Anyone know if they made the usual gift pack this year with a pair of flutes? I usually pick one up every year for New Years Eve while I'm out Christmas shopping but haven't seen one anywhere this year with the 2003 vintage.

Took a look at the NY price postings

answer is no, at least not yet.

closest thing to a gift pack is the david lynch special case and label.

Thanks for checking that out. First year in a while they haven't done it. Wonder why? Always seems to go quickly when I do see it and gives me a nice excuse to try each new release of the wine.

I work wine retail and haven't seen a gift set with flutes this year. Lots of people were looking for it though and I'm sure DP lost some sales due to not releasing enough, or any at all.

I was a bit suprised that they had two different gift box this year. One was the same as last year but the other one had a locking mechanism that you needed to pinch the buttons on both sides to unlock and open (it pulled 'up' revealing the bottle standing on a pedestal). I thought the EU was getting tough on excessive packing? Maybe those policies only apply for the EU versions and exports don't have to reduce packaging waste.

finz,
Did you see any of the special "Light up" bottles of Dom in the Twin Cities for retail this year?

I did not, though I wasn't out looking for them. I'll have to keep my eyes open for those. Morellis always has the latest release on sale for $119 during December, so I don't usually bother to check out the stock at other stores since I don't think anyone can beat that price locally. When they brought up the bottles from the storeroom they had the two different box styles.