Letters

Wines & Vines, Sept, 2003 by Steve Henry

Editor:

In reply to your article "Cheap Whines" ("Wise & Otherwise," July, 2003), I love the way you look at the cup as being half full during the wine glut here in California. I, however, am a realist in the sense that people who are trying wine for the first time due to the decrease in price, will be soured by the product itself. You take someone who has had virtually no wine and give them a bottle of Two-Buck Upchuck and they will never try wine again. It's my belief that people need to spend another $5 to $6 and get a bottle that is at least palatable.

The proprietors of this garbage are doing an injustice to the potential new wine drinkers out the're and unfortunately it is going to work against them in the long run. But hey, what does Bronco care, they are rolling in dough now.

I write this because I am one of the vineyards being hurt by the glut here in Paso Robles and am not "rolling in the dough!" Just jealous I suppose.

Steve Henry

via e-mail

(Dear Steve,

Maybe your first taste of wine was Chateau Lafitte, but most wine drinkers we know started

out with low-end wines like Boone's Farm and White Zinfandel. They may not have been 90-point wines, but we liked them all the same. Far from discouraging us from drinking wine, they eventually led us to try new varieties, like Riesling and Merlot, and our palates evolved. We all have to start somewhere, and Two-Buck Chuck is as good a place to start as any.

In fact, we think it's a few steps up from the entry-level wines most of us drank in the '70s and '80s.--Ed.)

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