March 30 (Bloomberg) -- If you’ve always wanted to join the exclusive mailing lists for Napa Valley’s latest cult cabernets, now’s your chance. The recession is making room for you.

Only a few years ago, spots on already-full insider lists went for thousands of dollars at a New York charity auction, snapped up by impatient wine lovers unwilling to wait five years or more for the privilege of buying a handful of inky rarities.

Now, buyers like St. Louis-based orthopedic surgeon Martin Boyer are dropping off mailing lists to save money.

“The first one I dumped was Levy & McClellan,” says Boyer. “The wine is $350 and Martha McClellan would never answer my e-mails. How many bottles of expensive California cab do I need?” Still, he’s hanging on to several favorites.

On wine Web site bulletin boards, collectors are trading tales of paring their lists. One planned to purchase from only three of the seven in-demand wineries whose mailing-list offers he received last month. Others are splitting their allocations.

Typically made in small quantities of 500 cases or less, cult wines are sold direct to consumers via mailing lists for $100, $200 and up. Varying amounts of bottles are reserved for top-end restaurants and a few retailers in high-net-worth areas.

Usually these producers send three- to six-bottle allocation offers twice a year and you pay up front for wines delivered months later. Those who don’t purchase eventually get bumped. Many buyers quickly “flip” hot labels such as Screaming Eagle ($750 release price) for two or three times their initial cost or more.

At least, that’s the way it used to be. No longer.

Barrel Tasting

Last month, Premiere Napa Valley, a barrel tasting and auction held annually at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena, California gave me a glimpse of the state of the cult cab market. On offer: 200 one-of-a-kind cuvees, mostly cabernets or cabernet-blends, created by top wineries especially for the event.

I squeezed into a big room packed with rowdy retailers, restaurateurs and wholesalers ready to party and pretend the recession didn’t exist. They cheered loudly as wine broker Ichizo Nakagawa of Tokyo-based Nakagawa Wine Co. waved a paddle and bid $80,000 for five cases of a one-of-a-kind, still-in-the- barrel 2007 Scarecrow cab blend named Toto’s Opium Dream. Which works out to $1,300 a bottle, or more than $200 a glass.

That was a flashback to the old days -- you know, early 2008. Prices for most lots, down 50 percent from last year’s sale, told the new story. Five cases of 2007 Shafer cabernet from their Sunspot Vineyard, which provides the heart of the winery’s top cab Hillside Select, pulled in $24,000, compared with $62,000 in 2008.

List Flippers

Resale prices of bottled cult cabs are falling, too. Mailing-list flippers can’t count on doubling their money overnight.

“A lot of private individuals are selling us their allocations for the cost they paid just so they won’t lose their place on a list,” explains Cory Wagner, a partner in Napa Valley fine-wine merchant Blicker-Pierce-Wagner. Take smooth, round, elegant 2006 Scarecrow cabernet sauvignon, $175 on release. Wagner snapped up offerings from 10 collectors and marked them up to $260.

Many restaurants, leery of being able to move pricey bottles, have a freeze on buying.

Lipstick Print

Steve Bachmann, founder of collector wine service Vinfolio, says one restaurant -- he wouldn’t say which one -- has been regularly offering him their six-packs of cult favorite Colgin Cellars ($300 release price). (Flamboyant owner Ann Colgin is famous for marking labels of auctioned wines with her red lipstick print.) Now, Bachmann’s clients will no longer pay enough to give the restaurant any profit after Bachmann’s fee is included.

In this economy, even cult producers have to work hard to keep buyers, explains Fritz Hatton, proprietor of Arietta.

“Wineries are opening their doors, getting more personal, offering bells and whistles,” he says. “This spring we’re giving our best customers the chance to purchase their wine in an engraved 3-liter bottle, something we’ve only done for charity auctions.” The big, rich, 2006 Arietta H-Block Vineyard is being released at $150 a bottle.

Brand-new Cade Winery, part of the Plumpjack group owned by Gordon Getty and San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, is wooing customers with its “luxury green” appeal (winery insulation is recycled jeans), access to its tasting lounge with outdoor fire- pit, cooking lessons and fantastic views on Howell Mountain -- and a new powerful 2007 estate cab ($125).

One famous-name winery offered Gary Fisch, owner of New Jersey’s Gary’s Wine and Marketplace and this year’s top buyer at Premiere, dinner for his customers combined with a vertical tasting, where different vintages of the same label are compared. He views it as a thank you.

“The magic of many labels is gone,” says Marc Lazar, president of St. Louis-based Cellar Advisors. “There’s a cult- cab glut.”

(Elin McCoy writes on wine and spirits for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of the story: Elin McCoy at emcwine@aol.com.

Last Updated: March 30, 2009 00:01 EDT