{"id":35467,"date":"2023-07-06T15:25:51","date_gmt":"2023-07-06T14:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/?p=35467"},"modified":"2023-07-06T21:27:00","modified_gmt":"2023-07-06T20:27:00","slug":"the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Emperor’s New Clothes – and a humbler offer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neal Martin’s latest article<\/a> on the Vinous website is timely and, in a most measured and reasonable way, lays out how an apparently well-motivated individual is capable of making all the right noises about quality of wine and how to achieve it, so that the back story sounds plausible, while marketing it entirely on price. Not a low price to beat all, but a price so high that the only people who could possibly find a reason to buy it would be anyone who wants to be seen to be drinking the most expensive wine in the world<\/p>\n

In the article Neal says he does not want to pull his punches, but then does to some degree, as in my view this is taking this kind of inverse marketing into the realms of the plain silly. To be fair he had been to a dinner at Annabel’s to taste the wine, so perhaps felt that a reasonable tone was polite. He also says he will answer the question as to whether any bottle of fermented grape juice can be worth \u00a335000, but then doesn’t – or not in plain terms. The wine is called Liber Pater<\/strong> and my answer is a clear no<\/strong>. And I have not even tasted it.<\/p>\n

Rather more interesting is one of the wines that Neal compares it to, Stephane Dief’s Clos Manou<\/strong>, and more specifically the ‘Cuvee 1850<\/strong>‘ which is made from his ancient ‘franc de pied<\/em>‘ (ungrafted) vines which date from 1850. Lea & Sandeman en primeur<\/em> buyers will be aware that we have been championing Stephane’s wines since 2006\u00a0 – you will find a number of articles about them in the blog<\/a> including a photo of St\u00e9phane posing with one of his ancient vines (copied again below) which is mirrored by the illustration from Neal’s article, where the only change is that St\u00e9phane and the vines are ten years older.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As I write (first come first served) we have ten (it’s super-rare!)\u00a04 bottle<\/strong> cases of the Cuv\u00e9e 1850<\/strong><\/a> available at \u00a3225 per case in bond (en primeur)<\/em>,<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

and you can still buy the regular cuv\u00e9e of Clos Manou 2022<\/a><\/strong> from us for a mere \u00a3114 per six bottles in bond. Or you can buy some other vintages from the shops or online, where we have some halves of the 2019<\/a>. And just arrived from bond, one double-magnum of the 2019! This is the kind of value L&S stands for.<\/p>\n

With the price of fine wine rising at astonishing rates in the classic regions – and in some less classic ones – Liber Pater’s price is the reductio ad absurdum<\/em> of a pricing policy in which ‘collectors’ seem to value wine by the price asked for it by the producer rather than the value it achieves in the open market over time. Sadly it’s far from the only one in this field of shame. Quality is irrelevant in this world of ‘brands’ jockeying for a higher price than their peers.<\/p>\n

The product of a farm, of vines and the earth and of an artisan who translates it, are reduced to the banality of crypto currency by the Liber Pater style of marketing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neal Martin’s latest article on the Vinous website is timely and, in a most measured and reasonable way, lays out how an apparently well-motivated individual is capable of making all the right noises about quality of wine and how to achieve it, so that the back story sounds plausible, while marketing it entirely on price. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1490,789,370,816],"class_list":["post-35467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ls-post","tag-2022-bordeaux-en-primeur","tag-bordeaux","tag-clos-manou","tag-neal-martin"],"contentshake_article_id":"","yoast_head":"\nThe Emperor's New Clothes - and a humbler offer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Neal Martin's latest article on the Vinous website is timely and, in a most measured and reasonable way, lays out how an apparently well-motivated\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Emperor's New Clothes - and a humbler offer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Neal Martin's latest article on the Vinous website is timely and, in a most measured and reasonable way, lays out how an apparently well-motivated\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lea & Sandeman Wine Merchants | Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/LeaandSandeman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-07-06T14:25:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-07-06T20:27:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blog-2207a.kxcdn.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Clos-Manou-Stephane-Dief-Old-vines-600.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Charles Lea\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@leaandsandeman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@leaandsandeman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Charles Lea\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Emperor's New Clothes - and a humbler offer","description":"Neal Martin's latest article on the Vinous website is timely and, in a most measured and reasonable way, lays out how an apparently well-motivated","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/","og_locale":"en_GB","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Emperor's New Clothes - and a humbler offer","og_description":"Neal Martin's latest article on the Vinous website is timely and, in a most measured and reasonable way, lays out how an apparently well-motivated","og_url":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/","og_site_name":"Lea & Sandeman Wine Merchants | Blog","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/LeaandSandeman","article_published_time":"2023-07-06T14:25:51+00:00","article_modified_time":"2023-07-06T20:27:00+00:00","og_image":[{"width":600,"height":600,"url":"https:\/\/blog-2207a.kxcdn.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Clos-Manou-Stephane-Dief-Old-vines-600.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Charles Lea","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@leaandsandeman","twitter_site":"@leaandsandeman","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Charles Lea","Estimated reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":["Article","BlogPosting"],"@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/"},"author":{"name":"Charles Lea","@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/5795d57b80ae899af5dc0d4b5699c116"},"headline":"The Emperor’s New Clothes – and a humbler offer","datePublished":"2023-07-06T14:25:51+00:00","dateModified":"2023-07-06T20:27:00+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/"},"wordCount":534,"commentCount":2,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/blog-2207a.kxcdn.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Clos-Manou-Stephane-Dief-Old-vines-600.png?format=webp&quality=95&bg=ffffff","keywords":["2022 Bordeaux En Primeur","Bordeaux","Clos Manou","Neal Martin"],"articleSection":["L&S Post"],"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/","url":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/","name":"The Emperor's New Clothes - and a humbler offer","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/blog-2207a.kxcdn.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Clos-Manou-Stephane-Dief-Old-vines-600.png?format=webp&quality=95&bg=ffffff","datePublished":"2023-07-06T14:25:51+00:00","dateModified":"2023-07-06T20:27:00+00:00","description":"Neal Martin's latest article on the Vinous website is timely and, in a most measured and reasonable way, lays out how an apparently well-motivated","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/blog-2207a.kxcdn.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Clos-Manou-Stephane-Dief-Old-vines-600.png?format=webp&quality=95&bg=ffffff","contentUrl":"https:\/\/blog-2207a.kxcdn.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Clos-Manou-Stephane-Dief-Old-vines-600.png?format=webp&quality=95&bg=ffffff","width":600,"height":600,"caption":"Clos-Manou-Stephane-Dief-Old-vines-600"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/07\/the-emperors-new-clothes-and-a-humbler-offer\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Blog","item":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"L&S Post","item":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/category\/ls-post\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"The Emperor’s New Clothes – and a humbler offer"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/","name":"Lea & Sandeman Wine Merchants | Blog","description":"Award winning Independent Wine Merchants in London","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/#organization"},"alternateName":"L&S Wine Merchants","inLanguage":"en-GB"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/#organization","name":"Lea & Sandeman","url":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/blog-2207a.kxcdn.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Ampersand.jpg?format=webp&quality=95&bg=ffffff","contentUrl":"https:\/\/blog-2207a.kxcdn.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Ampersand.jpg?format=webp&quality=95&bg=ffffff","width":714,"height":714,"caption":"Lea & Sandeman"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/LeaandSandeman","https:\/\/x.com\/leaandsandeman","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/leaandsandeman","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/lea-&amp;-sandeman"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/5795d57b80ae899af5dc0d4b5699c116","name":"Charles Lea","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a57e2e36f98c4329d6133a68b61a36de6f71731d4f66c3c140fd5238b6a7fcf6?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a57e2e36f98c4329d6133a68b61a36de6f71731d4f66c3c140fd5238b6a7fcf6?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a57e2e36f98c4329d6133a68b61a36de6f71731d4f66c3c140fd5238b6a7fcf6?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Charles Lea"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk"],"url":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/author\/cal\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35467"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35495,"href":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35467\/revisions\/35495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leaandsandeman.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}