I never liked beer when I first started, but I forced myself to drink it anyway. Love me a good beer now and drink more when visiting Europe than I do wine except for dinner.
This is bringing wines to people who like wines but don’t want to know anything about it that taste good to them. I think this is a positive. This does not bother me the way say Rolland wines do. These guys are taking mediocre or worse terroir and making something palatable from it. Too many consultants are taking good terroir and making junk from it. That is a shame, this is positive.
While I don’t drink or make wines she’s talking about I do agree you have to start some were. I was at Sonoma State in the wine business program when 2 buck chuck hit the shelfs. The college parties instantly went from kegs and hard liquor to cases and cases of 2BC. Many consumed right from the bottle with no need for a glass. Put the whites in the freezer or ice chest to get them cold enough to swallow. Many of those folks got good jobs after school and have graduated to premium wines.
In college I would but the cheapest bottles I had not had before. Many were undrinkable but I figured I had to push thru the cheap stuff to really appreciated the good stuff later in life. I ate fast food some back then as well and can’t remember the last time I did at least 10 years ago.
Entry level wines are needed to bring in new consumers. However I do think most consumers don’t realize there wine is being engineered as much as some foods are. The marketing has done a good enough job most just dont realize anything other than grapes or sulfur are added. I do think ingredients lists would help a lot, though take away some of the mystique of wine being a traditionaly made beverage. I also think residual sugar (or nutritional info so you could see calories from sugar) would also help consumers learn better what they like. So many of the lower end wines are perceptibly sweet and thats fine if you like that but if you think you like dry wine its hard to get something that pleases you at a restaurant, wine shop, winery.
Aaron, I take your point about drinking what you like, along with the idea of starting at the “low” end and maybe over time working up to the quality stuff. Fine by me. But that’s only part of the point. What this article talks about is new ways of manipulating wine to make it please as many drinkers as possible while remaining cheap. That’s rather different from what we’ve had in the past–for instance I can remember cheap stuff sold in French supermarchés that cost less than coca-cola, was in a keg (you brought your own bottle), and was so tannic that you had to cut it with water to make it palatable. Fine, that has its place and poses no special problem, but it wasn’t designed by focus groups or fancy-pants manipulation.
Oh, yeah, post some photos of the cellar and provide a list of the wines and we will be the judges of those two things. That’s what we do here. You’re welcome.
I guess it depends how long ago you mean by “in the past”, but Gallo and probably a couple of other producers have been doing this for quite a long time. The technology is more advanced now, but it has been the same idea. Figure out what the largest segment of consumers want and make wines that fit the mold. Then there are entire regions that have more or less done this type of thing. Look at Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, Mendoza Malbec, Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon (not cheap, but still worthy of comparison), and so many other entire categories where the vast majority of producers are basically following a model of success, which has been figured out by less efficient versions of a similar process to that used by the mass market producers.
Wine now aged in former Bourbon barrels lends credence to the thesis of this article. Add to this the recent James Laube article in WS that discusses how the price of land in Napa is making it virtually impossible for a mom & pop winery to gain a foothold, it’s no wonder why we’re seeing a plethora of wines that taste like they were birthed from a factory. I can find no better example than Meomi Pinot Noir, which I call “Mommy crack”.
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