Charles Schléret

Yesterday, we finished the last of the two and a half bottles bought from Hedonism, the other one and a half having been reported on 12th and 18th of March. A 2007 gewürztraminer, not bad at all, but with quite a rich flavour and which did not go down quite as well as the rather dearer wine from the Elena Walch stable.

I get into a regular tangle when I ask the Professor all about it. The first and most informative stop is the Rosenthal Wine merchant part of the Mad Rose Group at http://www.madrose.com/. Is Mr. Rosenthal a real person, a real operation or is he just a marketing concept? Trying a bit harder, I find that he is a retired corporate lawyer who now avers that 'the Mad Rose Group is a family-run organization that is composed of a close-knit group of people who understand that wine is an agricultural product and that in its best and purest form wine must reflect a specific sense of place'. He has clearly moved on a long way from corporate lawyer speak and one wonders whether this new life is profitable or whether it is mainly financed by the profits from his previous life. Did his previous life involve the snuffling of white powders to which he now prefers the snuffling of  white wines?

The Schléret operation appears to exist, although they do not seem to have a web site of their own and it seems that the most recent Schléret has retired, just before the bottling of the wine which is the subject of this post. Is it a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mad Rose Group? Do they have exclusive rights? Probably not, as plenty of other outfits appear to stock the stuff, one offering the rather fruity comment: 'this benchmark Alsace Gewürztraminer from Charles Schléret exhibits a bouquet of tropical fruit and spices, has an unctuous palate with lychee and white pepper notes and a rich, rounded finish'. Perhaps the Schléret family are good enough at making wine that they don't have to bother with all the trappings of a modern, go-ahead sort of business. They can just let the business come to them.

I then notice the name 'Prospect Marketing' at the bottom of the Mad Rose page and wonder who they are. Click there and you are back in the cool corporate speak world of http://www.prospectmarketing.com/. So Mr. Rosenthal's new skin is not completely brand new after all.

Onto PrivCo at http://www.privco.com/ which claims that the 'Prospect Marketing Group is a privately-held media and marketing firm. Prospect Marketing Group headquarters are located in Broomfield, Colorado' and that if I care to stump up $149 I can see a full report, so while it might be privately held, it is not all that private. Either that or PrivCo are making it all up. But the Broomfield web site is called http://www.businessprospects.com/, so it is not altogether clear yet whether these two prospect marketing outfits are one and the same. Work in progress...

PS: tracing all these labyrinthine connections must be a tedious and error prone business and there must be plenty of false trails out there among the PrivCo's which claim to sort it all out for you. Perhaps I should have stuck to the rather simpler world of beer.