Meatloaf Mondays–how about a little merlot alongside the mac and cheese? Or perhaps a nice chardonnay to complement that Hungry Man chicken?
Sound decadent? Hardly. Just drop the aristocratic airs, plunk down a few singles and sip away.
A top-notch vino is no longer a stuffy luxury for those with deep pockets. Thanks to a glut of grapes and a slew of quality blends from overseas, quality wine has never been more bountiful–or cheap.
“It’s a very, very good time to be a wine consumer,” said Dan Thompson, publisher of The Wine Report. “This has been going on for a couple of years and will go on for a couple more.”
Within a week or two, Sam’s Club stores will be offering Palamon, a California cabernet sauvignon that will be sold in two-packs for $9. Target will be selling 1.5-liter cubes of several varieties in October. And Lost Vineyards, a New York company, is negotiating with distributors for shelf space in the near future.
On the West Coast, wines with a $1.99 price tag have revolutionized wine drinking and lured a whole new consumer into placing a bottle on the kitchen table alongside the salt and pepper shakers.
“For too long, Americans have been convinced that wine has to be a special-occasion beverage and the only wine worth drinking is an expensive one,” said Andrea Immer, wine consultant and sommelier for Target stores and one of 13 female master sommeliers in the country.
Immer, who hosts “Simply Wine With Andrea Immer” on the Fine Living network, teamed up with the discount giant two years ago and hand-selected a line of products that were once considered laughable: boxed wines.
Target’s 3-liter “wine cubes” sell for $15.99, which equates to about four bottles of wine. A smaller version, the 1.5-liter cube, will debut for $8.99.
“The challenge to the wine industry is clear because of how well consumers have responded to everyday-priced wines,” Immer said.
One label in particular fermented this trend. California-based Charles Shaw, part of Bronco Wine Co., unveiled its line of wines at the unheard-of price of $1.99 a bottle 2 1/2 years ago.
Surprising everyone, this juice was good. Very good.
So much so that even snooty wine connoisseurs were snapping up cases of Two-Buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s stores.
Their moniker: closet Chuckies.
“Charles Shaw has taught everybody a lesson: Good wine doesn’t have to be expensive,” said Harvey Possert, spokesman for Charles Shaw. “The competitors and people who do not want to meet these price points would like it to end tomorrow. It’s accurately seen as a phenomenon.”
There’s good reason to boast. Earlier this month, the winery celebrated the sale of its 10 millionth case.
So why has quality wine suddenly become so affordable?
An overabundance of grape plantings in the mid- to late 1990s resulted in a bountiful harvest of high-quality grapes. Countries such as Argentina, Australia and Portugal also began producing notable varieties. The market was flooded with impressive wines.
“Two-Buck Chuck has brought it into the spotlight,” said Bob Paulinski, Sam’s Club’s national wine buyer. “Winemaking is so much more advanced than [it was] 10 to 15 years ago that the quality is so much higher.”
Price is undoubtedly vital in courting the swell of new wine drinkers, a much younger and less stuffy lot than their forefathers.
“The next generation is the Millennium Generation, and they’re drinking much more than Generation X,” said Doug Bell, East Coast wine buyer for Whole Foods.
“They go for quality and packaging. There’s a lot of people out there to drink this wine.”
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale (cdipasquale@tribune.com) and Kris Karnopp (kkarnopp@tribune.com)
