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 and 600,000,000 ( not a misprint) bottles
have been 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 116 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
the winemaking 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
her 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 about $500 million with his unique multi
faceted approach. He crushes 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"
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.
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
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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