True story:
My wife and I make a few batches of Merlot every year. We were at the wine making store bottling our latest batch. Christine proceeded to slap on Shiraz labels. "Stop!" cried the store assistant, "that's Merlot!"
"That's ok" said Chris, "some our our friends don't like Merlot!"

I decanted a bottle of Zinfandel from the Paso Robles region of California. It was from an old established winery that specialzes in Zinfandel. It was about ten years old and the wine was from old vines. I served this to a well known collector/dealer who was over for dinner and who claims to hate Zinfandel but proceeded to have multiple glasses.
When he asked what it was I just told him it was "Paso Robles Red!!"

Jim

Haaaaaaaaaaaaa, that's really funny but don't do this to me.

A friend of mine tried something similar in the past by adding really "cheap" wine into expensive labled bottles........everyone thought that the wine was exquisite.

Truly Pat, I find it amazing sometimes.
A $30 bottle can be crap and a $10 bottle amazing.

A biggie down here right now is "Two Buck Chuck"(Charles Shaw) with the penny pinching crowd. The name is derived from the fact that it sells for $2.00 a bottle over in California but actualy cost $3.00 here. It's drinkable but just barely. My understanding is the highest cost item to the winery is the bottle.

BTW Pat:
Is it going to be double of nothing on the Super Bowl this year??
Jim

This should be in the "Other Hobbies" area

When I lived in France (1978-1981), one of the Parisian papers (Le Monde?) did a series of myth-busting wine studies.

The first was that decent wine is delicate. They got some cases of really good wine, Margaux, I think. One case was kept in ideal conditions. Another was strapped in a long distance truck that ran from Paris to Southern Italy. Another in a boat that crossed the Atlantic, another in a Concord, etc. 6 Months later, a tasting with the experts. Result: No differences.

Another was world wines. Some California and Chilean wines beat the local favorites.

Lastly was Cheap vs Expensive. This was not a top end type of comparison, but a tasting of low to mid price table wines. To everyone's surprise, the experts picked a screw-top low grade plonk sold only by the liter in returnable bottles over many "Appelation Controle" wine that sold for a lot more.



Dave