Qupé Syrah Magnums
Bob Lindquist is one of the original Rhone Rangers, a group of Central Coast wine producers that found a new world home for varietals from Southern France. One of Bob’s legacies was to highlight cool climate Syrah. These wines are not high in alcohol extract. Rather, they have a polished acidity and an integrated tannin with balanced alcohol.
Customer will receive 2 or 4 Random Magnums from this assortment of Qupé Syrah:
2014 or 2015 Qupé Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard Syrah, Edna Valley
2008, 2012, 2013, or 2014 Qupé Sonnie’s Syrah, Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard, Edna Valley
Price Comparison
$400 for 4 Bottles/MSRP$100 per Bottle/Not Sold Online
About The Winery
Winery: Qupé
Here at Qupé, our wines focus on quality, character, and balance. We specialize in Rhône-style wines from the Bien Nacido Vineyard in Santa Maria, that is farmed sustainable, the Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard in the Edna Valley, farmed biodynamically, and the Ibarra-Young Vineyard in Los Olivos, farmed organically. Bob Lindquist’s exacting standards and never-resting-on-laurels attitude, allows Qupé to continually be cutting edge and a benchmark other wineries aspire to be.
Qupé (pronounced kyoo-pay’) is the Chumash Indian word for California poppy. The Chumash are native to California’s Central Coast and Channel Islands; the California poppy is our state flower. Bob Lindquist added the accent to the word Qupé and gave it the pronunciation.
Available States
AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MO, MT, NE, NV, NJ, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, WI, WY
Where’s everyone at?? Sleeping because they probably got too much Tryptophan today?? Maybe we need to hear REVELRY to wake everyone!!
Ok on a serious note, if the winery was sold, where’s this offer coming from and can we have more data on the bottle specifics? Not much available on the winery website.
@Boatman72 though the winery was sold, they still have quite a backstock of older vintages. Not sure if these arw are being offered by Bob or the new owners - perhaps @winedavid49 will pipe in?
@Boatman72 No soup for me now that UPS is the delivery guy…so I’m sleeping until UPS changes their hold policies because delivery to home is not an option.
I will say, love me some Qupé.
@Boatman72@tercerowines@klezman
I recently bought some older vintage Qupe from another vendor. In that offer email they referenced that Bob held onto the library wines at the time of sale.
“Because of an odd purchase agreement, Lindquist will still be selling Qupé wine for some time. Vintage bought the brand and the current release wines, but not the library… Lindquist maintains a substantial wine library that he will now sell to restaurant customers, and perhaps through a tasting room.”
OK; I give - I was turned on to Qupé Syrah from a Fess Parker wine club employee, actually a great guy, (who helped us expand our wine knowledge, before his death.) way back then we were club members.
In for 2, maybe it will be lost in the Continuum, or the
quantum realm; but I’m willing to change fate: because after all I do posses a Time Stone…
naive-ceaseless-sodium
From WE:
92 Points Qupé 2014 Sawyer-Lindquist Vineyard Syrah
This bottling from Syrah legend Bob Lindquist, sourced from the biodynamic vineyard that he planted, delivers snappy boysenberry, white pepper, rosemary and lavender aromas. The palate judiciously balances savory, peppery spice and lush purple floral notes with tangy black plum fruit and rosehip accents, making for a wondrous sip.
2008 Qupe “Sonnie’s-Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard” Edna Valley Syrah
91 points from Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar: “Inky purple. Very ripe, pungent nose is at once decadent and lively, offering notes of candied dark berries, smoky minerals, black pepper, and olive. Lush and fine-grained, with ripe blackcurrant and olive tapenade flavors that are complemented by a note of black pepper. This rich wine finishes with velvety tannins and a lingering floral note. Plenty powerful but there’s a graceful quality to this as well.” (Nov/Dec '08) 91 points Wine & Spirits: “This is the first vintage from 25 acres of Syrah Bon Linquist planted in 2005, farmed biodynamically. The wine is a barrel selection, layering blueberry and plum flavors into red scents of strawberry and rhubarb as it expands with air. There’s spice to the supple texture, the flavor of a spice rub as it gently caramelizes into a roast–the wine providing a clear parallel to the foods it would best accompany.” (02/11)
2012 Qupé “Sonnie’s - Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard” Edna Valley Syrah
93 points Wine & Spirits
An annual selection of the best barrels off of the hilly, gravelly site that Bob Lindquist planted in 2005, Sonnie’s bursts with refreshing, detailed fruit in 2012, the flavors as dark and juicy as mulberries and black plums yet lively and mouthwatering, holding tightly to the stony cool of its structure. It’s pretty irresistible now, but has an effortless balance that will allow it to age gracefully. (10/2015)
93 points Wine Enthusiast
Bob Lindquist shows his mastery of cool-climate fruit with this bottling, which is redolent of asphalt, cracked black pepper, rosemary, lavender and damson plum. It’s fairly light in body but strong in tarry structure, offering loads of cracked peppercorn flavor with its juicy purple fruit. (MK) (7/2017)
@klezman Klez, I think you’ve said you have issues with door tags left when someone is home, were they from brown trucks, or that other shipper some now fondly recall?
The comments have lured us in for our first magnum purchases. And trying out the challenging UPS shipping. (Which we had a taste of with a recent rattage- fingers crossed!)
@rjquillin@losthighwayz For me definitely the shipping, I would have bought 4 mags but the UPS is a definite no more purchases due to my shipping circumstances.
But hell the internet is awash with places that sell wine and will ship via FedEx.
@radiolysis@rjquillin same here. Though i bought 2 sets of 4 which was maybe a bit overboard. Lol Will be opening the 08 at christmas. Not sure how well its holding up based on CT comments.
@rjquillin agree, the magnums should age much more slowly, also even though one of the negative CT comments was based on a magnum who knows how they acquired or stored it. I’ve seen magnums stored vertically by stores and folks who dont have the spce to do otherwise.
Yep picked up my ‘2’ pack; 2008 & 2014 with a CaseMate’s ornament and sticker. Where did I pick it up you ask: at a “MICHAELS STORE”, which of course dose not accept ‘Adult Signature Required’…This is Sooooo confusing - OMG like Schroders CAT in the Box Theory
Mine arrived today (East coast). Got two four-packs, anticipating serving them at holiday get-togethers this (and future) years.
Four 2008, two 2012, and two of the not-Sonnie 2014s. Will pop the cork on one of the 2008s in the next couple weeks. Would have preferred one or two fewer 2008s in exchange for a bit more variety, but that’s the risk with a random offer.
@moondigger I have instant regret for not getting more like you did.
And, I didn’t even realize that it was a “mystery” regarding the vintage, I got the 2008 and 2012. Hopefully that’s good. Maybe @Winedavid will tell me that he has more that I can get…???
@losthighwayz It seems obvious, based on the reports here, that their stock was heavy with 2008. It also seems likely that they had relatively little of the odd-number year vintages.
Alternate explanation is that they wanted to deplete the stock of their oldest vintage before it ages beyond its prime drinking window, though I would still have expected to see at least one person report receiving a 2013 or 2015.
@losthighwayz@moondigger I hadn’t thought about the relative stock of each, but there are plenty of people who’d have (strongly) preferred to have two of the oldest vintage. Especially when the next oldest is 4 years younger. Them’s the chances you take with randomized offerings.
@klezman@losthighwayz I don’t know… I’d guess if somebody only purchased two, as losthighwayz did, they’d prefer two different vintages. I mean, if you were really hoping for two 2008s, in a random offer that includes six different wines of five different vintages, wouldn’t you buy more than a 2 pack?
I understand how random offerings work, and even said as much in my earlier post ("…that’s the risk with a random offer.")
I’m only mildly disappointed in the variety I received, and I do like older library selections. But I ended up with four 2008s, and would have preferred a little more variety rather than half of my order being the same wine.
@losthighwayz@moondigger Yup, I get it. I’m just saying ymmv. I was happy with 2008 and 2012, and I’d have been equally happy with 2x2008. I’ve also had randomized offers where I’ve been a bit bummed at what I got.
@klezman@losthighwayz@moondigger I got two 2008 – gifted one, kept one. I really think i’m the lone lover of mystery/random stuff. Sure i’d have enjoyed mixed vintages, but i’m thrilled with the purchase regardless.
@klezman@losthighwayz@radiolysis I really do like mystery/random offers. I believe I got the maximum order size for every Wellington mystery case offer back on the old site, and was never disappointed at the variety I received. I think the main complaint folks have for this particular offer is that “mystery” or “random” implies variety, even if that’s not strictly true in the mathematical sense.
I remember back in the early days of the iPod, people complained to Apple that the “shuffle” feature played two songs by the same artist or from the same album in a row sometimes. Of course, in a truly random shuffle, that’s bound to happen occasionally, but some folks were insistent that it shouldn’t happen. So during one of Steve Jobs’ press events, he announced a new feature: the ability to prevent that from happening. Of course, that meant that the shuffle feature wasn’t truly random anymore, because the algorithm had to reject repeats if they happened to come up. But most people were pleased, judging by the response.
That’s all tangential to this discussion, mainly because it’s really unlikely that the folks packing these wines for shipment are actually employing a random selection method. As I hinted at before, it’s likely their decisions are at least partially guided by the amount of stock for each vintage, or by a desire to ship the 2008 before its prime drinking window expires. But that also means that there’s a disconnect between what the offer is called (“random”) and what it actually is (a mix of vintages with a weighted likelihood based on non-random factors).
@moondigger I like all you have said. Since Peter, the “mystery” offers have become less exciting and more rare. (Not you, Scott. But I would point out those magnums were not “random”) I guess it may have offered a cover for a winemaker to offer 2 nice bottles then cover their “loss” by including the possibility of everything in their cellar, but actually only shipping below avg SRP bottles to make the deal a wash and a few gems to make it legitimate.
As for truly random… it never has been. No one ever got an entire case of Victory (or insert the coveted wine in the random offer).
So your point really is, we know it isn’t random, so why do we sometimes pretend it is and other times it is very explicitly stated (percentages aside) details? I would like to know…
@KNmeh7@moondigger Humans and math…few do it well. And most of us suck at probabilities, case in point the iPod example above.
They’ve usually been good at delineating between a random offer where the cases going out will be different vs a mystery offer where, often enough, the cases going out are identical.
As for music playing shuffled vs random - those mean different things! Shuffled means a random permutation of all the included music files. Random means draw a number with replacement - you could even get the same song twice in a row!
Random vs. mystery: Based on the experiences of a few people in this thread, this may have been closer to a mystery offer than random. Several of the 4-packs reported here have the same distribution: Two 2008s, one 2012, and one 2014. This is true for sdilullo and both of mine. (That’s actually how mine arrived: Two magnum cases, each capable of holding six bottles, but instead containing four bottles distributed as described above.) Though looking back, rjquillin’s and StingingJ’s reports are ambiguous… they may have gotten the same distributions in their four packs, or they may have had a 2013 included rather than one of the 2008s.
Apple’s iPod “shuffling” algorithm didn’t work the way you describe in your hypothetical (by picking a song at random each and every time a new song was supposed to play). In fact, I’m not aware of any music player that ever worked that way.
Instead, it took the specified song set (e.g., an album, or a playlist, or the entire contents of the iPod, etc) and ordered it randomly, then stored the randomly-ordered list. You wouldn’t get the same song twice in a session because each song only had one entry in the list; it’s just the playback order that was random. That’s why you could (at the time) skip ahead and skip back through the list; if a song was chosen randomly every time after the previous song ended, that wouldn’t work.
When they changed the algorithm to prevent songs from the same artist playing twice in a row, the algorithm got a lot more complicated. It had to use various metadata fields to determine whether the list order was ‘kosher’ according to the user’s preferences.
@moondigger they could’ve been a bit more precise about the 2008 being included in every order regardless if a 2 or 4 pack. Kinda like they have done in the past
Oh, and UPS sucks. Big time. The closest hub is in Cerritos about 14 miles and 30 minutes from my place. I’m not paying for a UPS store to hold my wine. Defeats the purpose of paying a monthly fee to Casemates for FS
My 2 pack was a 2008 and a 2012, and I was really pleased. We had the 2008 today with Christmas dinner- opened, tasted, and let it breathe in the bottle for a few hours. The wine was fabulous, No detailed notes, but this was a lovely, aged Syrah with lots of character. This made Christmas dinner pretty special. Looking forward to the 2012. What a fabulous offer!
PS UPS shipping is far less convenient than FedEx for me. No option given for me to hold at the local UPS store, so had to drive out to the shipping hub, about 20 minutes. I’ll be looking more to other sites that use FedEx and choosing more carefully from the Casemates offers. Such a shame.
Vintage and Winemaker’s Notes
Qupé Syrah Magnums
Bob Lindquist is one of the original Rhone Rangers, a group of Central Coast wine producers that found a new world home for varietals from Southern France. One of Bob’s legacies was to highlight cool climate Syrah. These wines are not high in alcohol extract. Rather, they have a polished acidity and an integrated tannin with balanced alcohol.
Customer will receive 2 or 4 Random Magnums from this assortment of Qupé Syrah:
2014 or 2015 Qupé Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard Syrah, Edna Valley
2008, 2012, 2013, or 2014 Qupé Sonnie’s Syrah, Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard, Edna Valley
Price Comparison
$400 for 4 Bottles/MSRP$100 per Bottle/Not Sold Online
About The Winery
Winery: Qupé
Here at Qupé, our wines focus on quality, character, and balance. We specialize in Rhône-style wines from the Bien Nacido Vineyard in Santa Maria, that is farmed sustainable, the Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard in the Edna Valley, farmed biodynamically, and the Ibarra-Young Vineyard in Los Olivos, farmed organically. Bob Lindquist’s exacting standards and never-resting-on-laurels attitude, allows Qupé to continually be cutting edge and a benchmark other wineries aspire to be.
Qupé (pronounced kyoo-pay’) is the Chumash Indian word for California poppy. The Chumash are native to California’s Central Coast and Channel Islands; the California poppy is our state flower. Bob Lindquist added the accent to the word Qupé and gave it the pronunciation.
Available States
AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MO, MT, NE, NV, NJ, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, WI, WY
Estimated Delivery
Thursday, December 26th - Thursday, January 2nd
Qupé Syrah Magnums
$69.99 - $119.99
How much more are you saving by buying a full case?
(Note: Tax & Shipping not included in savings calculations)
Qupé Syrah Magnums - $20 = 14.28%
@chipgreen.
Not a full case … close, but no cigar!
Magnum = Two 750ml bottles
So 4 magnums equals 8 bottles. Wink.
Some of the last wines Bob made before the winery was sold. Well worth the tariff IMHO . . .
Are all the vintage/bottle options from when Bob was still the guy in charge?
@klezman yes
@tercerowines thanks Larry! I see you answered my question as I was asking it, too!
Anyone in a state near NH willing to split a 2 or 4 pack? VERY interested in this and super sad there’s no NH shipping this time
@wordek Hi, I am in Salem and willing to share. Believe I responed to your reuquest ona previous offer but did not receive a response. Jon 6036824739
One of my absolute favorite wines, had to jump on this
Where’s everyone at?? Sleeping because they probably got too much Tryptophan today?? Maybe we need to hear REVELRY to wake everyone!!
Ok on a serious note, if the winery was sold, where’s this offer coming from and can we have more data on the bottle specifics? Not much available on the winery website.
@Boatman72 though the winery was sold, they still have quite a backstock of older vintages. Not sure if these arw are being offered by Bob or the new owners - perhaps @winedavid49 will pipe in?
@Boatman72 @tercerowines best not.
@Boatman72 @tercerowines @Winedavid49
Sold by One Vine Wines, whoever that is.
@Boatman72 No soup for me now that UPS is the delivery guy…so I’m sleeping until UPS changes their hold policies because delivery to home is not an option.
I will say, love me some Qupé.
@Boatman72 @tercerowines @klezman
I recently bought some older vintage Qupe from another vendor. In that offer email they referenced that Bob held onto the library wines at the time of sale.
“Because of an odd purchase agreement, Lindquist will still be selling Qupé wine for some time. Vintage bought the brand and the current release wines, but not the library… Lindquist maintains a substantial wine library that he will now sell to restaurant customers, and perhaps through a tasting room.”
/giphy jazzy-purring-lemon
OK; I give - I was turned on to Qupé Syrah from a Fess Parker wine club employee, actually a great guy, (who helped us expand our wine knowledge, before his death.) way back then we were club members.
In for 2, maybe it will be lost in the Continuum, or the
quantum realm; but I’m willing to change fate: because after all I do posses a Time Stone…
naive-ceaseless-sodium
/giphy illustrious-flat-tarzan
/giphy nifty-relevant-acoustic
roflmao!
unkind-statuesque-roll
From WE:
92 Points Qupé 2014 Sawyer-Lindquist Vineyard Syrah
This bottling from Syrah legend Bob Lindquist, sourced from the biodynamic vineyard that he planted, delivers snappy boysenberry, white pepper, rosemary and lavender aromas. The palate judiciously balances savory, peppery spice and lush purple floral notes with tangy black plum fruit and rosehip accents, making for a wondrous sip.
https://www.winemag.com/buying-guide/qupe-2014-sawyer-lindquist-vineyard-syrah-edna-valley/
2008 Qupe “Sonnie’s-Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard” Edna Valley Syrah
91 points from Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar: “Inky purple. Very ripe, pungent nose is at once decadent and lively, offering notes of candied dark berries, smoky minerals, black pepper, and olive. Lush and fine-grained, with ripe blackcurrant and olive tapenade flavors that are complemented by a note of black pepper. This rich wine finishes with velvety tannins and a lingering floral note. Plenty powerful but there’s a graceful quality to this as well.” (Nov/Dec '08) 91 points Wine & Spirits: “This is the first vintage from 25 acres of Syrah Bon Linquist planted in 2005, farmed biodynamically. The wine is a barrel selection, layering blueberry and plum flavors into red scents of strawberry and rhubarb as it expands with air. There’s spice to the supple texture, the flavor of a spice rub as it gently caramelizes into a roast–the wine providing a clear parallel to the foods it would best accompany.” (02/11)
2012 Qupé “Sonnie’s - Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard” Edna Valley Syrah
93 points Wine & Spirits
An annual selection of the best barrels off of the hilly, gravelly site that Bob Lindquist planted in 2005, Sonnie’s bursts with refreshing, detailed fruit in 2012, the flavors as dark and juicy as mulberries and black plums yet lively and mouthwatering, holding tightly to the stony cool of its structure. It’s pretty irresistible now, but has an effortless balance that will allow it to age gracefully. (10/2015)
93 points Wine Enthusiast
Bob Lindquist shows his mastery of cool-climate fruit with this bottling, which is redolent of asphalt, cracked black pepper, rosemary, lavender and damson plum. It’s fairly light in body but strong in tarry structure, offering loads of cracked peppercorn flavor with its juicy purple fruit. (MK) (7/2017)
Note on 2013 Sonnie’s:
http://www.terroirlife.com/assets/client/File/2013 Qupe Syrah Sonnies Tasting Note.pdf
fwiw
My wife’s favorite varietal from a great producer, in large format for extra long cellering? In for eight to make sure I get at least on of each!
/giphy qualitative-uplifted-recess
Awesome Black Friday deal!
Great job @Winedavid49 !
Happy Black Friday, folks!
Well done @Winedavid49.
/giphy mediocre-roasted-blueberry
/giphy fanciful-opportune-meat
/giphy burgeoning-thankless-rifle
@klezman Klez, I think you’ve said you have issues with door tags left when someone is home, were they from brown trucks, or that other shipper some now fondly recall?
@rjquillin I think I had that with GSO and FedEx. It’s only happened once or twice with each carrier anyway. Hardly an epidemic.
/giphy ungrateful-caring-ginger
We’ll give the shipping directly to a more convenient Customer Center a shot!
The comments have lured us in for our first magnum purchases. And trying out the challenging UPS shipping.
(Which we had a taste of with a recent rattage- fingers crossed!)
/giphy actually-kindhearted-warrior
@benguin986 Not a bad first magnum purchase, and the price is certainly right
/giphy perforated-haphazard-expansion
Given the price point, and the source, I kinda expected a sell out. But given the shipping turmoil, perhaps not.
@rjquillin @losthighwayz For me definitely the shipping, I would have bought 4 mags but the UPS is a definite no more purchases due to my shipping circumstances.
But hell the internet is awash with places that sell wine and will ship via FedEx.
Dude must have bottled crap load of mags ! Or did UPS keep peeps away?
Giving UPS a try though I am certainly and without a doubt hesitant
My first UPS pickup went meh. All of the UPS delivery employees park in customer spots so it was a challenge to pick up.
That said…
The mystery box was two 2008! Yay! And a casemates sticker and Christmas ornament! Can’t wait to dig in.
@radiolysis Oh, yeah, a mystery. Just grabbed mine today as well, a bit of an adventure, and I guess I should look as well.
@radiolysis Well done.
Got the split vertical; '08, '12~'14, and some baubles.
@radiolysis @rjquillin same here. Though i bought 2 sets of 4 which was maybe a bit overboard. Lol Will be opening the 08 at christmas. Not sure how well its holding up based on CT comments.
@radiolysis @StingingJ You have the mag, most of ct comments will be based on 750’s; big difference there.
@radiolysis @rjquillin @StingingJ My 2-pack was 2008 and 2012. Excellent!
@rjquillin agree, the magnums should age much more slowly, also even though one of the negative CT comments was based on a magnum who knows how they acquired or stored it. I’ve seen magnums stored vertically by stores and folks who dont have the spce to do otherwise.
@radiolysis 2x 2008, 1x 2012, 1x 2014 for us, plus the aforementioned swag
Yep picked up my ‘2’ pack; 2008 & 2014 with a CaseMate’s ornament and sticker. Where did I pick it up you ask: at a “MICHAELS STORE”, which of course dose not accept ‘Adult Signature Required’…This is Sooooo confusing - OMG like Schroders CAT in the Box Theory
Mine arrived today (East coast). Got two four-packs, anticipating serving them at holiday get-togethers this (and future) years.
Four 2008, two 2012, and two of the not-Sonnie 2014s. Will pop the cork on one of the 2008s in the next couple weeks. Would have preferred one or two fewer 2008s in exchange for a bit more variety, but that’s the risk with a random offer.
@moondigger I have instant regret for not getting more like you did.
And, I didn’t even realize that it was a “mystery” regarding the vintage, I got the 2008 and 2012. Hopefully that’s good. Maybe @Winedavid will tell me that he has more that I can get…???
PS: Love the ornament!
Disappointed in my 2 pack. Both are 2008. Would have been nice to have two different vintages.
@losthighwayz It seems obvious, based on the reports here, that their stock was heavy with 2008. It also seems likely that they had relatively little of the odd-number year vintages.
Alternate explanation is that they wanted to deplete the stock of their oldest vintage before it ages beyond its prime drinking window, though I would still have expected to see at least one person report receiving a 2013 or 2015.
@losthighwayz @moondigger I hadn’t thought about the relative stock of each, but there are plenty of people who’d have (strongly) preferred to have two of the oldest vintage. Especially when the next oldest is 4 years younger. Them’s the chances you take with randomized offerings.
@klezman @losthighwayz I don’t know… I’d guess if somebody only purchased two, as losthighwayz did, they’d prefer two different vintages. I mean, if you were really hoping for two 2008s, in a random offer that includes six different wines of five different vintages, wouldn’t you buy more than a 2 pack?
I understand how random offerings work, and even said as much in my earlier post ("…that’s the risk with a random offer.")
I’m only mildly disappointed in the variety I received, and I do like older library selections. But I ended up with four 2008s, and would have preferred a little more variety rather than half of my order being the same wine.
That said, I’m still happy overall with my order.
@losthighwayz @moondigger Yup, I get it. I’m just saying ymmv. I was happy with 2008 and 2012, and I’d have been equally happy with 2x2008. I’ve also had randomized offers where I’ve been a bit bummed at what I got.
@klezman @losthighwayz @moondigger I got two 2008 – gifted one, kept one. I really think i’m the lone lover of mystery/random stuff. Sure i’d have enjoyed mixed vintages, but i’m thrilled with the purchase regardless.
@klezman @losthighwayz @radiolysis I really do like mystery/random offers. I believe I got the maximum order size for every Wellington mystery case offer back on the old site, and was never disappointed at the variety I received. I think the main complaint folks have for this particular offer is that “mystery” or “random” implies variety, even if that’s not strictly true in the mathematical sense.
I remember back in the early days of the iPod, people complained to Apple that the “shuffle” feature played two songs by the same artist or from the same album in a row sometimes. Of course, in a truly random shuffle, that’s bound to happen occasionally, but some folks were insistent that it shouldn’t happen. So during one of Steve Jobs’ press events, he announced a new feature: the ability to prevent that from happening. Of course, that meant that the shuffle feature wasn’t truly random anymore, because the algorithm had to reject repeats if they happened to come up. But most people were pleased, judging by the response.
That’s all tangential to this discussion, mainly because it’s really unlikely that the folks packing these wines for shipment are actually employing a random selection method. As I hinted at before, it’s likely their decisions are at least partially guided by the amount of stock for each vintage, or by a desire to ship the 2008 before its prime drinking window expires. But that also means that there’s a disconnect between what the offer is called (“random”) and what it actually is (a mix of vintages with a weighted likelihood based on non-random factors).
@moondigger I like all you have said. Since Peter, the “mystery” offers have become less exciting and more rare. (Not you, Scott. But I would point out those magnums were not “random”) I guess it may have offered a cover for a winemaker to offer 2 nice bottles then cover their “loss” by including the possibility of everything in their cellar, but actually only shipping below avg SRP bottles to make the deal a wash and a few gems to make it legitimate.
As for truly random… it never has been. No one ever got an entire case of Victory (or insert the coveted wine in the random offer).
So your point really is, we know it isn’t random, so why do we sometimes pretend it is and other times it is very explicitly stated (percentages aside) details? I would like to know…
@KNmeh7 @moondigger Humans and math…few do it well. And most of us suck at probabilities, case in point the iPod example above.
They’ve usually been good at delineating between a random offer where the cases going out will be different vs a mystery offer where, often enough, the cases going out are identical.
As for music playing shuffled vs random - those mean different things! Shuffled means a random permutation of all the included music files. Random means draw a number with replacement - you could even get the same song twice in a row!
@klezman @KNmeh7
Random vs. mystery: Based on the experiences of a few people in this thread, this may have been closer to a mystery offer than random. Several of the 4-packs reported here have the same distribution: Two 2008s, one 2012, and one 2014. This is true for sdilullo and both of mine. (That’s actually how mine arrived: Two magnum cases, each capable of holding six bottles, but instead containing four bottles distributed as described above.) Though looking back, rjquillin’s and StingingJ’s reports are ambiguous… they may have gotten the same distributions in their four packs, or they may have had a 2013 included rather than one of the 2008s.
Apple’s iPod “shuffling” algorithm didn’t work the way you describe in your hypothetical (by picking a song at random each and every time a new song was supposed to play). In fact, I’m not aware of any music player that ever worked that way.
Instead, it took the specified song set (e.g., an album, or a playlist, or the entire contents of the iPod, etc) and ordered it randomly, then stored the randomly-ordered list. You wouldn’t get the same song twice in a session because each song only had one entry in the list; it’s just the playback order that was random. That’s why you could (at the time) skip ahead and skip back through the list; if a song was chosen randomly every time after the previous song ended, that wouldn’t work.
When they changed the algorithm to prevent songs from the same artist playing twice in a row, the algorithm got a lot more complicated. It had to use various metadata fields to determine whether the list order was ‘kosher’ according to the user’s preferences.
Sorry for taking this way off on a tangent.
@moondigger they could’ve been a bit more precise about the 2008 being included in every order regardless if a 2 or 4 pack. Kinda like they have done in the past
Oh, and UPS sucks. Big time. The closest hub is in Cerritos about 14 miles and 30 minutes from my place. I’m not paying for a UPS store to hold my wine. Defeats the purpose of paying a monthly fee to Casemates for FS
My 2 pack was a 2008 and a 2012, and I was really pleased. We had the 2008 today with Christmas dinner- opened, tasted, and let it breathe in the bottle for a few hours. The wine was fabulous, No detailed notes, but this was a lovely, aged Syrah with lots of character. This made Christmas dinner pretty special. Looking forward to the 2012. What a fabulous offer!
@wnance jealous you received one if each but happy to hear the 08 was enjoyable!
PS UPS shipping is far less convenient than FedEx for me. No option given for me to hold at the local UPS store, so had to drive out to the shipping hub, about 20 minutes. I’ll be looking more to other sites that use FedEx and choosing more carefully from the Casemates offers. Such a shame.
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