For those of you who have never been to a free art gallery opening or a fundraiser, Charles Shaw is a bargain wine known affectionately as “Two Buck Chuck,” as it sells for $1.99 a bottle in California ($2.99 elsewhere). The Bronco Wine Company purchased the label of Charles Shaw, a failed Napa vintner, and used his name on bottles of blended bulk wines that the company buys from bankrupt wineries. Fred Franzia, the founder of Bronco Wines, uses this tactic with many of his wines: buy the name of a defunct winery, blend surplus wines nobody wants with his own mass produced juice until the wine is palatable enough to sell for a modest profit. When you multiply that modest profit by the number of cases they sell per year – 20 frickin’ million – and you’re talking about some serious dough-re-mi.
In addition to the purchased labels – Napa Ridge, Rutherford, Montpellier, etc. – the Bronco marketing staff works tirelessly to come up with new, sellable winery names. Almost every bucolic sounding name you see slapped on a bottle in the wine section of your local grocery store is a Bronco wine. Sea Ridge, Crane Lake, Forest Glen, Silver Ridge, Salmon Creek – it reads like the Ralph Lauren paint catalog. There was a great article about Bronco in the New Yorker a few weeks ago that delves deeply into all their shenanigans.
On the other end of the spectrum is Opus One, the pretentiously named chez d’oeuvre of Robert Mondavi, produced in partnership with the Mouton Rothschild folks. It’s the type of wine that revels in how classy it is. Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” blasts out when you land on their home page just to remind you of their immense sophistication. For over $150 a bottle, their wine better wear white gloves and bring me watercress sandwiches. And then when you multiply that price times the 25,000 cases they produce annually – think of how much Two Buck Chuck you could buy!
If you can’t tell from my snarky tone, neither wine appeals to me that much. Even though my father has no problems with Charles Shaw – “It’s good!” – I’ve always found their wines to be flabby and characterless and sometimes cloying. Yeah, it’s decent for the price, but for a few bucks more you can get something that’s actually good, regardless of cost. With the Opus One, it’s the opposite. It’s good but then you think about how much it costs and think, “Is it $150 good?” Or should I have spent that money to save starving children in the Third World? Then it becomes impossible to enjoy the wine. But for many, that price and the pedigree are shorthand for quality.
I remember when a friend’s wealthy father had a birthday party and offered to let me pick out the first wine. I carefully perused the extensive wine list and picked out a modestly priced but respected Burgundy, thinking of how it might match well with the poached Arctic char. After that, the father flipped to the end of the thick wine list and explained, “I don’t know much about wine. I mostly just go by price.” He then proceeded to buy bottle after bottle of 1988 Chateau Montelena Estate cab that went for over ten times what my choice cost. I was happy to let him order for the rest of the night. Had Opus One been 10 bucks more than the Montelena, we would have drunk that all night.
Why did I own either bottle of wines I apparently despise? The Charles Shaw I bought out of curiosity. The Opus One was a generous gift. When I had both in my hands, it seemed like I had no choice but to have a face-off. Phil brews beer so he has a good palate but knows nothing about wine which made him the perfect candidate. I let him know what the bottles were but poured them for him blindly.
I wasn’t surprised when he insisted the Two Buck Chuck was the Opus One. It’s more fruit forward and what few tannins were there were uncomplicated while the Opus One, while the same vintage as the Shaw (1999), was probably a couple years too young to drink. He described it as being flavorless and harsh. Wine bigwig, Steven Tanzer, wrote that the ’99 Opus One was, “Rich, sweet and tactile, with complex, tangy flavors of crystallized blackcurrant, caraway seed and smoked meat.” Go figure. Meanwhile, the New York Times wine guy, Frank Prial, said the ’99 Charles Shaw was, “light, pleasant and easy to drink and has little varietal character…Nondescript would not be too harsh a characterization.”
You can see why many would find the cheaper wine more drinkable. It requires very little thought to process what you’re tasting. It’s wine, it’s inoffensive, drink more. In fact, a Charles Shaw wine won a California wine tasting. But half an hour or so after being opened, our Charles Shaw’s one dimensionality and acrid finish became more pronounced while the Opus One started to open up beautifully. It was still fairly austere but its layers of berries and violets and minerals became more evident...not to mention that it was rich, sweet and tactile? Plus something about seeds and smoked meat.
So what is the lesson to be learned from this? To gladly accept any Opus One that someone gifts you? Sure. For me it was that there is a threshold for things that are good “for the money.” I was already pretty sure that the Opus One was going to be delicious, just not $150 delicious. But on the low end of things, when do you stop compromising quality for the sake of cost? If your shampoo gives you a rashy scalp and causes your hair to come out in clumps, you can’t justify using it just because there was a 2-for-1 sale at the 99 Cents Store. The Two Buck Chuck wasn’t quite that bad but I want my wine to be more than “nondescript”; I want it to catch my attention and make me feel better about having drunk it. I’ll happily pay two dollars for that privilege but such a wine hasn’t yet passed my lips.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Vino a Vino
A few years ago, in my pre-blog days, I invited my friend, Phil, over for a taste test. The goal was to compare value vs. quality. The contenders: Charles Shaw and Opus One. A showdown of famous cabernet sauvignons (O.K., Opus One is a blend but it’s mostly cab).
For those of you who have never been to a free art gallery opening or a fundraiser, Charles Shaw is a bargain wine known affectionately as “Two Buck Chuck,” as it sells for $1.99 a bottle in California ($2.99 elsewhere). The Bronco Wine Company purchased the label of Charles Shaw, a failed Napa vintner, and used his name on bottles of blended bulk wines that the company buys from bankrupt wineries. Fred Franzia, the founder of Bronco Wines, uses this tactic with many of his wines: buy the name of a defunct winery, blend surplus wines nobody wants with his own mass produced juice until the wine is palatable enough to sell for a modest profit. When you multiply that modest profit by the number of cases they sell per year – 20 frickin’ million – and you’re talking about some serious dough-re-mi.
In addition to the purchased labels – Napa Ridge, Rutherford, Montpellier, etc. – the Bronco marketing staff works tirelessly to come up with new, sellable winery names. Almost every bucolic sounding name you see slapped on a bottle in the wine section of your local grocery store is a Bronco wine. Sea Ridge, Crane Lake, Forest Glen, Silver Ridge, Salmon Creek – it reads like the Ralph Lauren paint catalog. There was a great article about Bronco in the New Yorker a few weeks ago that delves deeply into all their shenanigans.
On the other end of the spectrum is Opus One, the pretentiously named chez d’oeuvre of Robert Mondavi, produced in partnership with the Mouton Rothschild folks. It’s the type of wine that revels in how classy it is. Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” blasts out when you land on their home page just to remind you of their immense sophistication. For over $150 a bottle, their wine better wear white gloves and bring me watercress sandwiches. And then when you multiply that price times the 25,000 cases they produce annually – think of how much Two Buck Chuck you could buy!
If you can’t tell from my snarky tone, neither wine appeals to me that much. Even though my father has no problems with Charles Shaw – “It’s good!” – I’ve always found their wines to be flabby and characterless and sometimes cloying. Yeah, it’s decent for the price, but for a few bucks more you can get something that’s actually good, regardless of cost. With the Opus One, it’s the opposite. It’s good but then you think about how much it costs and think, “Is it $150 good?” Or should I have spent that money to save starving children in the Third World? Then it becomes impossible to enjoy the wine. But for many, that price and the pedigree are shorthand for quality.
I remember when a friend’s wealthy father had a birthday party and offered to let me pick out the first wine. I carefully perused the extensive wine list and picked out a modestly priced but respected Burgundy, thinking of how it might match well with the poached Arctic char. After that, the father flipped to the end of the thick wine list and explained, “I don’t know much about wine. I mostly just go by price.” He then proceeded to buy bottle after bottle of 1988 Chateau Montelena Estate cab that went for over ten times what my choice cost. I was happy to let him order for the rest of the night. Had Opus One been 10 bucks more than the Montelena, we would have drunk that all night.
Why did I own either bottle of wines I apparently despise? The Charles Shaw I bought out of curiosity. The Opus One was a generous gift. When I had both in my hands, it seemed like I had no choice but to have a face-off. Phil brews beer so he has a good palate but knows nothing about wine which made him the perfect candidate. I let him know what the bottles were but poured them for him blindly.
I wasn’t surprised when he insisted the Two Buck Chuck was the Opus One. It’s more fruit forward and what few tannins were there were uncomplicated while the Opus One, while the same vintage as the Shaw (1999), was probably a couple years too young to drink. He described it as being flavorless and harsh. Wine bigwig, Steven Tanzer, wrote that the ’99 Opus One was, “Rich, sweet and tactile, with complex, tangy flavors of crystallized blackcurrant, caraway seed and smoked meat.” Go figure. Meanwhile, the New York Times wine guy, Frank Prial, said the ’99 Charles Shaw was, “light, pleasant and easy to drink and has little varietal character…Nondescript would not be too harsh a characterization.”
You can see why many would find the cheaper wine more drinkable. It requires very little thought to process what you’re tasting. It’s wine, it’s inoffensive, drink more. In fact, a Charles Shaw wine won a California wine tasting. But half an hour or so after being opened, our Charles Shaw’s one dimensionality and acrid finish became more pronounced while the Opus One started to open up beautifully. It was still fairly austere but its layers of berries and violets and minerals became more evident...not to mention that it was rich, sweet and tactile? Plus something about seeds and smoked meat.
So what is the lesson to be learned from this? To gladly accept any Opus One that someone gifts you? Sure. For me it was that there is a threshold for things that are good “for the money.” I was already pretty sure that the Opus One was going to be delicious, just not $150 delicious. But on the low end of things, when do you stop compromising quality for the sake of cost? If your shampoo gives you a rashy scalp and causes your hair to come out in clumps, you can’t justify using it just because there was a 2-for-1 sale at the 99 Cents Store. The Two Buck Chuck wasn’t quite that bad but I want my wine to be more than “nondescript”; I want it to catch my attention and make me feel better about having drunk it. I’ll happily pay two dollars for that privilege but such a wine hasn’t yet passed my lips.
For those of you who have never been to a free art gallery opening or a fundraiser, Charles Shaw is a bargain wine known affectionately as “Two Buck Chuck,” as it sells for $1.99 a bottle in California ($2.99 elsewhere). The Bronco Wine Company purchased the label of Charles Shaw, a failed Napa vintner, and used his name on bottles of blended bulk wines that the company buys from bankrupt wineries. Fred Franzia, the founder of Bronco Wines, uses this tactic with many of his wines: buy the name of a defunct winery, blend surplus wines nobody wants with his own mass produced juice until the wine is palatable enough to sell for a modest profit. When you multiply that modest profit by the number of cases they sell per year – 20 frickin’ million – and you’re talking about some serious dough-re-mi.
In addition to the purchased labels – Napa Ridge, Rutherford, Montpellier, etc. – the Bronco marketing staff works tirelessly to come up with new, sellable winery names. Almost every bucolic sounding name you see slapped on a bottle in the wine section of your local grocery store is a Bronco wine. Sea Ridge, Crane Lake, Forest Glen, Silver Ridge, Salmon Creek – it reads like the Ralph Lauren paint catalog. There was a great article about Bronco in the New Yorker a few weeks ago that delves deeply into all their shenanigans.
On the other end of the spectrum is Opus One, the pretentiously named chez d’oeuvre of Robert Mondavi, produced in partnership with the Mouton Rothschild folks. It’s the type of wine that revels in how classy it is. Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” blasts out when you land on their home page just to remind you of their immense sophistication. For over $150 a bottle, their wine better wear white gloves and bring me watercress sandwiches. And then when you multiply that price times the 25,000 cases they produce annually – think of how much Two Buck Chuck you could buy!
If you can’t tell from my snarky tone, neither wine appeals to me that much. Even though my father has no problems with Charles Shaw – “It’s good!” – I’ve always found their wines to be flabby and characterless and sometimes cloying. Yeah, it’s decent for the price, but for a few bucks more you can get something that’s actually good, regardless of cost. With the Opus One, it’s the opposite. It’s good but then you think about how much it costs and think, “Is it $150 good?” Or should I have spent that money to save starving children in the Third World? Then it becomes impossible to enjoy the wine. But for many, that price and the pedigree are shorthand for quality.
I remember when a friend’s wealthy father had a birthday party and offered to let me pick out the first wine. I carefully perused the extensive wine list and picked out a modestly priced but respected Burgundy, thinking of how it might match well with the poached Arctic char. After that, the father flipped to the end of the thick wine list and explained, “I don’t know much about wine. I mostly just go by price.” He then proceeded to buy bottle after bottle of 1988 Chateau Montelena Estate cab that went for over ten times what my choice cost. I was happy to let him order for the rest of the night. Had Opus One been 10 bucks more than the Montelena, we would have drunk that all night.
Why did I own either bottle of wines I apparently despise? The Charles Shaw I bought out of curiosity. The Opus One was a generous gift. When I had both in my hands, it seemed like I had no choice but to have a face-off. Phil brews beer so he has a good palate but knows nothing about wine which made him the perfect candidate. I let him know what the bottles were but poured them for him blindly.
I wasn’t surprised when he insisted the Two Buck Chuck was the Opus One. It’s more fruit forward and what few tannins were there were uncomplicated while the Opus One, while the same vintage as the Shaw (1999), was probably a couple years too young to drink. He described it as being flavorless and harsh. Wine bigwig, Steven Tanzer, wrote that the ’99 Opus One was, “Rich, sweet and tactile, with complex, tangy flavors of crystallized blackcurrant, caraway seed and smoked meat.” Go figure. Meanwhile, the New York Times wine guy, Frank Prial, said the ’99 Charles Shaw was, “light, pleasant and easy to drink and has little varietal character…Nondescript would not be too harsh a characterization.”
You can see why many would find the cheaper wine more drinkable. It requires very little thought to process what you’re tasting. It’s wine, it’s inoffensive, drink more. In fact, a Charles Shaw wine won a California wine tasting. But half an hour or so after being opened, our Charles Shaw’s one dimensionality and acrid finish became more pronounced while the Opus One started to open up beautifully. It was still fairly austere but its layers of berries and violets and minerals became more evident...not to mention that it was rich, sweet and tactile? Plus something about seeds and smoked meat.
So what is the lesson to be learned from this? To gladly accept any Opus One that someone gifts you? Sure. For me it was that there is a threshold for things that are good “for the money.” I was already pretty sure that the Opus One was going to be delicious, just not $150 delicious. But on the low end of things, when do you stop compromising quality for the sake of cost? If your shampoo gives you a rashy scalp and causes your hair to come out in clumps, you can’t justify using it just because there was a 2-for-1 sale at the 99 Cents Store. The Two Buck Chuck wasn’t quite that bad but I want my wine to be more than “nondescript”; I want it to catch my attention and make me feel better about having drunk it. I’ll happily pay two dollars for that privilege but such a wine hasn’t yet passed my lips.
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