The Steal: Does This Wine Dinner Seem Mispriced?

Hawksworth is an expensive restaurant and Phantom Creek is a really expensive winery, so how is this event only $155?

Full disclosure, I’m not going to this dinner on June 27th, but if I were free and had a spare $155 in my pocket I’d be there. Why? Because when the notice crossed my screen I did a quick double take. Hawksworth? Pretty much synonymous with the pinnacle of fine dining in the city (and priced accordingly).

And while Phantom Creek Winery may be new to you, it won’t be for long. It’s the passion project of local businessman Richter Bai, and by passion, I mean he dropped a reported $50,000,000 buying arguably the very best plots of land in the South Okanagan and is dropping another $50,000,000 building a winery/restaurant/concert venue that, when it opens next year, will be like nothing the Okanagan has ever seen. Not surprisingly the wine is very pricey—$100 for the Phantom Creek Vineyard Cuvée, a touch less for the other big reds.

So does something seem off with these two powerhouses pairing up and charging only $155 for dinner with wine pairings? I’m not going to call anyone out, but Google “wine + dinners + Vancouver” and you’ll see no shortage of lesser restaurants and lesser wineries charging more for their take on a wine dinner.

You can buy tickets here. If they sell out, there are two more wine dinners this summer with Tantalus and Roche: those are amazing wineries and they’ll be great as well, if not quite the same steal of a deal.