Yesterday, completely out of the blue, I posted a stand-alone blog on "two-buck Chuck."
Now, today from The New York Times, I kid you not, I cannot make this up:
Archived.
Like many producers of popular, inexpensive wines, Bronco was always vague about where Charles Shaw came from. Most likely it was a combination of wine sold on the bulk market, because it was either surplus or not considered up to snuff, supplemented by wine made from Bronco’s vineyards — it owns more than 40,000 acres in California, mostly in the Central Valley, a hot, fertile expanse that is a source of grapes for many inexpensive wines.
Bronco now has a line of more expensive Shaw wines made, Bronco says, from organically grown grapes. That’s not Two-Buck Chuck.
How were the grapes farmed, and who provided the labor? What steps were taken at the winemaking facility to ensure some semblance of consistency, since the sources of the wine changed year to year? We can only guess.
It may not occur to many wine drinkers to ask these questions. But they do matter, especially if you are concerned about farming methods and conditions for agricultural workers. And they matter to people who care about where a wine comes from and whether it expresses the distinctive character of a place.
To be clear, Charles Shaw is not the only wine that raises these questions. A lot of wines, inexpensive and not, are made without regard for the environment and workers. As with fast fashion, the pleasure in the product and the price can obscure serious issues in the manufacturing.
Most people don’t really care about how wine is made or where it comes from. They just want an inexpensive drink that gives them a buzz and tastes good or, at least, doesn’t offend. A smaller group of wine lovers spend a considerable amount of time, energy and money on wine because they find it delicious, as well as rewarding intellectually and aesthetically.
A lot of people would never pay more than a modest price for a wine, regardless of how it’s made. But I do take issue with cynical companies that peddle false messages to consumers to hype their products.
Two-Buck Chuck did not damage American wine culture. But Mr. Franzia relentlessly told American wine drinkers that no wine could possibly be worth more than $10. “Elites,” he argued, were trying to brainwash people with all their talk about terroir and nuances.
“You tell me why someone’s bottle is worth $80 and mine’s worth $2,” he said in a 2009 profile in The New Yorker. “Do you get 40 times the pleasure from it?”
His message not only promoted his own company’s products, it also destroyed the notion that any wine could be better.
People who are passionate about wine knew better, but for others it confirmed a suspicion that wine was all a bunch of foolishness. And for people who might have been curious about wine, it raised doubts.
Charles Shaw and Charles Schwab. I often get them mixed up. LOL.
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