If we were talking beer, would highlighting the difference between Busch Lite and a competent small volume brewer that costs 2x-3x per 12 oz unit be controversial?
People need to be less sensitive. I like the taste of Mountain Dew Baja Blast and drink it once or twice per year on road trips, but that doesn’t make it qualitatively good. And my feelings won’t be hurt if someone says Mountain Dew is an industrially produced soda. It has very high RS, very high acid, and synthetic citrus flavors, it’s sort of balanced, but it won’t be confused with fresh fruit juice blended with sparkling water.
Industrial wine, which is most (not all) mass market stuff, is no different. Like it, don’t like it, it’s basically a beverage product made to spec with the constraint of being grape-based. Generally sub-$20 you are going to get either a wine that is balanced, or a wine that is interesting, But rarely both balanced and interesting. Mass market is almost always going to take the ‘balanced’ option–though often the mass market concept of balance involves oak treatment and RS.
I read this whole thread. I enjoyed it. Just another early morning WB thread with no information, random mis-representations, subtle arguing over word choice, and the usual assortment of web chaos. Though kinda polite, for the Internet.
I’m waiting for someone to share the La Tâche taste-alike sold for $20 that invalidates the article.
One basic issue with wine is that it is simply more expensive than other alcohol beverages. And it also comes in a pretty awkward size/package, a 750 mL glass bottle, that usually should be drunk upon opening for best experience.
For my taste, beer usually is pretty tasty in the $10-$15 range per 6 pack. But I would generally rather have beer in that price rage than wine. Maybe my beer palate is not as developed, but comparing local craft breweries to local wineries, the ‘good’ entry point is about half as much for the former. Vinifera grapes are simply a more expensive ingredient, and the production costs inclusive of holding inventory prior to release are higher for wine.
I think it is good advice that if you are on a budget, a cocktail or craft beer is going to deliver more bang for the buck. Wine has unique attributes in the world of delicious liquids and can be worth the tariff–it often is for me–but either it takes careful vetting at low price points or a budget high enough to more reliably purchase wines that are both balanced and complex.
You asked me if I read the article. I said I did. Now you know.
I never said the headline was a quote.
You seem to be actively ignoring my point. It’s just as easy for a Somm like this to make the same point, that it takes a little bit more money to have a better chance of getting a great wine, without sounding snobbish. It’s all about tone. I’m not totally disagreeing with his point - some, but not totally. I’m disagreeing with how he, and others, say it.
Tone matters, sure, but not much. Anyone who talks about wine that costs more than $20 a bottle is going to be called an elitist. Heck, anyone who talks about wine at all on the Internet will be called an elitist. Or, anyone who talks about [insert any subject] on the Internet will be called a [insert insulting epithet].
I like wine though. And in the US there isn’t much below $20 worth drinking.
I took his quotes a completely different way. The parts of the article that are actually in quotations seem balanced and accurate. The somm effectively said that $25-30 is the price point where you see a noticeable difference in quality. The writer of the article is the one that said $30-60.
Similarly, the somm said most wine in the under $20 range is mass produced and uninteresting. I think we can all agree that the vast majority of wine sold in the US under $20, whether by volume or by label, falls in that category. There are absolutely outliers, and when you go to other countries things obviously change dramatically.
I also like his point about seeking out smaller producers. And inherently, smaller producers dont have the economies of scale that mass producers do.
I understand what youre getting at, I just think your discontent with the article should be more directed at the writing rather than the somm.
This is a fair point, but I do think there’s a difference between a professional whose job is to sell wine and educate, and is talking to a national-ish news outlet about it, and us shnooks (myself included) who post on this board. But yeah, someone who’s perfectly content buying $13 wine is usually gonna read it as snobbish no matter how tactfully the message is delivered,
Will someone please spill the beans on which domestic $20 wine is amazing? Not ‘good’ because many fill that basic niche. There’s a lot of posts about the problems with the somm commenting, but I would love to see which $20 wines invalidate his statements.
I suspect there are things in Vinho Verde category, and a fair number of crisp white wines that could fit this description…kind of. But mostly, even the classic values like German Riesling, Muscadet, and Beaujolais are all over $20 now.
Yeah I think especially in the US, there are few wines less than $20 one could consider “amazing”.
Even in Europe, purchasing directly, it’s hard to find wines that are “amazing” for $20 although I would say that when we were in Sicily visiting wineries, there were certainly wines for $15 or so that were fantastic. The same wine in the US would probably be $30, though. I have found some superb wines from Greece and the Balkans at <$20 in the US market, although that was a number of years ago, and they may be more now. I think many are distributed by Blue Ice?
To be fair, the somm quoted in the article never really used quite that level of superlative. The somm hedges it a bit more: “Anything that’s mass produced, I would tell people to try and avoid,” Osborn says.
To answer your question, for me, no, I don’t think I’ve ever had a domestic >$20 wine (at today’s price) that I’ve thought is “amazing”. Sub $30? A few that really close to, if not totally, amazing for me.
Honestly the closest domestic wine to “amazing” that I’ve had was the Williamette Valley Chard from Goodfellow; I have no idea how much it cost, I assume it’s close to be likely more than $20 (and no, Marcus didn’t pay me to say that).
I think Otto nailed it. There is an ocean of industrial swill under $20 in the US market, but over the past six months, I’ve found some very interesting wines with real complexity under that price point, for example:
Felsina Berardenga Chianti Classico
Charvin Cotes du Rhone
Trediberri Langhe Nebbiolo
As someone said, good whites are even easier to find.
Very appreciated Michael, the WV Chardonnay was $24ish for a while but with inflation in packaging costs and, especially, fuel surcharges it’s at $30 now. Which is unfortunate, as I think it’s important to try and deliver something for people to try that’s less than $25. We just can’t really do it anymore.
It got lost a little bit but as posted upstream, the $20 quote was:
“When you go to the store and you’re getting a wine that’s under $20, there’s a very good chance you’re looking at something that was mass produced and conventionally farmed with synthetic pesticides, fungicides, herbicides” [emphasis added].
And…
“the $25 to $30 price point is where…’ you start to get some identity expression’ in your wine.”
