Hahn Estates Red Quartet

Guessed correctly…but alas DC doesn’t seem to be listed as a permissible state despite the Hahn website saying they do ship to DC.

Bat woot guys, the price isn’t good enough to get me to buy it. If the wines retailed at 65 or 75 I’d have bought them and broke them apart and sued them as gifts but these wines arent that good of wines, hell one of them is nearly a two buck chuck, selling for a mere $7 on average.

Arrrgh… methinks that me FIL’s penchant fer the Hahn libations that he be sharin’ wit me inflooence me a wee bit…

wait a minute, why am I posting in pirate-ese?

I’ve liked the Hahn Cabs that I’ve had at my inlaws in recent weeks. Will wait and see what the maker has to say… it may only take a nudge to topple me off the fence.

Talk like a pirate day is coming! September 19! see

http://www.talklikeapirate.com/

make it a 7 buck chuck

Gosh. Is it true? Our nation’s capital is off the list this week? No wine for me. A little forced frugality, I guess.

Oh, and the Jim Bakker reference went right over my head. Didn’t click at all until this morning. I guess I’m either too old or too young (well, forget the young part).

Still 95+ everyday here in Florida, unless it rains more like 90 with a lot of steam.

It still says $7 shipping for me…it is way to hot in Texas to leave something on the UPS truck all day, so leave it until October, please.

Meritage. I’ll have to be in somehow, but will wait until I’ve finished the bills.

Anyway, the sites:

Hahn Estates
Smith & Hook
Red Flyer

Red Flyer is Flash heavy.

iByron

Morning All,

Was out late last night and just woke up to my alarm so I could check out how everything is going, forgive me if I’m a bit groggy before my first coffee of the morning. My name’s Joshua Cairns and I run the direct sales for Hahn. Making sure the website doesn’t crash, getting the wine shipped out on internet orders, checking the wine institute website everyday to see if there is another state I can start shipping to, representing all the Hahn brands at shows and events, etc.

Adam Lazarre the winemaker is out and about today, but he’s told me to text him questions about the wine and he’ll be on later to converse. If you have read through his wine notes on the Hahn website you know he has a way with words and I’m looking forward to seeing where our conversations this week take us.

So, let me skim through the posts so far and see what I can see.

Alright, first my favorite topic in the whole world (when it’s not causing me to bang my head on my desk), compliance. Hahn definitely looks to play by the rules so currently that means DC and Arizona are no go for us. DC has a legal limit of one bottle per month (http://wi.shipcompliant.com/StateDetail.aspx?StateID=41) and we produce just a bit above 20,000 gallons so we are not able to get our hands on an AZ permit (http://wi.shipcompliant.com/StateDetail.aspx?StateID=31). As proven by some of the last Woot offerings, there are ways to ship wine into the states, but the compliance is cumbersome for the alternate routes and we haven’t gotten them in place yet. For Vermont the permit is one of the most expensive in the Union and we had not had enough direct business opportunities to justify the couple of grand it would cost us.

So that’s that. Sorry about the long paragraph but hopefully it’s somewhat fun to learn something about one of the most heavily regulated industries around (do I sound frustrated by dealing with it on a daily basis… nah).

I would have loved to include the Cab Franc but it’s pretty heavily allocated right now so the only ways to acquire it are finding it in your local store or being a club member and purchasing from the tasting room/website. Couldn’t kick loose enough to satisfy everyone.

Since Red Flyer is a Rhone style red table wine we went with the Rhone style name for added authenticity, or we thought it sounded better, or Adam likes to confuse everyone around him. Red Flyer is really a great wine for hot days on a porch when you are looking for something clean and bright to sip into the evening (personal experience). You’ll likely hear me say several times that Hahn’s goal is to over deliver the wine in the price point. We want to make wines people will drink and feel good about, not try once and think “that so wasn’t worth the price”.

Alright, what have I done here? This morning’s entertainment will include the guy who can’t remember how to correctly code html. Little help

It’s not directly html, here’s a guide

The last time I checked a few months ago, of the states that require a permit, Vermont looked to be among the CHEAPEST states for permitting ($300/year for permit + ~$2000 of ‘reporting’). Are we just too small (State Pop is only about 630,000) with too few winos to make the effort worthwhile?

With the exception of the Francis Ford Coppola offerings, every other offering I can recall has had Vermont on the Ship-To list. I’m just curious what leads the bigger wineries (for wine.woot, FFC & Hahn are ‘big’ when compared to the typical offerings) to drop some states that the smaller wineries routinely include. Is it due to increased permitting costs due to increased production, is there something about WineCountryConnect’s middle-man role that makes it more attractive for smaller wineries to ship to smaller markets, or is there something more obvious that I don’t see.

I think at this point we’re all used to the “Tediously Long” crap-shoot for MA, IN, NJ, AZ, etc. where it’s a big PITA to deal with the states’ compliance rules, but it’s always a curve ball (maybe more like a wild pitch?) when the ‘regulars’ get axed from the list.

Change {quote=“Loweeel”} to

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). Took me a moment of head-scratching before I figured out why it wasn’t working, too (time for that second cup of coffee!)

If you are intersted in the Hahn Cab Franc you might wangt to try the hahn web site at www.hahnestates.com. If they have some in inventory you may be able to order it from them depending upon the state you are ordering from.

I also think that this is one of the lowest price Meritages that I’ve ever seen. From what I know about the Meritage association and the trademark, it’s supposed to be the winery’s “top” wine, and I’m intrigued at both the price point and that it’s a Merlot-based Meritage instead of CabSauv like the majority.

Also, what’s the difference between the Grand Reserve and a Regular reserve? Is there even a regular reserve?

How long can each wine age?

Many people have develped a little justified shyness on pinot noirs in part do to the fact that some are Gamay’s mascarading as PN, or PN’s that have been blended and PN is not a wine to be blended. The Hahn PN is 100% Pinot Noir.
The Red Flyer is an unpretentious well made wine that for all intents and purposes could be called Syrah. Great with good BQ.

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And now I have a new best friend, thank you much. That was 30 minutes of my life wasted trying to correct it.

I’m not going to be in the office until tomorrow so I don’t have my shipping book with me, but I remember Vermont in addition to the reasonable $300 license fee has a $100 per label fee (good for two years if I remember correctly). So if we do the Hahn varietal, Red Flyer, S&H, and the other brands produced at Hahn it adds up pretty quickly.

To answer your question about not caring about the states with 630,000 people in them it was a question of cost vs. gain. In the last 6 months we have been cleaning up our licenses and making sure the house is in order. Much like retailers will only pull in product know they can sell or have been asked about, we had not had much direct sales interest from the Green Mountain State and therefore did not include it in our first couple batches of registrations. As I was working through the woot deal I noticed we were one of the only ones to not have Vermont as a listed. I apologize for the lack and the permits are now into the state as of Friday. We only await the kind and compassionate state lawmakers approval to begin shipping. It was simply too late for this offer.

Now on to some more about the wines. I talked a little bit about the Red Flyer, but if you would like more data on the wine, with all the awards and reviews, you can check out the website for Hahn’s Sales and Marketing company Wimbledon Wine Co. You can click on the brand and either look at the “Wine Info” or choose the “Trade Tools/Electronic Press Kit/Stat Sheets”. There is also a link in the top nav bar to searchable awards by competition, reviewer, etc. The Wimbledon site is normally used by 3-tier trade people, but has some good stuff.

Last website I’ll direct you to. Hahn Estates is located in the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA (American Viticultural Area). The Highlands has an association has a website all about the area Here. The reason I would point you to the AVA website is to talk a little bit about the Pinot Noir. The SLH is much the like the Rhone region in France in terms of climate and growing season. We are located up the side of the moutain range so have cooler temperatures and more fog then down in the valley. This is great for Pinot Noir, Syrah, Mourvedre, etc. Adam will be able to get more into the specifics of why. Hahn believes in their Pinot Noir enough to have ripped up a couple hundred acres of Merlot and replaced it with Pinot, you won’t believe me, but it wasn’t due to Sideways :slight_smile:

Hahn is always committed to making (this is my favorite tag line) “Wines of Monterey Distinction”.

My appologies to all. I should have first introduced myself. Bad Bad.
I am proud to say that I do work for Hahn Estates and my expressed purpose here is to answer any questions that I can that will, I hope be of some help to you so please fire away. I sincerely appreciate your interest in the Hahn wines.

I work pt. time in a NY wine shop (upstate not NYC) , first I can vouch for the '05 meritage … we sell it for 15.00 a btl. and it is very good … I looked up the lowest wholesale price of the lot (there are discounts for multi-case deals for some of them) and the rock bottom wholesale (not retail and w\o sales tax) for the entire offering is 46.02… now add to that the industry standard markup of 50% and the wine would sell here for 69.03 + tax highere if the shop buys only a case or less of each variety… ymmv but this is a good deal imo