The Two Buck Chuck Roundup: A Former Winemaker Reviews All 8 Bottles So You Don't Have To
It went about how I expected...
There’s a particular kind of humbling that only happens when you’ve spent a decade making wine by hand, sorting grapes at midnight, arguing with barrels, obsessing over brix levels like they were your children’s report cards and then you find yourself standing in the Trader Joe’s wine aisle on a Wednesday night years later, loading eight bottles of Charles Shaw into your cart because it’s $3.99* and you have a mortgage.
This is my life now. I made peace with it. Mostly.
For ten years I ran a small garage winery and ten years before that I was a hobby wine maker Real wine. The kind where you actually worry about things like pH balance and whether your yeast is happy. Then 2008 happened, the economy went sideways, and the winery went with it. I had to shut it down in 2014. These days my most sophisticated wine decision is whether to grab the Cabernet or the Pinot Grigio from a guy named Charles Shaw. Well it it’s actually the Bronco Wine Company, but that is neither here nor there.
So here’s what you’re getting in this review that you absolutely will not get anywhere else: someone who actually knows what they’re tasting. Not in a pretentious swirling and sniffing way… well, okay, there will be some of that, but in a “I understand exactly what corners were cut to get this wine to $3.99” kind of way. And trust me, some corners were absolutely sprinted past. They are going for a low price and clean wine, not something you want to lay down for 10 years in your cellar. Its drink now wine.
So, a couple of days ago, I tasted all eight Charles Shaw varieties so you don’t have to make the same mistakes I did. Some of them surprised me. Most of them did not. All of them were drinkable (except for one), which in the Two Buck Chuck universe counts as a five star review.
Let’s do this.
