I must agree with some others; as much as I tend to drink pinots more than $40, I certainly have enjoyed many that are less, especially from New World wine regions. To be fair, I've found that many of those are not consistently enjoyable for my palate from vintage to vintage.

Rhys and Sea Smoke are excellent--as are Schrader and Kapcsandy! We have some in the cellar. We stopped ordering Rhys and Kapcsandy simply because we can't order them all. We still order Sea Smoke. I'm not as big a fan of Maybach compared to others at that price point, but it is a wonderful wine. We stopped ordering Schrader partly because of the way they handled a visit request on a few occasions--and since there are others that price similarly and were more accommodating, we simply chose the others. :-) Kapcsandy is one we might eventually sorely miss, but we have plenty of the Grand Cuvee and Roberta's Reserve in the cellar. :-)

Thanks for the invite! I'm not a big fan of crowds, big wine events, (or whisky events, to be fair), and tastings; I prefer to visit the wineries, chat with the winemakers (partly because of my winemaking interest), and see the vineyards--as much as taste the wines. We're heading back to South Africa in January to visit some of those we've not yet visited: Vergelegen, Kanonkop (meeting with winemaker), Tokara (meeting with winemaker), Chamonix (meeting with winemaker), Mullineux (meeting with winemaker), and Sadie Family (to possibly help with barrel selection!).