It all started with an offhand remark from my friend Tyler. “Hey, you know what we should do?…” It soon became a plan. The lineup was decided, the wines were procured, and a date was chosen…really, the only date that fully suited an event like this. On April 1st, we sat down, twisted off some caps and got down to drinking some of the most popular and reviled wines on the planet. Happy April Fools’ Day, everyone.
Oh yes.
I should pre-emptively intercede to point out that we didn’t just do this to be the online jerks who make fun of cheap wine. Like it or not, the wines picked for this tasting are embedded in global drinking culture, are a gateway for many people to more serious bottles (the marijuana of table wines, I suppose) and have had a market position that can only be described as dominant. As someone who has studied wine quite a bit over the past few years, I had heard a ton about all of them: Baby Duck, Canada’s most successful retro sparkler. Mateus, Portugal’s top export and once the world’s best-selling wine. Gallo White Zinfandel, flagship of a wine “fad” that continues in full force to this day. Black Tower and Blue Nun, continual influencers of global opinion of an entire country’s wine tradition. And Naked Grape, one of the most likely local inheritors of the legacy of these cheap and cheerful drinks. I had never tried a single one of these wines, and my desire to do so was more than just morbid curiosity. I was hoping to discover both what has made these bottles so iconically popular for so long and whether the suspect reputations that preceded them into the tasting room were well-deserved. Let’s find out.
cabernetdialectic (Raymond Lamontagne)
Dan Steeves
Peter Vetsch
tylerderksen
pop & pour 