Jump to content

Deidre Costello

participating member
  • Posts

    82
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  1. So I kept putting off posting until I heard more of Jonathan’s shopping trip…then I started to hear rumblings 20,000 25,000 30,000 cases purchased on the latest trip only to find out that it was actually 40,000 of delicious juice coming our way …I know it is pretty slim pickings out there right now but some pretty good things will start to come in the next two weeks all the way up to Mid-April. I wanted to wait to post until I had a change to see and taste some of the upcoming Chairman’s Selections so here goes with the best of the bunch quick notes: Beringer 1995 Reserve, drinking beautifully right now, rating wise, the ‘97’s scored higher by the experts but if I had to pick one of the 4 vintages coming in I would go with the ‘95’s (The Chairman purchased the ’95, ’96, ’97 and ’99 vintage). Although all of the Beringers showed well I thought the ’96 and ’99 had more vegetable eucalyptus flavors than I tend to like. The 2001 vintage of the Cinq Cepages (we previously had the ’00 as a C.S.) Really like this I wasn’t too crazy about the 2000 but the ’01 was very pretty. The St. Supery Cabernet ’01 is my top undervalued wine @$13. I would stock up on this. Good structure good fruit very nice. Flora Springs Poggio Del Papa ’03 ( a super-tuscan style blend) Very nice especially at $18 well balanced and structured. Vasse Felix Shiraz ’03 Big fruit wine delicious beautiful nose jammy raspberry and jammy black raspberry I know I wrote jammy twice but if you never tasted jammed fruit in wine this might be the perfect inexpensive example at $12 The Sanford Chardonnay ’03 at $12 is a real bargain very nice great structured Chard lemon and clean finish. Freemark Abbey Viognier a very nice round honeysuckle and stone fruit wine. Cheers, -Deidre
  2. Here’s a surprise, I had a few Chairman’s Selections over the Holiday weekend. I didn’t write notes so these are from memory. I loved the Byron Syrah Upper Bench 2002 deep purple color, rich full-bodied good fruit, long finish…very good! Enjoyed the Lake Sonoma Cabernet Sauvignon ’01 (Although I think I liked the Lake Sonoma Zinfandel better) Good fruit easy to drink medium finish. Rizzi Barbaresco ’00 Purchased this around Thanksgiving (looks like it’s still available) Nice red. Red cherry fruit / nice balance not too heavy I was going to say a nice afternoon red but didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. The Henri Abele non-vintage I might have to buy some more this had a good toasty and apple flavors crisp nice finish. By the way if anyone is interested the free shipping ends Dec.31st for pawineandspirits.com To all my e-gullet friends a very happy and prosperous NEW YEAR shared with good wine and good friends! -Deidre
  3. Is the PLCB able to get/order any of the fabulous wines from Lewis Vineyards in Napa? Their 2002 Cab Reserve is incredible. ←
  4. I can’t believe that a month has gone by since my last post…Tis the Season I guess! I remember when I worked in our retail stores that the week before Thanksgiving to New Years Eve was so busy that you barely had a chance to catch your breath…and I thought I left that behind. Glad to see the Chairman had a chance to stop in and post in my absence! Just thought that I would pipe in about three Chairman Selections I had Sunday evening. Toasted Head Chardonnay RRV $11 Pear and apple on the nose and are carried through to the palate then it grows into a big round lush chard. The finish is outstanding… The Byron Nielson Chardonnay $10 Tropical fruits and oak on the nose, round tropical flavors on the palate good finish I was really impressed with the Lake Sonoma Zinfandel Dry Creek $13 worth getting a few more bottles, red raspberry fruit on the nose on the palate the red fruit flavors come through with Nibs red licorice flavor, the fruit to acids are well balanced, the tannins silky. -Deidre PS…For all my Delco friends just in time for Christmas, Media is set to open next Sunday the Dec. 18th with parking! Since I haven’t had a specialty store near me I do most of my purchases on-line especially with the free shipping offer…now I already planned out my Sunday shopping schedule, stop for wine, hit Trader Joes, finish up with the regular grocery store…I can bet the family will be wondering where the heck I am all day. Oh and one more thing, the updated ETA information on the Inniskillen Riesling icewine is that it should be in the week of Dec. 21st. It is very limited only 200 cases were ordered.
  5. Deidre... you posted this just last week. I have been checking the inventories online at least once a week. Last week I know the 94 Burgess was not showing up anywhere, and was still on the "Upcoming Chairmans Selections" list. Today I see it's no longer on the Upcoming list, and it's also not in inventory (Product Catalog Search results in nothing.) Should I conclude that this item came in less than six days ago and was subsequently all sold out? I'm beginning to wonder if the Chairman's Selection program is intentionally engaging in a bit of excitement marketing, creating hype around sparse shipments and limited quantities. You know, people want iPods more when there aren't any available... I like wine, but it's a bit absurd that soley because of the design of the program, we have to hover around discussion boards like this one (not that there aren't lots of other great reasons to be here...) and constantly check the PLCB site for Chairman's Selection items and stock levels at stores in the area. Instead why not just offer online pre-ordering via pawineandspirits.com? Wouldn't it make more sense to send the wine where it's already sold, then to make guesses about how much each store will sell, ship to them, and then wait and see? This is 2005, not 1950. I order everything online, and backorder things that aren't currently in stock, etc. etc etc. It's not rocket science, and the state does have a monopoly and a big fat revenue stream with which to implement information technology. ← I was out of the office for a few days and just getting around to catching up on this thread…Let me see if I can sum up the gist of what’s been said and see if I can shed some light on the subject at hand. Let’s start with the Burgess Library 94 it hasn’t hit any stores yet…someone jumped the gun and removed it from the upcoming chairman’s selection list prior to arriving in the stores. I’ve been working with our web services team to update the way we produce the list of products that will hopefully eliminate the problem that occurred. Our web services team started with the products that are currently available in stores. This updated page will hopefully roll out later today, once 10 cases hit in any store or combination of stores the item will display in the currently available. They have started working on the upcoming page so that they will source information from different programs instead of people. This automation will eliminate as much as possible the human error factor such what occurred with the Burgess. I am as you say “just technologically incompetent” I resemble that remark in that I can come up with ideas that I know how I want them to work, I let our IT figure out how to get it to work then I leave the ‘code writing’ to the IT people…I know my limitations and it is definitely not programming!!! Anyway back to the subjects that were brought up in my absence, inventories are updated daily on the LCB site so these are accurate as of the start of the day. The Pawineandspirits.com site is updated every 15 minutes. The Pawineandspirits.com site, which by the way is offering FREE shipping from now through Dec 31’st., doesn’t allow for preordering. (Hint our fulfillment center gets shipments on Friday’s that is the best time to check out the site to see what is available or what's new to the site.) I agree that pre ordering would be nice however, to create a pre ordering function on Pawineandspirits.com would require major rewrite of the software or as my IT people put it “the code”. The on-line store is one of the top sellers of the Chairman’s Selection, I have said numerous times allocations are based on sales. We get a large allocation of these wines based on previous sales this also gives us the advantage to offer these selections to areas that don’t have a specialty store near them. I do have to agree with several other posters above that the Chairman’s Program offers the chance to try wines that I never would have tried especially at the original price. Do I agree and like all of the selections? No! Am I upset if I paid $20 instead of $60 and loved the wine based on my taste and palate? No! Everyone has a different palate and if nothing else the Chairman’s program allows people the opportunity to discuss what they like or don’t like in a particular wine. By the way anyone try the Rizzi Barbera yet??? Regards, Deidre
  6. Hello Doing what I do best (snooping) I wanted to touch base concerning the postings above about some of the Chairman’s Selections. Keep in mind that not all stores in a region get deliveries on the same day. For the Futuro of the 1000 cases that were ordered over 500 were going to the Phila region stores. Only the stores that received a shipment on Friday received half of their allocations. The remainder should be coming in soon to all the premium collection stores shortly hopefully this week. As for the Latours’ only 300 cases were ordered of the Chassagne Montrachet and 300 of the Meursault the Phila region getting 152 cases of each of these. The remaining 148 cases of both of these went to the central and western part of the state. Both of these products hit the Phila region first…the other parts of the state are still waiting for their deliveries. Just on these three examples you can see that the Phila region gets half of all the Chairman’s Selections with the remainder going to the rest of the state. The distribution of the Chairman’s Selections is based strictly on past sales. As a point of reference Ardmore, Bryn Mawr and the Waterworks (in Pittsburgh) sell the most Chairman’s selections in the state so they get the most of any allocation. This time of the year because of building up of inventory for the Holidays it is so hard to predict what areas of the state. As I said earlier poor customer service gives all of us that try to enhance the LCB a bad name. Here is a number to report poor service 1-800-332-7522 option 3 or you can send an e-mail under contact us sections of the web sites, the web master will forward the information to our store operation bureau to handle each complaint. As always I hope this is helpful. Deidre
  7. I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for making this evening so enjoyable! Greg and Ross and staff deserve ALL the credit for such an outstanding evening. I think that we can all agree that when Jonathan speaks you can’t help but get excited about the Chairman’s Selection program and all the innovations that have gone on in the past few years! It’s exciting times working at the Liquor Board!!! Keep in mind that when I started we weren’t even permitted to recommend a wine to go with a meal. We could only say “What are you serving?” When we got an answer of say Chicken we could only direct you by saying: “Our white wines are over here”. Nowhere in my wildest dreams would I have thought that I would be able to break bread with all of you, the Chairman too and talk wine. How’s that for a Hat Trick? Now that we got our first BYO Chairman’s tasting behind us, I thought I would wet your appetite with some upcoming Chairman’s Selections. Not that I want to make anyone jealous but yesterday I had the chance to taste an incredible lineup of Chairman Selections. Way too many to list all right now but here is a few that I really, really enjoyed! Of course I will start off with the Burgess 1994 Cabernet…Beautiful fruit on the nose soft silky tannins. I think I liked this even more that the 1993! $19 Rizzi Barbaresco 2000is round and mouth filling, cherry raspberry flavors with a nice hint of spice. $15 Arrowood Saralee Syrah 2001big another mouth-filling wine, black licorice, cassis and pepper $18 Chateau Lascombes 2003 Unbelievable coffer bean aroma I immediately thought that I would love this wine with a piece of something chocolate that that was before I even tasted it. Black cherries coffee cocoa…delicious $44 I might be buying this as a Christmas gift (for myself) I’ll post some more notes in the weeks ahead but just wanted to wet your whistle…Deidre
  8. Hello all, I've been so busy lately that I feel like I've neglected you. Thought I would let you know about this wine alert!! I happened to notice that an incredible Chairman's Selection appeared on pawineandspirits.com on Friday, so if it is not in your stores this week it should be there next week for sure. The IL Colombaio di Cencio Il Futuro is an unbelievable deal for $18 I used this in our wine club a few month's back and thought I negotiated great deal to get this wine at $50. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that the Chairman's Price...believe me when I say that it takes a lot to floor me. This price floored me! Quoted at $85 Selling for $18... Let me know what you think on this deal. I pulled my wine club notes to tell you a little about this baby: "Because of this wine youth we decanted this wine about two hours before tasting, even then the wine seemed a little tight but opened up nicely as the tasting went on. Made with Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot. The wine has a deep purple color, big tannins, good dark fruits with spice and licorice beautiful finish and a delightful wine." I wanted to mention that the Rx dinner for Tuesday night is almost sold out! Don't wait if you are interested in joining in on the fun. Evan posted the information earlier (by the way Evan you set a record posting the e-mail you received I think you posted the information within minutes ) I'll just repeat the phone number to call: 215-222-9590 Deidre
  9. Brad, what you describe is a nightmare no two ways about it! Special Liquor Orders sometimes do have problems in that the specific wine that people may want is not already represented in Pennsylvania as was the case with the product you wanted, Henry V. From what I understand, originally the vendor Jeff Hummer from Laird Distributors said that this product was only available at the winery. I believe it took pressure from 'Jane' calling the winery to have the product quoted through Jeff @Laird. (By the way as a side note here, when Jeff told you that the PLCB listings were often wrong I'm sure he neglected to mention that 90 percent of the products listed in SLO are entered and maintained by the vendor selling the product) In some cases, wineries are already represented in Pennsylvania by local distributors, when that is the case we have to go through the distributor to quote the product (sometimes that is not the easiest thing to do in that it could take weeks to get back to us.) Once the distributor quotes the products they wait until an order is placed before they turn around to place an order. In many cases an actual order is never placed, since you are in no obligation to purchase anything by simply asking for a price quote. It does not make financial sense for the vendor to carry everything they represent in stock. After the vendor receives an order either they have it in stock which they ship right away as I assume what happened with Philadining’s order. In the case, where the vendor doesn’t stock the item they then have to ‘special order’ the product themselves to get in stock which causes delays in the whole ordering process. The thing to keep in mind when placing SLO merchandise is that the merchandise is not the PLCB's it belongs to private distributors to do and sell it as they wish. The fact is that the major percent of SLO transactions occur without ever having a problem! -Deidre
  10. My apologizes to Jeff for not being able to attend the 2nd round tasting, I hope everyone enjoyed themselves. It looks like new selection of Chairman’s wines are slated for mid-October / November so that there will be a supply to get through the holiday season. Mr. Newman could probably chime in here if my recollection is incorrect, I believe that at one of his seminars for employees he said one of the reasons the you see influxes of Chairman’s products in November, March, and July is that the wineries are willing to make deals at that time. If you think about the winery cycle the harvest is complete in October so all the new products have to be stored in barrels or bottles. To make room for the new juice the products in bottles have to be moved if they want to move it quickly they may consider Pennsylvania as a way to move it since they only need to ‘sell’ it once, so more selections appear in our stores in late Oct early Nov. In early March the deals come from wineries trying to boost their post holiday sales. When the products hit the shelves in July / early August, wineries have moved products before the close of their fiscal year so that their bottom line looks good. All in all, it is a win, win, win situation. Wineries are winning because they get a boost in operating capital, we win because we are moving products quickly and you are winning because the deals are being made on good wine! There is definitely an ebb and flow to how many wines are in the stores but you should start to see more selections coming in during the next several weeks, when the cycle continues...As always hope this helps. Deidre
  11. I want to start by saying thank you to Evan for hosting our first OL Chairman Selection tasting. Evan you were a wonderful host and the backyard setting was perfect! This was a potluck appetizer event, where I should have been more observant and notated who provided which appetizer. Since it was my first OL I was busy trying to put user names, to real names, to faces, so my apologies for not taking those particular notes however, compliments are in order to all the delicious items that made up the spread! I volunteered to write down my tasting notes, I’m sure others will soon post their thoughts. We did have a few ‘non’ chairman selection wines and I will note those wines as SLO (special liquor order). The wines are listed in order of our tasting these wines. Lurton Bodega Pinot Gris ‘04 (SLO #59933 $9.99) Perfect first wine, pretty floral, peach and apricot nose the flavors continue to the palate where the flavors are round and mouth filling finishes clean Montes Alpha Chardonnay ’04 $10.99 California style, nice buttery component on the nose (from malolactic fermentation). Rich mouth coating tropical flavors. Well integrated oak ,nice balance well made a bargain at $11 Byron Nielson Vineyard Chardonnay ’01 $12.99 More fruit on the nose, crisper (non-malolactic fermentation) Tropical fruits on the palate clean crisp long lingering finish. Leganza Crianza 1999 (SLO #60252 $11.19) Lots of cherry flavors on both the nose and on the palate. On the palate oak mixes with the cherry flavors nicely, drying tannins. Morlanda Crianza 2001 $29.99 Nose has beautiful cherry plum aromas, on the palate the plum and cherry flavors are carried through to the dry finish, chalky tannins. Arrowood Le Beau Melange Syrah 01 $17.99 Big in your face fruit flavors of black cherry, black raspberry, plum on the palate big wine flavors and black fruits with chewy tannins some spice and licorice long finish. Lancaster Red ’01 $19.99 Bordeaux style refined red very elegant everything is refined especially after the syrah. Fruits are black cherry and red fruits well structured soft tannins. Very pretty soft Bordeaux blend. Mariah Zinfandel 00 $14.99 Cherry, blackberry and pepper nose on the palate the flavors are carried through with lots of fruit and spice. Soft tannins Kracher Cuvee Auslese 2003 (Specialty item special treat #11413) #18.99 (available in some specialy stores) Honeysuckle and candied citrus on the nose on the palate the taste of honey fruit well balanced was a perfect complement to the pound cake. I was a real treat to meet everyone that attended and to put a face on the user name. Again Evan, Thank you for a wonderful evening. -Deidre
  12. maybe she did! i tend to... well, i forget things. ← Basically, when you see two different prices 9 times out of 10 the price in our stores will be cheaper than a Special Liquor Order (SLO). Merchandise is being purchased in bulk in many cases direct for our specialty stores whereas, SLO merchandise is purchased in smaller amounts from a vendor or distributor - adding a layer of cost to the bottle. -Deidre
  13. I think when it was decided that there was no reason not to display inventories, the easiest, fastest way to do this was to publish our internal product look-up. (The inventories displaying along with the product lookup only happened within the past year.) I know that this was a ‘patch’ if you will, until they could improve the product look-up as a whole. Perhaps, our web services development team could implement the store lookup from the e-commerce site into the product lookup on the informational site. (Our e-commerce store lookup allows for a search of the surrounding zip codes already.) Until the are ready to roll out an improved search. -Deidre
  14. Hello, the information on upcoming grand openings can be found on our informational web site under FYI on the right hand side. here. I didn’t want to link the page specifically as it may change when new information is added. The Quakertown grand opening is Thursday, August 11, 5:30 p.m. -- Calvin Sidhu, proprietor of Byron Winery, will host a tasting to celebrate the grand opening of the PLCB's new Premium Collection Store at 1465 W. Broad St., Quakertown. Another grand opening that you might be interested in is the grand opening of Delaware County’s first Super Store in Springfield. Wednesday, August 17, 5:30 p.m. -- Margo Van Staaveren, winemaker for Chateau St. Jean, will host a tasting to celebrate the grand opening of the PLCB's new Premium Collection Store at 149 Baltimore Pike, Springfield. Also I hear Media in Delaware County is planning on opening in Oct./Nov. will be near the Trader Joes I’ll keep you posted. Deidre
×
×
  • Create New...