The Best of Budget Wine, PT. II

The phrase “The Best” is open to argument when the subject matter is California vintner and CEO of Bronco Wine Fred Franzia. Some swear by his product (a 2005 Chardonnay won a double gold medal at the 2007 California state fair), while others swear after drinking a $1.99 bottle of Charles Shaw (a.k.a. “Two Buck Chuck”). In this week’s “New Yorker” article, Mr. Franzia dismisses any blue language over his cut-rate red and white wine:

Talking about his wine, Franzia can sound like an old-fashioned Democratic populist, though personally he’s more of a Darwinian capitalist. “You tell me why someone’s bottle is worth eighty dollars and mine’s worth two dollars,” he says. “Do you get forty times the pleasure from it?” With Charles Shaw, which Bronco introduced in 2002, Franzia invented a category, known as “super-value”—wine that costs less than three dollars a bottle—that is now a significant segment of the marketplace.