Dolce? Niente

A year ago, Far Niente Winery in the Napa Valley unveiled the first vintage of a late-harvest Semillon called Dolce with a public rollout as flamboyant as the packaging of the wine: gold lettering sprayed on a unique slender, label-less bottle.

Luncheons and dinners were staged for merchants in the nation’s major cities at restaurants such as Los Angeles’ Patina to show off the new wine.

The wine was excellent, with complex honey, hay, pear and apple scents and a lusciousness rarely found in such wines. The price, however, was a bit of a shocker for merchants: $50 for a half bottle. (Chateau d’Yquem, the ne plus ultra of late-harvest wines, and the wine with which Dolce is almost inevitably compared, sells for about $100 for a half bottle.)

That was a year ago. With the new, 1990 vintage being shipped, I decided to find out how the marketplace had reacted to Dolce. Had the send-off resulted in sales? Apparently not.

“I haven’t sold a bottle, and I haven’t any calls for it, either,” says Barry Herbst of the Wine Reserve in Glendale. “Great package, though.” Meanwhile, Herbst says, he has sold eight cases of 1986 Chateau d’Yquem--at $189 a bottle. Dan Wilson of Wine House in West Los Angles says he had half-bottles of 1989 Dolce on his shelf (at $45) but hasn’t sold a single bottle of it.

Everybody, it seems, loves Dolce, but few have sold any. In fact, many shops don’t even stock the wine, waiting for someone to order it. In most cases, that someone has never come.

“Well, I don’t think Yquem sold out in its first year either,” says a winery spokesman. “It’s true, it hasn’t done as well in retail shops. Where it has done very well is in restaurants, by the glass (typically, a three-ounce serving for about $15 as an alternative to Port or Cognac). People don’t usually make a $50 impulse purchase by the bottle (or half-bottle), but it’s been very successful in restaurants where the staff can talk it up.

Winemaker Dirk Hampson says Dolce is sold in only eight states at present, and Los Angeles has been the worst market for it.

Recently, the Los Angeles unveiling of the new vintage of Dolce occurred with the same flourish as a year ago. There was a luncheon for wine merchants at Spago. One Westside wine merchant who asked for anonymity says he attended the luncheon but wasn’t sure he’d buy any of the wine.

“It was a noble effort to launch a product like this, but the price bothers me,” he says.

Referring to the L.A. unveiling parties for Dolce, he said: “First it was Patina and now Spago--they’re spending thousands of dollars hosting us, and the consumer is being asked to pick up the tab for my lunch.”

The 1987 Yquem, now arriving on store shelves, is magnificent wine, showing fruit of fresh figs, a trace of new-mown hay, a taste of vanilla cream and an incredible aftertaste reminiscent of grapefruit and pears.

At $150 per bottle, the ’87 Yquem is $50 cheaper than the 1986 was, in part because of the worldwide recession and in part because the 1987 vintage in Bordeaux is not perceived to be as good as 1986. However, I’ve tasted both wines side by side and prefer the 1987.

Still, tasted side by side with Yquem, Dolce is impressive, and the 1990 version is better than the 1989--fresher, more complex. In fact, Dolce is produced in even more limited quantities than Yquem. Only 550 cases of the 1990 Dolce were produced, compared to 10,000 cases of Yquem.

“It’s always been said, ‘There’s Yquem and then there’s all the rest,’ and Dolce isn’t out to change that,” says Hampson. “We’re not trying to be Sauternes. We’re just trying to make the best type of dessert wine from the Napa Valley we can.”