Fifteen bucks for a single bottle?? Sheeze, you rich guys really like to brag. If I feel like puttin' on the ritz it's down to Trader Joe's for a case of Two Buck Chuck (Charles Shaw). By the time you're half way through the second bottle it's pretty good stuff.
Mort
It has been a while since I had any 'Two Buck Chuck', but as I recall, the Sauvignon Blanc was the best offering they had, which compared with decent wines costing 4 or 5 times as much. And was better than many that cost 4 or 5 times as much. For the reds, I liked the Merlot best, which surprised me, because I am not a big fan of Merlot. It isn't very good, but it is drinkable, which is amazing for $2 (in California). I prefer drinking better wines, but the value, especially in California, of the Charles Shaw Sauvignon Blanc is amazing.
If you want to step up to a decent red that is commonly available, you might want to go with a Louis Jadot Beaujolais. You should be able to get it for $10 or less. Everything I have had from Louis Jadot is good, but the prices tend to go up faster than the quality. Their Beaujolais is a great value (though it may not seem that way to someone used to spending $2 for a bottle of wine).
With reference to the original article, some years ago
Consumer Reports hired some professional wine tasters and had them do double blind tests with various sparkling wines. (Usually, the "blind" tastings professionals do are not truly blind, where they just cover up the label and pretend that one cannot tell by the bottle shape and color what it might be. So very often, the wine taster knows what it is before they ever take a sip.) In the
Consumer Reports taste test, which was of Brut sparkling wines (only some of which were Champagnes), a Piper-Heidsieck beat out a vintage Dom Pérignon by the wine experts. The Piper-Heidsieck can sometimes be had for as little as $30 or occasionally even slightly less, though typically sells for a bit more, and the Dom Pérignon cost over $100. Both, however, were judged "excellent", and not significantly different in quality. I tried the Piper-Heidsieck based on that, and I must say, I think it is about as good as wine gets.
This reminds me of a documentary on wine I saw on PBS some years ago, in which it was said that the cost of wine was largely a matter of what the market would bear, and had little to do with the cost to make it. At that time (which was probably 10-20 years ago), they said that even a small vineyard did not have costs high enough to justify any wine costing more than $20 retail for a regular bottle. Anything higher than that was simply a matter of charging people what they are willing to pay, without any reference to any special expense in making it. Of course, with inflation for the past 10 or 20 years, now the cost is probably higher than just $20, but it still is no where near what some wines cost to buy. It might now justify a cost of $30 or even $40, but probably no more.
I have been less impressed with
Consumer Reports more recent recommendations of wines; Yellow Tail reds tend to be syrupy sweet and therefore awful, in my opinion. But they have not tended to say how they have tested their wines more recently, and perhaps they have had just the regular staff taste the wines. Yellow Tail is, I am told, one of the most popular, if not the most popular, imported wines in the U.S. Apparently, syrupy sweet is considered to be good by many people. Of course, it is also quite cheap, so that helps with sales.
A good sweet wine that I have not had in many years was a Carl Graff Piesporter Goldtröpfchen Auslese. ("Carl Graff" is the winery, "Piesporter Goldtröpfchen" is the grape variety, and "Auslese" means that it was a late harvest of the grapes [later than "Spätlese", and earlier than "Eiswein"].) This is a white wine; I have never had a good sweet red wine. Its sweetness seemed to be derived from the fruit, whereas the syrupy sweetness of Yellow Tail tastes like they have added corn sweetener or some such thing to it. The difference in taste is significant.
Edited to add:
I just noticed that you said a case of Charles Shaw. So you are talking about spending $24 on wine. Some people prefer to get one really good bottle for that amount, instead of a lot of less than stellar wine. Of course, if you are talking about the Charles Shaw Sauvignon Blanc, it is hard to argue with your choice.
