House Wine Brands
I meant to post this earlier, but then Fourth of July got in the way and print is essentially dead to me. Oh, well, the fireworks, beer, and freedom are worth it, but I don’t like getting newspaper ink on my fingers.
Anyway, the June 30, 2006 issue of The Wall Street Journal has a great article about house wine brands being sold by places like Target and 7-Eleven. Flip to page W1 and W5 for the whole story. I won’t reproduce the whole article here, but you should definitely see if you can find a copy lying around your barbershop or doctor’s office.
Many stores are now getting into the generic wine business due to the success of Trader Joe’s Two Buck Chuck. In the last five years, “private-label” wine sales have quintupled, and analysts expect this trend to continue. To see if these wines are actually worth the few dollars you need, Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher of the WSJ bought wines at Albertsons, Costco, Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Kroger, Safeway, ShopRite, Target, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods Market, Cost Plus World Market, and 7-Eleven. Then, they created a Dow Jones Chain-Store Wine Index including all of the medium-rated wines. There none listed on the high end of the tasting scale.
Anyway, the best of tasting were Kroger’s chardonnay Arrow Creek 2004 (California), Albertsons’s sauvignon blanc Origin 2005 (Western Cape, South Africa), Albertons’s cabernet sauvignon Origin 2001 (Coonawarra, Australia), and Kroger’s merlot Parkers Estate ‘North Peyton Block’ 2004 (Sonoma County). The best values were Target’s chardonnay Wine Cube 2005 (South Australia), Cost Plus World Market’s cabernet sauvignon Aaku 2004 (South Australia), and Kroger’s merlot Arrow Creek 2003 (California).
Considering that all of these wines ranged from $3.99-$24.99, though, it seems to me that you can easily buy name brand vintages from the USA and Australia for about the same price and even throw in some better recent French vintages on the high end. You still won’t get the cream of the crop, but it might look better than serving something clearly from 7-Eleven. Plus, no one really expects you to serve Lafite anyway.
