It turned out Safeway had a similar sale going, offering 30% off if you bought four or more bottles. The Lucky Store in Sunnyvale I regularly visit had a wine sale last Fall-buy four and save 10%-so that motivated me to take the plunge and see what their wine shelves had to offer.
I was also curious as to whether the increasing quality level we’ve seen in artisanal California Chardonnay in recent years might be having any influence on the quality level of mass market Chardonnay, or whether sweet and oaky styles of Chardonnay that have tended to be popular at the mass market level would continue to predominate. Nonetheless, having received the same request from numerous friends and acquaintances over the years, and finding myself in the past year visiting smaller cities and towns that lacked easily accessible wine retailers, I decided to see if there were choices available at a typical grocery store that I might be able to recommend. Moreover, such outlets often turn the stocking of their shelves over to one or more of the country’s major wine and spirits distributors, meaning that although there may be dozens of labels on the shelf, many of them are owned by or in the portfolio of Constellation, E&J Gallo, The Wine Group or one of the other major wine firms. The best place to purchase fine wine is a dedicated wine store, where they typically stock a hand selected inventory featuring a range of excellent wines and employ knowledgeable staff that can guide your selection. Supermarkets also rarely have on hand someone knowledgeable about wine and what they carry to offer advice and counsel. Therefore, if you’re looking for highly rated, artisanal wines, you are not going to find them in a grocery aisle. Top quality, artisanal wines are made in relatively small quantities, from very limited fruit sources, so simply can’t be produced in the quantities required by nationwide chain stores. To be in distribution at such large volume outlets means the wine has been made in sufficiently large quantities to justify their place on the shelf. I’ve always responded that supermarkets and grocery stores are not the place to buy wine. Ė% of the wines were affected by TCA and/or oxidationįor years people who know I rate and write about wines have asked me what to buy when they are at a grocery store or supermarket.Less than 14% of these wines were bottled under screwcap.Nearly 16% of these grocery store Chardonnays exhibited relatively high residual sugar (sweetness).wine firms are responsible for nearly 17% of these wines, and the top eight wine firms own over 37% of these labels The $26-30 range contains surprisingly few highly rated wines.While high QPR (quality price ratio) wines can be found at virtually all price points, the highest rated wines (92 and 91+ points) can be found at the $15-20, $20-25 and $30-and-above price ranges.Very drinkable (86 to 87 point) wines can be obtained for as low as $7-9.Prices ranged from $3 to $41 before sales tax.My average score was 85.8 points (i.e., slightly above average).My scores on these wines ranged widely, from 75 to 92 points.Some of the insights I gained from this survey can be summarized briefly as follows: From everything I’ve reviewed in researching for this report, this is the first time such a comprehensive critical tasting and analysis has been done of widely distributed grocery store Chardonnays. It’s also one of the world’s premier grape varieties, capable under ideal conditions of producing sublime and long aging wines as well as vast quantities of perfectly adequate raw material that is highly manipulable through winemaking techniques. I selected Chardonnay as the varietal to examine for this report since it’s both the most widely represented wine grape varietal in grocery stores (approximately 10% of varietal wines) and the most widely planted wine grape in California. This report includes detailed tasting notes, ratings both by price range and alphabetically, an assessment of alcohol levels and styles of wine available, and a look at that fact that over 37% of the 230 wines rated are owned by only eight wine firms. where wine sales at such stores are permitted. Many of these Chardonnays can be found in grocery stores in the 35 states in the U.S. This is a report on 230 domestic Chardonnays representative of what can be found on grocery store shelves in Northern California. Some of the more elaborate & colorful grocery store Chardonnay packaging
0 kommentar(er)
