Tax Policy Associates made a peculiar move in February 2024 by discreetly embedding an offer for a complimentary bottle of Pomerol wine within the fine print of its privacy policy on the company website.
After three months had passed, the organization finally received a response from someone who had spotted the hidden offer.
“We know nobody reads this, because we added it in February that we’d send a bottle of good wine to the first person to contact us, and it was only in May that we got a response,” reads a sentence in the organization’s updated privacy policy.
The wine in question, a Château de Sales 2013/2014, currently retails for £34.99 at Majestic. This Merlot-dominant blend, aged for 18 months in French oak, hails as the Grand Vin of the largest wine estate in Pomerol. Of the estate’s total 90 hectares, 47.6 hectares are dedicated to vineyards, with grapes meticulously hand-harvested and stored in concrete tanks before undergoing malolactic fermentation.
Vincent Montigaud, CEO of Château de Sales, brings his 23 years of expertise, having spent 16 years leading Domaine de Baronarques in Languedoc under Baron Philippe de Rothschild.
The 2023 vintage of the estate’s top wine received high acclaim in the latest Pomerol en primeur campaign, scoring 92-94 points by db’s Bordeaux correspondent Colin Hay. Described as “delicate and fresh” with a notable Cabernet Franc note, the wine showcases a “fire hydrant of sapidity and freshness,” maintaining its “impressively dense” character.
Dan Neidle, head of the Tax Policy Association, referred to the hidden wine offer as a “childish protest” against the requirement for all businesses to publish a privacy policy on their websites, despite the limited readership they receive.
Regarding the individual who claimed the wine, Neidle stated they “kind of cheated” as they were in the process of drafting their own privacy policy and had been scouring the web for examples. The winner reached out via email, initially assuming the bottle of wine had already been claimed, only to discover they were the first to spot the offer.
