ZD Abacus

                I was in St Helena this last weekend where it happened to be the Premiere Napa Valley barrel tasting.  Over the weekend 70 bidders (all wine distributors, importers, retailers, or restaurants) paid a collective $6M for 225 lots of wine ranging from 5-20 cases of wine each.

                Being in town during this event was a super-interesting perspective into the world of Napa wine auctions, and I learned about wineries and styles of wine that weren’t on my radar before.  A notable example was ZD Wines, which sells a three-bottle pack of its flagship Abacus wine for a cool $2,100.  Abacus is a single varietal wine (cabernet sauvignon) but is a multi-vintage blend (a new concept to me in red wine) that blends 27 vintages (1992-2018) into a single bottle.  The wine is made from ZD’s Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon which sells on their website for $230 a bottle for the 2016 vintage. 

                Although the Abacus at $700 a bottle is clearly a markup from a recent 2016 vintage Reserve cab at $230, the fact that the winery needs to blend 27 vintages means there is a significant inherent time-value cost to selling the Abacus vs individual vintages as they are ready.  This begs the question whether Abacus makes sense as an economic business decision stand-alone or whether it is more a marketing and brand play for an association with a deep library and premium wine-making heritage.  Without knowing the proportions of vintages in the Abacus, hard to say.  But would love to hear from anyone who has ever tried it what they thought (was a little too rich for my taste this weekend…)!