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Final Thoughts

This will be my final post, so it’s a doozy. Scroll all the way down the page to see each portion.

Touring Bronco Wine Co.

I got the chance to see where Charles Shaw is bottled and shipped from in Napa. Here are the highlights:

Fred Franzia is a simple man. He drives from his home in the Central Valley to Napa in an old truck with a ton of miles. He calls his workers a “hell of an asset”. He has delivered more than 500 million CASES of two buck chuck through one distribution channel, Trader Joe’s. The warehouse by the Napa airport holds 700,000 cases of wine. They produce 240 bottles per minute, or 50,000 cases per day on just one bottling line. He doesn’t like screwcaps. He runs a tight ship (you could eat off the floor). Trader Joe’s has only one liquor license in New York State, so it’s used at the Union Square store. A 2400 square foot facility that sells the most Charles Shaw in the Nation. A truck acts like a mobile warehouse circling around the block restocking the shelves when needed.

He makes a ton of wine under a ton of different brands. Chances are you have had his wine and didn’t even realize it (I served a sparkling wine and a cab at our wedding, both of which are produced by Bronco and I didn’t even know it until I took the tour).

He’s a nice guy that has a bad rap, all because he found a niche.

Tastings (Press samples):

Folie a Deux 2009 – Chardonnay, Merlot, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon $18 – $24, all very good – 88-90pts

Lodi Wine Country: Don’t dis these wines til you try em. My favorites included 2007 Bargetto Winery Old Vine Zinfandel 88pts ($19), 2007 VanRuiten Family Winery Zinfandel 92pts ($16), 2007 m2 “Artist Series” Zinfandel 92pts ($35) and the 2006 Mettler Family Vineyards Epicenter Zinfandel 90pts ($19).

Kosta Browne Wines:  Delicious Pinot Noir if you can find it.

Jackson Triggs Niagara Estate Winery: Inniskillin Icewine – Vidal Gold Icewine, Riesling Icewine, Cabernet Franc Icewine, every bottle was good, although my favorite was the Vidal Gold.

Brix Chocolate: Wine friendly Chocolates – Not bad but I still prefer cheese as a wine pairing.

Oakville tasting 2007′s:

Overrated wines: Far niente Cab, Futo Cab, Venge Cab, Opus One

Underrated: Swanson Cab, Gamble Family Cab, Ghost Block Cab, Kelham Vineyards Cab, Miner Cab, Paradigm Cab

Appellation St.Helena Tasting 2005′s:

Excellent: Vineyard 29 Aida Cabernet Sauvignon,Rockledge Cabernet, Salvestrin Cabernet, Corison Kronos Vineyard,  Jaffe Estate (Cab and Blend Great value), Stanton Vineyards Petite Syrah, Crocket & Starr Cab, Flora Springs Cab, Hall Cab, Raymond Cab

Mediocre: Whitehall Lane Cabernet, Wolf Family Cabernet, Spottswoode Cab, Titus Cab, Robert Biale Petite Syrah, Duckhorn Cab, Parry Cellars Cab

Lacking: Ehlers Estate Cabernet Franc, David Fulton Winery, Anomaly Blend, Casa Nuestra Cab,  Titus Zin, Vineyard 29 Aida Zinfandel

The Wines of Navarra Spain: I didn’t like most of the wines from the region. Very acidic for my palate. There was one stand out winery though: Tandem. They offer an 04 Cab/Merlot Blend that I gave 92 pts ($30). A 3 person winery started by 2 friends making some good wine from 20 year old vines.

PS I love you – Petite Syrah Tasting

Good: 2007 Parducci 92pts($12), 2006 Robert Foley 92pts($60), 2007 Aver Family Vineyards Blessings from Organic Grapes 92pts($45), 2005 Quixote Stags Leap 90pts($50), 2008 Michael David 90pts($18), 2007 Artizen 92pts($25), 2007 Cinnabar 92pts($36)

Final Thoughts

Consumers: Wine is a delicious beverage, but it is still just that. Don’t buy into the hype of expensive star produced wines. You can find same great caliber wines for a lot less from little known producers. Support your local wineries. Support your local retailers. Explore different varieties. Always drink in moderation.

Bloggers: Don’t do it for the money. Don’t accept samples, there are to many strings attached. Blog to inform your friends and maybe some other readers will come along for the ride. Stay grounded.

Take Care,

Jathan

P.S. You can still follow me at www.jatemack.com where I plan to revamp the site and blog about everything I enjoy, not limiting myself to one subject. I am busy building a online inventory management application for Used Car Dealers to post their used cars to Craigslist, and other vehicle advertising websites like Autotrader and Cars.com, as well as getting their own website that connects to social media. www.autoadmanager.com

Winexpression to Close

I must fly away to another flowerAfter almost 8 years, I have decided that my Wine Blogging journey has come to an end. Thanks to all the readers, PR staff, and fellow wine bloggers that supported me through this journey. I have a few posts to finish up and will explain a bit more, but basically this forum has run it’s course in my life and I am ready to move on. I have valued the feedback I have received and thank you all for your support. Stay tuned for a few more posts with the most valuable wine lessons I’ve learned, tips for wine bloggers, and some final reviews and notes from recent tastings I have attended.

Best,

Jathan.

How Much Does Wine Actually Cost?

These type of infographics reveal the actual cost of the materials used to make a bottle of wine, but fail to take into account everything else (similar to that forwarded email about the cost of the actual active ingredients in Medication), like the overhead of the winery including building/office cost, staff salaries and benefits, marketing, distribution mark up, taxes, and so on. However, it does reveal how all these years Fred Franzia has been able to produce a wine for only $2 and turn a profit. Small margins paired with huge volume and the cheapest materials possible.

So using the average numbers from the graphic, a bottle of Australian wine not aged in Oak costs $3, whereas a California Cabernet aged in Oak runs around $12 to produce.

Would it be cost efficient for more wineries to offer refillable large jugs/bottles for tasting room patrons? The Wine Garage in Calistoga does this already. I tasted the Bordeaux blend from them and it was quite delicious. Could they be on to something?

View [Snooth.com]

Winners Announced for Week of September 20th Contest

Congratulations to Ciara and Naomi! I’ll be emailing both of you with a list of books you can choose from.
Now how can you win this week?

The Contest

Just leave a comment below with your favorite type of music or a specific song you like to listen to when you drink wine.

The Rules

One entry per person please. Comments will be closed after October 4th, and a winner will be chosen at random and announced next week.

Paris Now Offers Carbonated And Chilled Water Fountains

Will the “Fizzy Fountain” take off in America? Probably not until food coloring and high fructose corn syrup are added. Nevertheless, this is a great idea that gets people to use refillable water bottles as opposed to wasting money and resources on the plastic alternative. This will cut down on the 4.5 million barrels of oil it takes each year to make the plastic water bottles purchased in Paris alone.

Bing Crosby’s Wine Cellar Preserves 1960 World Series Film

Image copyright Bing Crosby Enterprises

Bing Crosby at a game

Ahh the wine cellar, perfect for storing vintage films lost to time, or so the Bill Crosby estate executors found out when game 7 of the 1960 world series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Yankees was discovered perfectly preserved inside the San Francisco residence.

After Crosby viewed the 2-hour-36-minute game, probably in a screening room in the house, the films took their place in the vault, said Robert Bader, vice president for marketing and production for Bing Crosby Enterprises.

They remained there undisturbed until December, when Bader was culling videotapes of Crosby’s TV specials for a DVD release — part of the estate’s goal of resurrecting his body of work.

He spotted two reels lying horizontally in gray canisters labeled “1960 World Series.” They were stacked close to the ceiling with home movies and sports instructional films. An hour or so later, he found three others on other shelves. Intrigued, he screened the 16-millimeter film on a projector. It was Game 7, called by the Yankees’ Mel Allen and the Pirates’ Bob Prince — the complete NBC broadcast. The film had not degraded and has been transferred to DVD.

Read [NYTimes.com]

Single Serve Wine Glasses – Coming to the USA

Single Serve Wine Glasses

Would you buy wine packaged like this?

The glasses, actually recyclable plastic, come pre-filled with 187ml (6.3-ounces) of Shiraz, Chardonnay or rose and have a peel-off foil lid. They cost £2.25 each ($3.37), which makes them more expensive than buying the same wine by the bottle (four glasses add up to £9, whereas the bottle is £4.50).

Read [Wired.com]

Copa Di Vino Image

Copa Di Vino Photo

[Edit] : Reader Meghan H writes: I recently had a single serve wine in Washington at the Gorge Amphitheatre and it was really good!  I had to look it up, and I found your website on my way there.  It’s called Copa Di Vino www.copadivino.com  This product is really, really cool.  The glass is a little different, but is a lot more stable than the UK version looks- you could set it on a table and not worry at all!  I think they’re from Oregon, you should check it out.  (also recyclable)

Thanks for the tip Meghan! Please see photo.

Wine Film: Blood Into Wine

The story of Maynard Keenan James Winery Caduceus (pronounced Kah-dew-see-us) is being told through the lens in the new film Blood Into Wine, directed by Ryan Page & Christopher Pomerenke. Here’s the trailer:

Blood Into Wine
The film will be screened tomorrow night in the Bay Area at the Viz Cinema during the Noise Pop Film Festival (Buy tickets here, Event page here).

What the Wine.com API Release Means for Consumers

IMG 011It was announced today that wine.com has released it’s API, which is the framework that allows third party websites to link to it’s extensive online database. This means that some wine related website’s will choose to incorporate information from Wine.com into their site, allowing for more extensive information to be delivered directly to the end user. Think of what Google maps has done for the internet. There are an untold number of implementations of Google’s API on a hoard of different website’s. Wine.com is hoping to do the same thing.

But how many people actually buy wine through online retailers? According to a 2008 study by Vinquest:

U.S. wineries seem to think they sold about 2% of their wine through online wine retailers in 2007. Total sales through this channel were likely in the $200 to $400 million range for 2007

Not much when you look at the overall picture. There is definitely a lot of room for growth in the area. But is this what the average wine consumer wants? Or is it easier just to pick up a bottle from the local merchant or megamart and not have to wait or worry about shipping?

So far it seems the public has spoken.