JC Cellars 2005 Caldwell Vineyard Syrah Two - Pack
$49.99 + $5 shipping
Condition: Red
Product: 2 2005 Caldwell Vineyard – Syrah
CT link above
First sucker: mill
Speed to first woot: 0m 9.083s
Last wooter to woot: hld1970
Good call on JC Cellars. Solid reviews (only 2) on CT, but this is a solid buy.
In for 1 as we are having a baby today, the C-section is scheduled for 12:30. Even though the wife can only have a little, I’m sure she would LOVE to help me LabRat this one WD since she has been on wine hiatus since August. So here is me begging.
PLEASE PLEASE let me and the wife labrat this. I will sneak it in the hospital and take pictures.
We (grandparents, me and maybe Mom) will be toasting the newborn with the bottle of Etoile that I bought the Monday after I was told we were pregnant. That one didn’t have any LabRats…sniffle.
Anyways, now off to bed. See if I can sleep any tonight.
Later all!
Courtesy of CJ:
So join or create a gathering!!!
Wow. Website lists some really consistent good press:
2007: 91 Spectator
94 Wine Advocate
2006: 92 Wine Advocate
91 Spectator
2004: 91 Wine Advocate
92 Connoisseurs’ Guide
2002: 94 Spectator
Many of the notes suggest that this wine has tended to age well, and this wine could develop nicely for the next 2-3 years at a minimum. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that 2005 was the only year listed between 2000 and 2007 without a single review.
I know very little about wine and I’m sure this is better than the cheap stuff I normally drink for under $10 a bottle from the grocery store. But can I ask why wine.woot never has really inexpensive wines? I can’t bring myself to spend $20 and up on a bottle of wine on a regular basis. Where is the $2 bottle? I’ve checked almost every day for a couple years now and have been disappointed to have never come across a wine.woot deal that I consider to be a budget friendly priced bottle of vino(~$5 tops). Maybe its just me…
The complete list of scores from the Wine Spectator database:
JC Cellars Syrah Caldwell Vineyard 2007 91 $45
JC Cellars Syrah Caldwell Vineyard 2006 91 $50
JC Cellars Syrah Caldwell Vineyard 2004 89 $45
JC Cellars Syrah Caldwell Vineyard 2003 90 $45
JC Cellars Syrah Caldwell Vineyard 2002 94 $45
JC Cellars Syrah Caldwell Vineyard 2001 91 $40
JC Cellars Syrah Caldwell Vineyard 2000 90 $40
(Thrawn1020’s post had most but not all of these.)
Edit: I missed 2007 initially.
The closest item I could find on their website is the JC Cellars 2006 Caldwell Vineyard Syrah, although when clicking the link for it they mention the deal here at Wine.Woot and also allow you to enter a coupon code to get the 2005, so I’m not sure if they actually meant the 2005 on the product list.
Anyway, here is the discount breakdown -
Website Retail:
$45 per bottle on the website
$13.98 for ground shipping (to FL)
TOTAL: $103.98
Woot Deal:
$24.995 per bottle
$5 shipping
TOTAL: $54.99
Total Savings: $48.99
Percent Off Website Price: 47.11%
Making this almost 50% off the website price. Great buy if this is a wine you’re looking for or want to try.
wine.woot has wines in the $8-12 a bottle range fairly regularly, and these tend to be the cheapest reasonably well-made, reasonably interesting wines available - anything cheaper might be worth drinking to some people sometimes, but it’s certainly not worth shipping. There’s a reason they call it “grocery store wine.”
Mmmmmmh, $2 wine.
Bleghh! No offense, but get real. There are tons of budget-friendly wines here around $10-15 per bottle. Try one.
$2 wine isnt worth shipping. It’s called Thunderbird and already sold at a convenience store near you.
Looking for a drinking window on this baby…judging from Jeff’s history this could be a really big long term wine.
In fer one!
Can’t wait to hear from the winemaker.
Cheers!
It’s you … 
Actually, there have been $10 wines on Wine.Woot, it’s just they’ve been part of 6 bottle offers. But the quality isn’t there at that price point. Plus, it’s hard to beat $2 Chuck when you also have shipping to account for.
Wine.Woot seems to be more for quality wines that you might not find close to you, and usually around 30% off retail (see jwhite6114’s spreadsheet for actual savings on each offer). Some are higher than 30% savings, and the more of each offer you buy, the better the savings.
This is the place to upgrade your wine palate, and try better wines.
Why does the server on the label appear to be in such a hurry?
Because the sub-$10 stuff is made in massive batches, basically, and has such a massive distribution network that it’s not worth it to deal with the hassles of direct sales. Which isn’t to knock <$10 wine - there’s some diamonds in the rough there. (Though there’s a lot more in $10-20 wine, and a hell of a lot in $20-30.) Just that the business model on discount wine depends on massive distribution and economies of scale.
For my part, I don’t really dig the two bottle sets at the $50-60 range. My purchases have generally been the three-packs at the $50 range. But they’re good enough that I’ve largely had to give up cheap wine. 
I might have been interested, but I just remembered that I poured a bottle of that corked Havens Syrah, and another bottle of terrible Nicholson Chard down the drain today, and decided that woot doesn’t deserve any more of my money unless they quality control their carp.
At least from my experience anything cheaper than Yellowtail or Bogle (about $12-$15/bottle) isn’t worth it and that’s to buy locally not ship.
With the exception of the woot cellars offering which have been made, or at least bottled, for woot, woot has no control over the wine. What happens is woot’s buyer tastes the various things offered and selects wines to offer based on his assessment of the QPR (quality/price ratio), the quantity available to woot (must meet the sweet spot between not enough and too much to sell), and how an offering will fit in the program.
I don’t know what happened with the Havens wines - my own experience with them was terrible - but WD can only evaluate what he’s given. I suspect that in some cases he’s been gamed with wines offered for sampling that were not representative of actual production (you can control for that by random sampling from filled cases, but…) – and you could be sure he wouldn’t do business there again – but more often, the problem is either bottle variation or storage at facilities other than woot’s or the winery’s.
Also, while woot is a wonderful way to learn about wines you don’t know, and might not otherwise buy, a little selectivity is needed. Woot offers wines for every palate, and some of these wines will not be to your taste. I’ve pulled enough corks to have a pretty good idea of what I’ll like and what I won’t (or what SWMBO won’t, which is equally important), so I’m pretty selective - I’ll almost never order wines above 14.5% alcohol (and, really, I look for wines under 14%) or with high pH or that were harvested at high sugar levels. Unfortunately, that limits one more and more.
But, I’d recommend you try to use the boards, the rattery, and the descriptions to try to help you find things that are consistent with what you already like as a way of slowly broadening your palate, rather than jumping into everything.
If he doesn’t win the labrat I WILL protest W.W. c’mon!
Those who were on the Cyberpub a little while back in March found out about another vineyard that JC Cellars deals with, Eaglepoint Ranch (co-owned by chocolate mini-magnate Scharffenberger) who were selling off all their own-label inventory to concentrate on their core business of making and selling good grapes. JC makes an Eaglepoint PS with similarly consistently-good reviews (e.g. CT; e.g.2 to this offering’s vineyard.
So, a consistently good winemaker. and we know from the wootblurb he’s aiming at old-world Rhone style (which can be quite diverse, really). Nonetheless, ought to be aiming at lasting, more earth-bound wines than a typical Cali as far as I can reason.