The Franzia Challenge ( cheap wines vs. good wines )

[Boris]

I'm not exactly a wine connoisseur but I'm pretty sure I could distinguish between a $10 bottle and $50 dollar bottle, assuming the $50 bottle was not a rip off.

[z28dreams]

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I'm not exactly a wine connoisseur but I'm pretty sure I could distinguish between a $10 bottle and $50 dollar bottle, assuming the $50 bottle was not a rip off.

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We'll find out... results will follow [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[KDawg]

I'd be more then game for this. Granted I live in chicago, so if any Chi Town 2p2ers want to bear witness to me doing this I'd be game. I would buy the wines themselves and we'd have to do it all in one varietal, of which the three easiest would be chardonnay, syrah/shiraz, and cab or cab based blends.

Now, I wouldn't go as far as to straight up identify each wine, but give a point score for each of them based on the tradition Robert Parker point scale.

I'd also choose which wines I drink since I'd be the one forking out the cash to do this. I'd also probably add in another bracket so that instead of a straight 20-50 bracket, it'd be more like 20-35 and 36-60(since I'd be paying, I'd want to run it up to 60 as I have a few in mind that are slightly over 50 for this) as there can be a massive difference between a $38 wine and a $21 wine

like I said, I'm down for this and would probably even pull a few from my own collection for this experiment. I'm also a person who has little preconcieved notions and would promise not to look at the Cellar Tracker scores before doing this

[OrigamiSensei]

Z: I was trying to find out if there was an axe to grind or if it was an educational project. Sounds like the latter, and that's a good thing. There's far too many people in the wine world who want to shove their preconceived notions down other people's throats and one of the big ones is price. I know people who insist you have to spend at least x number of dollars to get a good bottle of wine (which is crap) and others who claim no wine is worth more than x dollars (which is also crap). The key is to explore and find out for yourself your comfort ranges in pricing and what your tastes are.

I also thought of a lineup for Cabernet:
Level 1: 2 Buck Chuck
Level 2: Gallo of Sonoma Cab (the regular $10 bottling and something that in a number of years has been surprisingly good for the money)
Level 3: Something like Frei Brothers, Fransiscan, Simi (I think they run in the $14-21 range) McManis may be somewhere in here and is reputed to be decent stuff
Level 4: The regular bottling from Heitz or Chateau Montelena, should be in the $30-45 range.

[gusmahler]

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I'm not exactly a wine connoisseur but I'm pretty sure I could distinguish between a $10 bottle and $50 dollar bottle, assuming the $50 bottle was not a rip off.

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Neither am I, so maybe this is a naive question. But this isn't something like generic Frosted Flakes, where competitors try to make the cereal taste like Kellogs.

This is wine, where companies try to get specific flavors in a wine. You can have a huge difference between two $10 merlots just as easily as you can have a difference between a $10 and a $50 bottle. But in the end, isn't taste too subjective.

Isn't it possible that the bottler of the $10 wine tried to get specific flavors in their wine that you happen to like more than the bottler of the $50 wine?

[z28dreams]

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Isn't it possible that the bottler of the $10 wine tried to get specific flavors in their wine that you happen to like more than the bottler of the $50 wine?

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This is kind of my line of thinking as well... they flavors will just be so different that it'll be hard to judge one better than the other.

[KDawg]

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Isn't it possible that the bottler of the $10 wine tried to get specific flavors in their wine that you happen to like more than the bottler of the $50 wine?

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This is kind of my line of thinking as well... they flavors will just be so different that it'll be hard to judge one better than the other.

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i fully disagree. I was actually thinking about this this afternoon, granted if someone wants to do this with me, I'd want a good cross section, but there is a massive difference in the nose and taste of a yellowtail vs a top aussie shiraz. Same goes for a generic cali cab and something that is a screaming value like a turnbull(which is around 40).

[IggyWH]

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So,

I'm convinced that most people would be very hard pressed to tell the difference (or have a preference) between a $10 bottle of wine and a $50 bottle.

I'm looking to have a blind-wine tasting, and see just what works out. Future challenges may be created for beer or vodka.

Please post suggestions for this tasting in the following price ranges:

- Bottles ~ $1-$7
- Bottles ~ $8-$15
- Bottles ~ $15-20
- Bottles ~ $20-50

(or suggest better ranges) I chose these ranges because my hypothesis is that you rarely need to spend more than $15 on a bottle of wine.

Also, what type of wine should I go with? I'm thinking some type of Cab to make things easiest. I'd preferably like to keep everything from a similar region.

Franzia box-wine will obviously be included in hopes of someone choosing it as their favorite. Mason is no longer in DC, or this would be a lock.

It would also be cool if I can get everything from one store - like a CostCo or similar.

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Don't front on Fran, it's the [censored]. Sunset Blush FTW!

[OrigamiSensei]

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I'm not exactly a wine connoisseur but I'm pretty sure I could distinguish between a $10 bottle and $50 dollar bottle, assuming the $50 bottle was not a rip off.

[/ QUOTE ]
Neither am I, so maybe this is a naive question. But this isn't something like generic Frosted Flakes, where competitors try to make the cereal taste like Kellogs.

This is wine, where companies try to get specific flavors in a wine. You can have a huge difference between two $10 merlots just as easily as you can have a difference between a $10 and a $50 bottle. But in the end, isn't taste too subjective.

Isn't it possible that the bottler of the $10 wine tried to get specific flavors in their wine that you happen to like more than the bottler of the $50 wine?

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Your question points to the age-old "objective quality" vs. "subjective quality" debate, one that rages all too frequently among those of us who take our wine a little too seriously. I personally believe that appreciation of wine involves an acknowledgement that there are facets of both. I have tasted lots of wine at all sorts of price ranges and of varying levels of quality. I have had technically well-made wines that I hated and flawed wines I adored. Nonetheless there are things that have been agreed upon by wine lovers that tends to point to an objective level of quality.

Balance and complexity are two of those things. Does the wine meld together as a seamless whole in your mouth or is there some aspect about it that is jarring? Too much oak? Too acidic? Not acidic enough? Does it taste alcoholic and hot on the finish? Does the wine have a lot of things going on in your mouth when you drink it or is it monolithic and dominated by one aspect or flavor? Are there any off flavors or spoilage compounds? Issues in these areas point to problems with objective quality.

There are very real differences between less expensive bottles and more expensive bottles. The first and foremost contributor is the quality of the grapes. Some places grow better grapes than others, and some places could grow better grapes than they currently do if they would reduce crops and adopt better farming practices. Less expensive wines will often source their grapes from less desirable areas, the farmers will attempt to coax a large crop (which has the tendency to dilute the wine) and they may well use very industrialized farming practices with lots of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and the like.

There are also differences in the winemaking process itself. Instead of using oak barrels that sell for $700-1000 a pop a winemaker might just dump some oak chips into the wine for flavoring. Winemakers may make excessive use techniques such as fining and filtering, which help to ensure that no little beasties will ever go off in a bottle and spoil it, but also can strip the life out of a wine if not used judiciously. Some winemakers regard the process as a lab experiment rather than an art so the wine is made "by the numbers" rather than by the judgment of an artisan. It becomes a giant chem lab experiment where the acids, sugars, enzymes and yeasts are just so and intended to make a wine that tastes consistently the same from bottle to bottle and from vintage to vintage. I should note that one place this is accepted practice is in Champagne, where master blenders strive for a common house style year in and year out for their non-vintage blends and for some reason everybody feels this is okay, including me. Don't ask.

Less expensive wines work towards a consistent taste commensurate with the brand and tend to emphasize simple, obvious flavors. They often have a little bit of residual sugar so the wine is a touch off dry and they tend towards emphasizing simple, ripe fruit flavors. Chardonnay producers often put the wine through a process intended to soften the acids known as malolactic fermentation, which is what produces the buttery popcorn flavor that California Chardonnays are often known for.

Perhaps the following story will help to illustrate things. Note for those in the know - if you're thinking it's a thinly veiled brag, well, it is, but it's not that I was drinking that particular wine, it's that I have such wonderful and generous friends.

At a recent gathering one of my friends brought a 2001 Guigal La Turque. This is a $350-400 bottle of wine and basically around four times the price I'm willing to pay for a bottle even under special circumstances. I simply don't play in that league. Now understand I'm not a Syrah guy, I'm a Pinot guy, and I was prepared and maybe even hoping to be underwhelmed. One must keep in mind that we are drinking this wine at least ten or fifteen years earlier than we probably should, but that happens. In any case, the nose was very nice, very traditional and had some complexity. On the attack and mid-palate again it was very correct and proper with nice complexity. It was showing rather closed because the wine is so young. Excellent, but certainly not worth $400 to me personally. So far, so good - I didn't have to care about not being able to afford it, right? No, because when it was time to check out the finish the wine pretty much exploded. The finish was incredibly pure, complex and powerful, so beautiful, and it seemed like it lasted forever. And that's when the wine is in a stage of its life where it's not showing at its best. I was just blown away, and that's the moment when it becomes clear why someone would pay that crazy amount of money for a stupid bottle of wine.

The long-winded point I'm trying to make is that the differences can be very real. In my story the comparison was 40 to 400, but the same sort of thing applies to the 10/50 comparison. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for.

[RunDownHouse]

z,

So your hypothesis is, "Some people have palates as sharp as bowling balls?" Obviously there's a difference between expensive wine and cheap wine, but whether people can tell, care, or have varying preferences just hinges on the person, and of course people are different.

I guess I just don't see the point of this. If the point is to find out what kind of wines you like and what your best value is, then great, that sounds like fun. But otherwise you're just asking best buddy Bill if the difference in quality between a $100 bottle and a $15 bottle is worth it to him. That's testing Bill, not the wine.