I Liked That Cheap Wine Last Month and Now It's Horrible

I've heard from many people that Charles Shaw Wines, aka Two-Buck (or now Three-Buck) Chuck is a great value -- inexpensive and pretty good. And, then I heard from some of the same people that it's not so good anymore. What happened?

Well, it turns out that Charles Shaw is what is known as a negociant. That's not a good thing or a bad thing; it's just a thing, so to speak. What it means is that it is a company that does not grow its own grapes. In fact, it might not even pick its own grapes. It might just buy the juice.

So, Charles Shaw doesn't necessarily know what Charles Shaw is getting. So, if Charles Shaw labels a wine as Cabernet Sauvignon from California, it does meet all the rules. The grapes are from California and at least 75% of them are Cabernet. But, the rest is certainly unknown to you and me and it might even be unknown to the good people at Charles Shaw.

If you are producing wine for $3 per bottle, and understanding that you do have a cost for the bottle and for the label, your input, that is your juice, cannot be very expensive. What negociants do is they find 'leftover' grapes and juice. That might be excess products that a winery doesn't want to use. They might be from grapes that that winery thought were substandard -- below the level of quality on which they would their own label.

Some negociants charge much higher prices for their wines than what we have discussed thus far. For example, Louis Jadot, largely in Burgundy, and Cameron Hughes, likely mostly in California, produce wines that are often in the $15-20 range and sometimes more than double that. 

So, a negiciant does exactly what the term suggests -- he finds overruns that he can buy on the cheap. Perhaps the grapes or juice have a deficiency of some type understanding that a Chardonnay deficiency from a high-end producer in Meursualt or Montrachet might not be a deficiency to you or me. But, if they are bottling at less than $3, they are not likely buying overruns from high-end wineries, they are buying the least expensive they can find. And, when they do, they might not be taking great care in how they mix and blend the juice in any particular lot.

So, let's consider Napa Valley, for example. A reasonable number of wineries have already said that they will either not be producing a 2020 vintage of Cebernet or if they do, they will be declassifying (selling under a different label rather than risking damage to their own brand). So, a negociant might take a chance that at the low prices, their drinkers will not notice the smike taint. 

Consider Napa high-end winery that refuses to bottle the 2020 vintage. Well, they might like to get something for their grapes. So, they will sell them to a negociant for whatever they can get. The negociantt will then turn around and bottle the wine from those grapes perhaps blended with grapes from other parts of California to produce a California Cabernet. 

What will it taste like? Who knows? That's always the case with a negociant-produced wine. You just don't know.

So, going back to our original example of Charles Shaw wines. Yes, they have had some vintages that have been quite pleasing to many people that buy that brand. But, in some other year, that same exact-looking bottle might just be atrocious. It might have that horrible smoke-taint. It might have been left on the vine too long and be a veritably hot, alcohol bomb. Or, it might be really tasty.

So, when you buy wine from a negociant brand, particularly an inexpensive one, you're rolling the dice. The better ones on the other hand do take more care and you are more likely to get predictably drinkable wines. 

But, this is why you might have loved your first bottle of Two-Buck Chuck and thought your second was absolutely undrinkable.