine" dining in the city? what is philadelphia's shining star, so to speak? nyc has per se, adny, jean georges,etc. chicago, san fran, have their nationally recognized places. what's philadelphia's? have there been any new entrants in the fine dining scene? i know there is le bec, lacroix, but do these compete on a nat'l level?

we've kinda been down this road before with a couple threads last year i believe. to rehash an old, but interesting argument, is the byob culture holding philly back from getting out the rut ms white refers to? don't chefs need the income from liqour sales to be successful enough to try new ventures? if your a talented young chef just out of the cia, or ready to open your own place, for example, do you come to philly? or do you go somewhere where you can get a liqour license at a reasonable cost and sell wine/beer/liqour to help the bottom line? i honestly don't know the answer to this. vadouvan? chef lean?

i ate at tiboldi about two months ago. it's beautifal place and the food is really good. probably not on antines level, though.

"Delaware, as we all know, has no sales tax." this is true. which leads to another point.... i don't quite get the pa gov't argument about lost tax revenue if the system went private, wouldn't the flood tax still be in the price and the sales tax at the register? how would there be lost tax revenue?

the whitehall lane cab was NOT the normal bottling. this was really not made clear and how they came up with a retail price for a wine that was not available to the normal market is pretty misleading. basing the price on the regular whl cab was misleading at best. the criticism for this selection was completely vaild.

it may well be that fine dining establishments in nyc don't routinely enforce the drinking age, but if they choose to, you can't be shocked and disturbed about it and then reflect your dismay in the waiters tip. dude is just doing his job. and where do they draw the line? if your 20 it's okay, but if your 17,no wine for you?

but, my point is you don't have to have "chairman's selections" to become a serious wine outlet. moore brothers is a good local example. they rarely, if ever, discount their wines. they have two sales a year, when the wines are discounted a whopping 10%. It is an extremely successful business. for the plcb to be taken seriously by knowledgable wine consumers, they must have better trained sales people, a commitment to temperature control of the wines, a strong selection of german reisling, a futures program for burgundy and bordeaux (i stand corrected if they offer this, i'm not aware of it). consistent offerings of inexpensive wines from the rhone, langeudoc, rousillon, beaujolais, loire valley, northern and southern italy, etc. if they just compete on price for wines that are not hard to find, like beringer for example, they will continue to miss out on alot of sales from big purchasers of burgundy, bordeaux, barolo, etc. this type of wine consumer buys ALOT of wine and generally is not concerned with price. they are more concerned with service, and getting the product in good shape. (ie, temp control from the source all the way through the distribution channel). they also must do something about the silly johnstown flood tax. i read that it is something like 15%?!? is that true? plus a 6% state tax! so every bottle of wine in pennsylvania has almost 20% tax built into the final price? that's absurd.

"Were the PLCB's buying power used the same way Wal-Mart uses its buying power -- which has now happened in the arena of fine wines -- Pennsylvanians would benefit every bit as much as they would from a competitive free-market regime." That may be true strictly on price, but that really is only going to work with large producers of wine and spirits. Smaller, well made wines, that are priced very reasonably btw, are not going to show up in your market place strictly through buying power. I just don't think a gov't run enterprise will ever truly capture the passionate wine enthusist. Someone who is truly passinate about wine and buys alot of it, doesn't have price as a main criteria for many of their purchases. The other thing state control of liquor/wine does is prohibit a citizen from going into the business for themselves. If you are a Pa citizen and love wine enough to open your own shop, you have to leave the state to do it. How is that good?

to make an issue of tax revenue being returned is a little bit of spin don't you think? wouldn't the tax revenue be there wether the sytem was state controlled or private?