2 buck Chuck

B

Boywonder2

#1
#1
I just tried this red wine called "2 buck Chuck" its actually $ 3.00 now per bottle. They sell it at Trader Joes in Westfield. It is a California wine that is huge out there. My friend lives in San Diego and he has been drinking it for ever and loves it as well. Told me its huge out there.
I tried the Cabernet and it was pretty good. I also bought the Merlot and Shiraz....within the next few days I will try them...the one I like the best I will go and pick up a case at a time. Its worth the trip for me if you pick it up by the case.
 
Traderdave

Traderdave

#3
#3
There is a Trader Joe's Wine Store on 14th street between Third and Fourth Avenues.
There are some excellent values here.
For those of you who went to Scores. the Wine Warehouse is selling leftover Scores "Champagne" for $7.95-lap dance not included. You probably paid $250 for the same bottle at Scores.
 
Traderdave

Traderdave

#5
#5
There are some excellent values at Trader Joe's. Some of the wines from Chile. including the Malbec's. ALso Wine Warehouse on Broadway is offering soem excellent wines at $4.99 and up. Maybe we should retitle this Cheap Thrills-Wine Section. Also UNION Square Wines-13th Street and Fourth Avenue and Astor-Lafayette Street, has some wine tastings usually on Saturday afternoon at 2 pm and it's free.
 
N

nychelsea

#6
#6
Two Buck Chucks is not very good. Try a blind tasting test and compare with any quality $15-20 bottle of whatever you are comparing it to.

Then compare it to a $50 wine and you will really see the difference!

Life is too short to drink cheap wine,

Chels
 
J

justlooking

#7
#7
I'm gonna disagree with you to a limited extent, Chels.

It's true that expensive wines, on the whole, are generally better than cheap wines.

But it's not true that cheap wines are bad. Some are quite good. You just have to find them.

And it's also not true that expensive wines are always appropriate. I mean, I enjoy cracking open an old Bordeaux to go with a sandwich as much as anyone. But truly, on a night-by-night basis, I don't tend to drink my expensive wines with unelaborate mid-week dinners. I tend to drink cheaper, more modest wines. If I'm not in the mood, I don't think I'd appreciate an old expensive wine under those circumstances. And also there's food that not only wouldn't complement a mature, subtle wine, but would actually make the wine harder to taste. Some vigorous one-dimensional inexpensive young wine would actually be better with such food.
 
C

celtic knight

#8
#8
nychelsea said:
Two Buck Chucks is not very good. Try a blind tasting test and compare with any quality $15-20 bottle of whatever you are comparing it to.

Then compare it to a $50 wine and you will really see the difference!

Life is too short to drink cheap wine,

Chels
Click to expand...
Blind taste tests have been done in California, and in many cases the Two Buck Chuck won out!
 
N

nychelsea

#10
#10
Hey, if it's good for you, go for it! As for the blind taste test, I meant that YOU should try as opposed to what supposedly happened in California. I have tried Two Bucks Chuck several times and in blind tests, and found it to be terrible. Wine is a matter of personal taste and experience.

JL: depends on what you mean by cheap? Of course you can find some decent wines for very low prices if you look around and are not afraid to drink some terrible stuff! My definition of cheap is anything under 10 bucks - yours may be different. There was a time when I would have said anything under 5 bucks was el cheapo.

Life is too short to drink cheap wine,

Chels
 
J

justlooking

#11
#11
I'd say less than $11 (cuz psycholigically, I still consider $10.99 "cheap").

Certainly the $6.99 Perrin 2007 Reserve Cotes du Rhone I had with dinner last night was fine (and I will tell the world that 2007 Cotes du Rhone are no-risk excellent cheap wine. As Nixon would have said, you had to be a genius to make a bad southern Rhone that year.)

You don't really have to take TREMENDOUS risks if you read a lot and ask around.
 
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P

paraneurotic

#12
#12
I might just be allergic to it but every time I've had 2 Buck Chuck I wound up with a huge headache about an hour later. It's good bang for the buck if you're having a party though. Nobody else seemed to get ill and they were all drinking tons of it.
 
J

justme

homo economicus
#13
#13
celtic knight said:
I find Barefoot brand to be very good -- especially the reds. About $5 per bottle.
Click to expand...
Heh, I find that the Barefoot whites are better than their price point, but I can't really drink the reds. Of course, it's all a matter of taste.

What Barefoot does do reasonably well, again for the price, is get their wine to exhibit the stereotypical elements of their varietals. So I think for something like $40, you can take someone who has absolutely no knowledge about wine and get them to see that there really are differences among the grapes and also give them a jumping off point so they can explore a grape that they like better than others. And you can do this everywhere since Barefoot has become relatively ubiquitous.

Also, now that everyone is clued in on Cava in general and Cristalino in particular, I find that if I want to have people over to gulp down some mimosas, the Barefoot bubblies (esp Extra Dry) won't ruin the OJ.
 
J

justlooking

#15
#15
Stealing from Dr. Johnson, to me, Two Buck Chuck is like a dog standing on its hind legs. It's not that it does it so well, but that it does it at all.

It's amazing that a $3 wine can be drinkable. But me, I'll spend the extra $6 or $7 and get something actually good.
 
W

weedoggies69

#17
#17
two buck chuck cab is certainly not a memorable wine but it is a great everyday glass or two with dinner wine. I like it for those reasons and buy a case whenever I am near a Trader Joes.

wd69
 
M

marcinny

#18
#18
I read this article in New Yorker, a couple of weeks ago, about Fred Franzia the man behind Two Bucks Chuck.

I have nothing to say about the wine. I have never tried it (as a rule of thumbs I stay away from things that have words like "bucks" and "chucks" on their label - maybe it is my loss, but it is what it is.)

While I have no comment about his wine, I was fuming when I read this quote from Mr. Franzia in the article:

"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?”

Now, after reading this, Mr. Franzia is in my "shit list" (an expression I have heard too often lately so I have to use it at least once, to break the spell.)

I cannot stand the people who try to quantify taste. People who want to put everything on a scale from art quality to sexual services, people who can communicate only numerically, people who have been dumbing down and simplifying, unifying, blanding down the tastes, etc. All these people are my enemies.
 
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J

justlooking

#19
#19
Just to allay one source of your aversion, the actual name of the wine isn't "Two Buck Chuck." The wine is really called Charles Somethingorother Vineyards. "Two Buck Chuck" is just a nickname people came up with for it.
 
J

justlooking

#20
#20
celtic knight said:
Blind taste tests have been done in California, and in many cases the Two Buck Chuck won out!
Click to expand...
Thinking it over, this is where I think the problem comes in.

My own take on Two Buck Chuck is, there's nothing horribly wrong with it. As I said in this or some other thread here, I'm never sorry to be drinking it. For two or three dollars a bottle, it's remarkable that it's drinkable.

But then people start making claims that it's not just drinkable but really good -- that it's better than many more expensive wines. That's where the bullshit comes in. There's a big difference between "remarkably drinkable for $3 a bottle" and "better than many more expensive wines."

This happens all the time when people talk about relatively inexpensive wines. (I'm looking at you, Sambucca.) They start out with "great value for the price" -- indisputably true, in many cases -- but then cross over to, "more expensive wines aren't worth it -- you have to be a moron to buy those." Indisputably false in many cases.
 
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