Price List and Notes November 2008

1. Price List and Notes November 2008

2. Introduction • We are a new business, looking to provide quality wines at very competitive prices. • As a new business, we’re trying hard to build a customer base. We do not advertise, but rather intend to generate custom through word of mouth recommendations. As such, we ask that if you like what we do please tell others….and if you don’t then please tell us so we can take the feedback onboard and improve our customer offer. • To allow us to be highly competitive on price, we plan to operate initially on a quarterly ordering basis – we will distribute a price list and take orders which will then be fulfilled within 7-10 days. Eventually we intend to take orders at any time, but first need to build a customer base…and we need volume in order to get the discounts which allow us to sell so cheaply. • The focus of our offerings are top quality, value for money wines. If it’s First Growth Bordeaux you are after, we’re probably not for you. If you want trophies, go to a trophy shop not a wine merchant!

3. What we mean by value for money The 2004 Underhill Shiraz (96RP) costs a mere 36p per point based on a retail price of £36.<our price is £30> Even better vallue is the 2004 Vega Sicilia Pintia(95 RP) which works out at 32p per point By comparison, the 2002 Comtesse (94RP) costs twice as much per point based on a retail price of £69! First Growths cost in excess of £4 per point All these wines have scored between 94 and 96 Parker Points – pounds per point, there are some wines that offer comparable quality for a fraction of the price as the graph indicates.

4. The “Sweet Spot”, or diminishing returns Is a £10 wine twice as good as a £5 wine? A £20 wine twice as good as a £10 wine? A £40 wine twice as good as a £20 wine? It depends – it’s a matter of opinion and will be different for each of us, but what is common to everybody is that there is a point at which we answer ‘no’ whether it’s at £10 or £1000 per bottle. That’s the law of diminishing returns – we may think the £40 bottle better than the £20 bottle but perhaps only marginally so, and not enough to justify paying twice as much for it. Let me put the same question in a slightly different form which I use to establish somebody’s boundary: ‘Would you rather have two of those or one of these?’ If you’d rather have two bottles of supermarket £5 plonk than one bottle of £10 wine then lucky you – you’ll get a great deal of enjoyment from your wine for not a lot of money. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, if that’s your palate, and as I say, lucky you – you’ll be considerably richer for it and get no less satisfaction. Time and again though, in running tastings and asking the question ‘two of those or one of these’, the vast majority of people (in excess of 90%) decide to take the two bottles once the single bottle price reaches the £60 mark and the alternative is two bottles of £30 wine. That’s what I mean by the sweet spot – it’s the point at which people’s perception of quality and value for money intersect, and for most serious wine lovers it is around the £30 bottle mark. We offer the ‘Calibration Case’ which is formulated to help establish where somebody is on the wine spectrum

5. Half-empty or half-full • Food for Thought #1 :reasons why half bottles are better than full bottles • Twice the number of bottles for your money. • Twice the selection of wines for the same spend. • You don’t end up drinking the whole of a full-size bottle for fear of it ‘going to waste’ if your other half doesn’t want any. • You can have a white for starter course and a red for main course without getting totally sozzled if they were full bottles (see point 3). • You can do comparison testings with twice the number of wines for the same volume of alcohol, great for the wine enthusiast wanting to taste side-by-side. • Experiments cost half the money. • Half bottles mature more quickly and are therefore ready to drink at their optimum sooner. • You can try the wines you’ve always wanted to try for half the price – a half of Monte Bello is a lot cheaper (half price in fact) than a full bottle meaning you can tick twice as many of your ‘like to try’ boxes. • Halves usually sell for 60 to 70% of the full bottle price, encouraging people to buy the full bottle. We sell halves at half price which is bad for us and good for you – and what’s good for you is good for us in the long-run which is what we’re in it for. • Half bottles are cute – a bit weak I know, but I was trying to get to ten reasons. Lists always have ten entries in them. Why is that?

6. Featured Wines Q4 2008 White Burgundy Chablis Domaine Pasqal and Didier Picq 2005 Chablis, £11/bottle – typical competitor price £12.50 Good entry-level chablis from a decent producer.Also available in half bottles at £5.50/bottle. 2005 Chablis, VIeilles Vignes, £12/bottle – typical competitor price £14 2005 Chablis, Vacoupin, 1er Cru, £14.50/bottle – typical competitor price £17 As you might expect, from a premier cru, deeply concentrated and will age for several years but will drink well now. Domaine du Colombier, Guy Mothe et Fils 2006 Chablis, Vacoupin 1er Cru, £14.50/bottle 2006 Chablis, Fourchaume,1er Cru, £14.50/bottle – typical competitor price £16.50/bottle Also available in half bottles at £7.25/bottle 2006 Chablis, Bougros, Grand Cru, £22/bottle - typical competitor price £25/bottle Domaine Denis Race 2006 Chablis, Montmain 1er Cru, £13/bottle Our most popular chablis with good reason – classic chablis characteristics, premier cru quality and great value for money. Also available in half bottles at £6.50/bottle.

7. Featured Wines Q4 2008 White Burgundy Cote de Beaune Domaine Henri Boillot We have access to the full range from the entry-level Bourgogne Chardonnay all the way to the Le Montrachet Grand Cru (£200/bottle plus). Like cars, the mark-ups on the top of the line models are exorbitant – we’re confident that we can beat any price on the £50/bottle and up selections by a good 20-30%.

8. By the bottle We currently sell only by the case, while we get established and become large enough to carry a more substantial inventory. The following wines are, exceptionally, currently available by the bottle – at the same per bottle price as it would be by the case. These are samplers, so you can try before you buy or so you can splurge out on a single bottle at a higher price-point than you would ordinarily pay. We offer this on this select list of wines because they’re wines that if we can’t sell them, we’ll happily drink them ourselves. In fact, it was these wines that got us into wines in the first place and it’s to buy these wines for personal consumption that we went into business. 2004 Yarra Yering Underhill Shiraz, 96 Parker Points - £30/bottle – typical competitor price £36 My current all-time favourite wine – it changes once in a while. It’s a blessing and a curse, but my palate is fairly well-aligned with Mr Parker’s so when a wine scores well with him it generally scores well with me. This is the best-value for money ‘serious’ wine I have ever come across – it will age for years to come but is drinking sensationally well now. It’s a personal challenge to keep any in my cellar without finding weak excuses to drink one. 2004 Vega Sicilia Pintia, Needs some ageing but buy it now and tuck it away and you will be well-rewarded. The thing with wine is that it costs a lot more when it is drinking currently than when it isn’t ready – buying young and storing allows you to enjoy the anticipation and by the time you pull the cork you will enjoy it all the more for having a bargain on your hands compared to what you could buy a replacement for. This is 3 years off being ready but its getting more and more expensive with every vintage, particularly as Toro becomes increasingly fashionable. A future classic. 200x Elderton Command Shiraz Big Aussie shiraz – fruit-packed, alcoholic, deep red, de-licious. Ageing potential in pots but great now if you don’t have the willpower. 2005 Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay Known as ‘white Grange’, created to be the pinnacle embodiment of the varietal in the same was as the legendary Penfolds Grange was created to be the ultimate Aussie shiraz. Gaining in following and accolades with every vintage.