At a charity event where this was the well wine and only thing available. Just a reminder that this is the sort of stuff that most people think of as “wine”. This was thin, insipid berry juice with a little vanilla but absolutely zero varietal character, no tannic presence, little acidity and just a red cup of disappointment. Had to put it down after two sips and switch to shitty beer.
Enlightening nonetheless. Been a while since I tasted supermarket generic stuff and always an education to see what passes for wine.
So brutal when you’re literally left with no options. I remember being at the ‘VIP’ lounge for the college football championship game 2 years ago and they were literally serving Barefoot. Wtf!?!
Along that same vein- wrapping up the night with a NV Marietta Cellars Old Vine Red, and it’s great! Florals and spice on the nose, medium + body with enough complexity to keep it interesting…and just damn tasty for $10…which is probably around the same price as that shitty BV. Just goes to show you people can serve decent wine at an event on a budget if they just put a little thought into it (granted every single person reading this would put way too much though into it…but you get what I’m saying)
It’s how they pay the bills, trading on their name and history to sell $7 bottles of Central Valley anonymous industrial wine. Other big names Napa wineries like mondavi and Sterling do it as well.
Two years ago our son turned 21. He had been working at a Pizza Restaurant, doing deliveries and prep work in the kitchen. We opened a 1994 Montelena Estate Cab a few weeks after he turned 21 to celebrate. He is not a wine drinker by any means, and we asked him how the wine was, and he said it was a heck of a lot better than the house wine at the restaurant. The house wine was BV Coastal.
Yes but the Marietta isn’t going to be available in every grocery store/liquor store in the nation. Sure one can get it from an online seller, but it usually doesn’t make sense to ship inexpensive bottles.
We tasted through a bunch of vintages back in December at BV. The modern GdL is freaking huge! 15+%, and either the 2009 or 2013 was 15.9%. We found we didnt really like BV after mid 2000s-ish. We initially liked a couple of the modern ones, but I was suspicious my palate was getting skewed by all the big wines. Through the 80s, 90s, 00s the wines got bigger and bigger and it was hard to realize just how hot and syrupy they had gotten.
Once we stopped, had a crisp white, and and reset our palate we re-tasted some and realized how big they were.
Basically, they are well made for people who like the really big, burley Napa cabs. I’ll keep buying pre-2005 BV, but unfortunately no new ones.
That’s true, you wouldn’t find it in many grocery stores…but I have seen it at the majority of the liquor stores I’ve ever popped into. For example, we visit my wife’s family in Pueblo West Colorado every year, and let’s just say the 3 liquor stores in town do not have the WB crowd in mind while they’re stocking their wine. All 3 of them have Marietta OV…and I’m sure PLENTY of BV Coastal!
I totally get it that wine is not the top priority for many events…but the point being there’s decent wine produced in large enough quantities to be readily available in most places…and I know we’ve all been in scenarios like Noah were we wish the event planners would have put a little more effort into the wine selection so we weren’t forced to drink BV or shitty beer
Honestly, very few events I have been to that were not explicitly wine events, have offered decent or drinkable wine. I am at the point where I pretty much don’t drink wine unless it’s at home or at a restaurant where I brought a bottle (I don’t like spending 2-4x what I could pay for a bottle to have it at a restaurant, and so just don’t order off the wine list).
