The biggest difference in wine quality relating to price is in the ten and twenty dollar bottles. Premium wines start in the $20 or $30 range. Upward from there, you will usually find increasing quality, but with diminishing returns. So what are the major distinctions between the cheap and the fancy stuff?
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| Truth in labeling :) |
Inexpensive wines
This is where you get what I call industrial-made wine in one of California's big wine "factories." They really exist, you just don't see pictures of them in the brochures. Gallo operates the world's largest winery in California's vast Central Valley, about a half-hour drive from their Modesto corporate headquarters. Gallo has more than one huge "tank farm." There is even one in Sonoma County's Dry Creek Valley.
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| The world's largest winery click on image to enlarge |
Most of the California wine you see in many stores and even restaurants in much of the country was made in this winery. There's an economy of scale to making wine this way. There's not a lot of winemaker finesse to make a better wine.
Is the reason these factory wines are not that great just because the wine is made in a mega-winery? No, there is the first priority for a wine in this price range. It has to taste the same every year because that's what the consumer expects. How do you do that when there are vintage variabilities? You can do it by blending to try to get a similar wine every year. Some premium wineries do this, too, generally with their wines distributed to retail. You can also do this with chemistry, i.e. additives. You will find various things put in wine besides grapes and yeast because that's how you make a quality wine. Unfortunately, you can expect more additives with industrial wines.
There's also something called Mega Purple. You'll find it in many cheaper wines and in a few mass-marketed premium wines. It helps make the flavors consistent year after year.
I'm picking on Gallo, but there are others making mass-produced wines that show up on retail store shelves. Gallo owns about 130 brands, so you usually don't even know you are buying a Gallo wine from one of their wine factories. You can usually tell because the back label will say Modesto, CA.
Premium wines
In the higher end category, there are big wineries and small wineries. Gallo has plenty of wines over $20. Some of the larger premium wine producers in Sonoma County are Kendall Jackson, Gallo, Rodney Strong, and Ferrari-Carano. The smaller you go, the more hands on of an operation you have.
A traditional picture you have of a winemaker is probably someone overseeing grape picking, then being there when the grapes come into the winery, and either participating in or watching each of the many steps towards getting the grape juice made into wine and eventually into bottles. In the smallest operations, the winemaker does everything from sorting out the bad fruit to cleaning and refilling barrels. Then there are the big operations where a winemaker sits behind computer screens watching the progress for the day. There's going to be a difference in the final product.
In flavor, one should expect a premium wine to give you:
- Complexity - A layered variety of flavors and smells
- Structure - The balance of acids, tannins, alcohol, sweetness
- Grapes quality - Vineyards from certain specific areas yield much higher quality fruit.
- Hand-picked grapes vs. machine harvested - For better control of the quality
- Oak barrel aging - Oak barrels and months of aging are expensive. Cheap wines will find shortcuts, and it's noticeable in the wine.
What do the really expensive wines give you? You should be getting grapes from highly regarded areas, wine made by a highly regarded winery and/or winemaker. Often you are also paying for expensive packaging and fancy winery buildings, things that have nothing to do with the wine quality.
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| Frightfully expensive Napa Cab. Often costing thousands of dollars a bottle. Is it worth it? Beats me, I'm not buying it to find out. |
Takeaways
Having some knowledge about what you are ingesting is always a good idea. When it comes to wine, drink whatever you like and what you can afford. We're not all sipping on $90 Cabernet every weekend. Know that the biggest difference in quality will be in a jump from $10 wines to $20 wines. Sixty percent of Americans drink $20 and under wine.
This doesn't mean you won't ever find good wines in the $10-$15 range. They're just harder to find. This doesn't imply you won't find simple, overly sweet wines at high prices. Luckily, those are in the minority. I'm looking at you Caymus, though they are not the only one.
Buying and drinking what you like doesn't mean you shouldn't experiment with different wine varietals, wines from different regions, and wines at different prices. If you drink $10 wine, consider having someone recommend a $30 or $40 bottle to splurge on, just to see if it's worth the extra cost to you.
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| A premium Cabernet selling for $20-$28 (depending on where you live and where you shop) |
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