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The Vintners World Wide are Fighting it. But Wine Prices Continue to Fall in Every Category. With a Little Effort You can get the Pleasure of Finding Real Values. We Help The situation in Australia defines the vintners problem world wide. They have an excess inventory of 100 million cases of Chardonnay, Cabernet, Shiraz, Merlot etc. That is 1.2 BILLION bottles. It certainly invites alcoholism big time. But this is Champagne Season so let's deal with that first from the bottom up. Stay away from the ultra low end Cooks & Andre etc at around $5 or even where it belongs at $2.99. The only thing those two will give you is a headache. They are overly sweet cheap white wines injected with sugar to mask its inferior quality and Co2 to create fake bubbles or on rare occasions some are fermented with the bulk Charmat process which is then only mediocre rather than basically awful. Under every occasion do not fall for Extra Dry as an indication of flavor quality and theessential dryness. It is a clear misnomer and is actually somewhat sweet. Choose only "Brut" or "Brut Natural" which is a bit drier. For only about a buck more you can buy what many afficionadoes think is the best overall wine value in the world. We have hyped it for the last 5 years. Every one has loved it. It is "Cristalino" Brut, a Sparkling Wine from Spain. It is created using the classic "Champenois Francaise" double fermentation process that is the same as used by "Dom". The grapes used are similar but come from Spain instead of the overly restricted Champagne district of France 60 miles Northeast of Paris. Amazingly in 2010, Cristalino has come out with perhaps a slightly better offering with their magnum of "Cristalino Nature Brut". It is slightly drier and ranges in sale price from $10 (for a double bottle) to $16 when not on sale. it can be found at Cost Plus or Vons. The magnum is a magnificent hostess gift that will raise your wine IQ reutation while providing about 16 flutes of a great party warmer upper. People will rave about your choice. In 5 years we have not had a single negative reaction except from France. If you require a low end domestic choice, consider the various offerings from Korbel, They offer extra dry, Brut and Natural at around $8 fermented Charmat style. They have been very slightly down in quality the last few years but are still dramatically better than the fakes named at the top. Next on the list of domestics is Gloria Ferrer Brut at around $12, Louis Roeder Reserve Brut (The French parent makes the $175 per bottle "Cristal") and finally a surprise this year with domestic appeal also because of its French heritage "Mumms Brut" at $20 and the fun Mumms Rose which is just a touch sweeter and also has a bit of romantic appeal because of the Pink bubbles. Prosecco sparklers from Italy also now are fairly priced but can be a bit sweet. But Don't be taken in by continued hype from the French Champagne makers who are trying to maintain high profitable prices while their shelves are loaded with last year's inventory. In fact, in a collusive act that would throw them in jail in the U.S. they combined to reduce acreage this year. Stay away from overpriced and overrated "Dom" or now Veuve Cliquot or Moet White Star. Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy sadly exploits all three. Dom is not worth $110. Many lesser known French (see below) are superior at 1/2 the price. Veuve and White Star among others can now be found at $33 and $23 respectively In the last two weeks approaching New Years , the French have gotten rather nervous so you can havesome fun if you have the time to be a bargain hunter. If you must have French, look for values from Duvall Leroy, Laurent Perrier, Feaulatte and Taittinger at under $40 only. Upscale go for Charles Heidseck in the $50 or $60. Or settle for a bottles of Charles Krug at $175 to $750 with your anticipated tax savings next year. Regular wines???? There are so many values out there from Napa, Sonoma, Paso Robles and Santa Ynez that you may be overwhelmed. Although a bit late the best answer is to choose a few that are interesting, taste them and then perhaps buy multiples. My value choices during this rather heavy drinking period are a red and a white under $10 that are worth at least $20. Shockingly, the great red values with label appeal come from the Provence area of South East France. Look for Perrin and Fils Cotes du Rhone at under $10 . For $2 bucks more consider Norton Malbec from Argentina. If you are looking for big name romantic esteem, the Provence offers the worldly Chateauneuf du Pape at amazing Avignon- Rhone Valley value starting at $30. $50 used to be the base price. Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc from new Zealand can now be found for less than $10. It is astonishing and maybe the best selling white wine in the world since it is better than Chardonnay with food especially with the marginal planting areas from which which much Chardonnay now comes. For more domestic ideas for Holiday values see below or.... Please e- mail me for any specific need or suggestion at Fredlich1@aol.com. I stay up all night to answer every single e- mail during this frenetic Year End. FrankAboutFood.com ...always at your service. Read On!!!! A Wine Wisdom Plus FrankAboutFood.com 10 Wine Spectator O
Slightly Blurred !!! But Very Serious
Those scores above should put me in some " Playoffs” ........somewhere,,,, With typical immodesty, I do see my self playing against the above vaunted journalistic powers except in the area of compensation. They each get about $100 a year from you for their supposedly sophisticated wine info (usually late) , rarely in your real interest........ while my services are free to you much earlier on wines that you can also actually find and afford. Please tell your wine imbibing friends all about FrankAboutFood. com. Subscription is freeeeee!!!!. You see: The big story about the above negotiant Cameron Hughes appeared in a full page article as a revelation in the Wall Street Journal.......... last week. I wrote about Cameron 9 months ago. Score 9-1 The Wine Spectator excitedly announced wine prices are dropping …. after the important end-of-season buying period of 2009 I reported it 10 months earlier. Score !0- 0. In case you missed my first Cameron Hughes story, here is a short reprise.
The negotiants of Burgundy rarely own vineyards or grow grapes. They buy the grapes via long term contracts from small growers from Dijon in the north to the gastronomic area south near Lyon. They have little control over the actual agricultural responsibilities. Thus they do take delivery of the grapes and then usually crush, age, and bottle. Then they label and market So, most of the names that you may see on the wines of Burgundy such as George Duboeuf , Bouchard et Fils, Mommessin etc are not the growers. They are the bottlers, financiers and marketers who do have long term contracts with the farmers. Cameron Hughes is a similar financier and marketer. However he probably does not crush nor age the wine And by intent he has no long term contracts. Instead of some level of continuity, he offers astounding values and savings of up to 75%. He does this by locating excellent grapes that are very often already crushed, aged and often bottled wines. They can be very fine wines that are languishing in distress..... in the vintners warehouse. Cameron and his lead taster, (previously a winemaker) Sam Spencer seem to have that elusive palate that finds these wines that are fair retails at $50 or more. They may offer as little as $5 cash per bottle, put the Cameron Hughes label on it and sell it to the big names throughout the country such as Sam’s Club and Costco. who retail it for $12.95 or recently under $10. Many vintners call Cameron a scavenger who bottom feeds. They are often bitter but will eagerly take his money when they need it. to survive Cameron operates in the same sophisticated manner as today's popular and aggressive fashion marketers have done for ages such as TJ Max, Ross, Steinmart and Kohl's who live on the mistakes of others. They deliver quality, style and true value to satisfy most consumers at prices that are within one's budget.
The other serious undertaker is Castle Rock with a huge warehouse in Napa that broke the Pinot Noir value level about three years ago. It now offers realistic values across the board at all levels but somehow is a bit weak in whites. At a much, much lower level, that is what Fred Franzia of Bronco Wines also does via an exclusive deal with Trader Joe for “Two Buck Chuck. In 8 years He has sold 600,000,000 bottles at $2 retail. Read Fred’s bio still showing at the end of this article. Hughes is obviously much more discriminating and only sells about 1,000,000 bottles a year.
Two Buck Chuck A Great
New HBO Series??
Think “The Wine Sopranos” If you think “Sideways” was a story about wine worth telling and a film worth making, wait until you hear about this one. It may be impossible to believe. But the Charles Shaw Label or “Two Buck Chuck” has been on the market at Trader Joes for eight years and is approaching 1,000,000,000 ( not a misprint) bottles sold at $1.99 in California and $2.99 in the other 49 states. And it has all been done by a third generation XXXL ":wise guy". with that classic Northern Italian wine Heritage. He essentially operates his privately owned Bronco Wines as a one man grape growing, grape crushing..... and deal making biz (whatever it takes !!!!) with a little help from "the boys" of La Famiglia, brother Joey Franzia and cousin Johnny. Franzia. His name is Fred Franzia (Think Tony Soprano and family) and he does have very, very serious chops that go back to Italy 117 years ago. His grandfather Guiseppe Franzia had then emigrated from Genoa in 1893 and quickly went to work in the grape fields around Modesto. He soon had his own farm. His future wife, Teresa whom he had never met before, was sent to him from Genoa. From this arranged marriage they conceived and raised 5 sons and 2 daughters. When prohibition ended, hardworking, entrepreneurial and now Grandma Teresa saw an opportunity. She announced to her 5 sons, while Grandpa was still visiting and fooling around somewhere back in Italy, that the family would go into their own wine business. During Prohibition she grew grapes on the road from Modesto to Yosemite and sold them to Italian home winemakers in the New York -Hoboken area. Somehow she was able to borrow $5,000 from her Genoese "Paisan", Amadeo Gianinni, founder of the The Bank of Italy (soon after to merge with the Bank of America) and she and her boys started..... Franzia Brothers. Freddy and Joey were born during this time to one of Theresa's sons, Guiseppe # 2 But the hardworking tough Grandma was the one to became Freddy’s true role model. During all those years she worked the bottling line 9 hours daily and still cooked dinner every night featuring home made pasta..... with that marvelous Genoese Pesto sauce........ for the entire family . While all of this was going on, Ernest Gallo married one of the grandma's two daughters. She then loaned this son-in-law the $5,000 needed to go into his own wine business. You know what happened to Ernie and his brother Julio. Gallo and Sons now do well over a Billion a year. But little nephew Freddy quietly now does more than $500 million with his unique multi faceted approach. He crushes his own 350,000 tons. Only Gallo, the largest vintner in the world crushes more. Freddy had graduated from Santa Clara University and went to work as a salesman for the already very successful Franzia Brothers. They made lots of cheap sweet wines that then appealed to the average street guy. It was port, sherry and muscatel, plentifully produced in that very fertile and sunny San Joaquin Valley. But his father and uncles then cashed out to an investment group that took it public and it later was sold to Coca Cola. who eventually sold it to another large wine company. Franzia Wine Is now known primarily for its "Wine in a Box"
In the same time period, Robert Mondavi was establishing Napa as a premium wine area with that low yielding tough gravelly soil and the climate that is needed to produces the premium wines. They would compete with the Bordeaux Cabs and Burgundy Chardonnays of France. This soil and heavy pruning however, produces only 4 tons per acre while Freddie’s more fertile San Joaquin acreage could produce 12 tons and the price of each acre was about 1/10th the price of Napa real estate.... or less. It has been rumored that Francis Ford Coppola paid $300, 000 plus per acre for some choice (?) Napa land. Freddy didn't go to Stanford for an MBA as all the Gallo kids did. But he quickly understood the economics of this new game of which he now made himself a part. (he understood costs and what his edge could be). The Napa Cabernet and Sonoma Chardonnay wine explosion then began. He was a risk taker not adverse to cutting serious corners while challenging that entrenched upscale Napa hierarchy. ....... .... and the legal system. Thus he started buying up labels such as Napa Ridge, Napa Creek, Domaine Napa etc., planning to put them with his Modesto grown wines or distress wines bought by the tanker-load.. You see, because of a grandfather loophole, he was able to put the Napa Ridge label on those low cost grapes for supermarkets to sell at about $5 retail since that name had been in play before 1986. He also bought The Charles Shaw label around then. It was a very respected Napa name that had gone bankrupt because of high living by the owners followed by a messy divorce. But he shelved that name... until 2002 because the stars had not yet lined up. In the early 2000s, in another rather clever and timely act, the Bronco bottling facility broke ground .......... in the town of Napa....... with a capacity of triple that area's total production, Reality then finally sank in to those dozing vintners. The Napa Valley Vintners Association prevailed on Governor Davis to sign legislation that closed that 1986 Napa loophole. Franzia sued as unconstitutional but eventually lost the right to use the Napa Ridge name in 2006. So What!!! In the interim, those stars lined up for Bronco. Over-zealous. optimistic and overpriced production within California by a bunch of those arrogant dozing dilettantes of wine created unwieldy domestic varietal wine surpluses. They also faced inroads from Australia, New Zealand and others from the Southern Hemisphere. Those foreign interlopers had lower real estate costs. lower production costs.......and little debt, Does that sound familiar? Freddy was waiting.. He is a very, very ruthless buyer. He paid as low as $1 or $2 a GALLON for casually drinkable varietals such as Cab, Merlot and Chardonnay. He already had the hi-tech skills and equipment in place to anticipate and reject any of the real trash. You can produce Five 750 ml bottles from one gallon.....Five ...............Do the math. Freddy surely did. So with all those brilliant moves, he combined penny prices with that esteemed Charles Shaw Napa aura and almost zero distribution costs. You see, he sold directly to the nearby and very high volume Trader Joe’s. Thus, no agents fees, low transportation costs and 2 day delivery for fast turnover. Trader Joe’s loved that magical $1.99 price point They had the wine sold before they even received an invoice. Everybody loved Bronco and Freddie....... except Napa wineries. You see that new bottling plant now allowed him to legally state...... on that Charles Shaw label that the wine was... bottled and cellared in …Napa. He then put that label on whatever semi-decent Cabernet, Merlot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and even Pinot Noir that measured up. Already crushed wine was then tanked in bulk to Napa from surplus sources all over the state or from his own vines,. some of which now actually have Pinot Noir grapes grafted on to them in The San Joaquin Valley. All these wines were often cynically described as "Freeway Aged" by those enraged Napsters .Skeptical pro wine tasters stated they had to deal with a "A moving target".. Get it? But Trader Joe wine consumers were always seen smiling..The economy has soured and the surpluses have mounted. Now many of those Napa Valley vintners who sneered at Freddy, come to him to sell him Napa grown varietal grapes in order for them to pay harvesting fees. That giant bottling plant is 30 minutes from their vines. A 99 Cents Spence from Napa soon? Freddy doesn't doze!!!.Oh Yeah! I forgot. In 1994 Freddy pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by falsely labeling grapes. He personally paid a fine of $500 thousand and Bronco paid $2.5 million. The Grand Jury indictment said that in the late 80s and early 90s he misrepresented more than one million gallons of wine worth 5 million dollars in the bulk market by offering a lesser Modesto grape as the varietal Zinfandel. He instructed Zinfandel leaves to be scattered over his local vines in an act he called “Blessing The Load”. The judge ordered him to step down from the Board of Directors and as CEO for 5 years. His brother Joey became CEO and President.... on the stationery. Freddy accepted the job of chief financial officer. But he still sat in the big office. Today he is again Chairman and CEO again. Brother Joey (see Woody Allen below) and cousin Johnny are now co-presidents???. Freddy applied to “Dubya” for a pardon. He was rejected. Bronco Wines is now the largest grower of grapes in the U.S. with 40,000 acres in production beneath 250 million vines!!! But he not only produces for himself, he still sells to other wineries and also buys large distress lots of wines from troubled competitors or growers. Gallo out-sources most of their grapes from contract growers and then crushes. Of course Fredrick Franzia still retains that Italian Joe Pesci street heritage with that traditional ego.... and the eternal Casanova eye for the ladies.. So there are rumors that he is seeking to self finance his story and offer it to HBO as a series. He certainly may think James Gondolfini is right for the lead with Scarlett Johannson (Sorry Edie) as his trusted in-house accounting manager. Scarlett likes to appear in Woody Allen productions so, as noted, he could play Freddy’s "schlemiel" brother.. and direct. Freddy now has a very attractive and worldly young lady running his very active computerized accounting system. He says he really needs her. The End ......seriously P.S Check info on his new Blue Fin Label at $4.
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Freddy was furious with his father, Guiseppe #2, for selling out.
He quit
and started Bronco Wines with his
“Goombas”, brother Joey and cousin Johnny in that same San Joaquin Valley
area. Where they got the money is unclear. Maybe rather now rich Grandma Teresa was still
alive and gifted her three grandsons. From the start Freddy was "Il Capo"
the
unchallenged boss.