The Second Glass

The “winery” is a 18 x 12ft building on a hill in California’s Napa Valley. The entire vineyard is one acre, or for a more accurate measurement, 80 vines. Each year Screaming Eagle produces somewhere between 500 and 700 cases of wine, which, by comparison to even modest sized wineries, is minuscule. Basically, this stuff is über rare and hard to come by.

The first vintage was in 1992 and famed wine critic Robert Parker gave it a 99 points on his scale, which made yuppies across the world Hamptons freak out. Since the production is so low and there are so many people willing to spend enough money to buy a dozen FEMA trailers, the price instantly sky rockets from the $500 release price to $2,000. That’s right, people who are on the list and allowed to buy a bottle or two can turn around, the same day, and make $1,500.

This stuff is so coveted that some poor sucker actually paid $650,000 for eight, 3L bottles ranging in dates from 1992 - 1999. Yeah, instead of buying… well… almost anything, they bought some fermented grape juice.

In 2003 the vineyard was sold to Charles Banks, a famous money manager for sports stars and billionaire, Stanley Kroenke (who’s married to Anne Walton… yeah, THAT Walton, as in the heir to the Walmart fortune). Who knows what’ll happen to the winery as they’re switching winemakers, but since we here at The Second Glass know few, if any people who would piss away $2,000 for a bottle of wine, who really cares.