Comments on: Walmart wine

By: Bill Loftin

Bill Loftin — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 06:35:07 +0000

I agree for the most part of Chucks analysis. Just a side note. I have purchase and consumed some really fine wines over the years. In spite of the outrageously good wines i have also found that the grapes don’t crush the same every year and in spite of attempts to always get the exact blend there will be variations. It’s not always a case of source it is more often a case of conditions of growth. Here, Here for Trefethen and Rombauer. Just pull out the big bills and enjoy!

By: Bill Loftin

Bill Loftin — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 06:21:29 +0000

I have purchased and consumed Charles Shaw for years and always thought it was a great wine and not just for the price. When you get up to about $10.00 or more for the production wines you can expect more than Charles Shaw but not in all cases. We (my wife and I) have been buying Fox Brook for the last couple of years for our table and daily consumption wine and found it to be generally a little smoother and more vanilla in taste. I just tried the Walmart brand (Oak Leaf) today and find it to be acceptable as a table Chardonnay but a little more tart than either Fox Brook or Charles Shaw. Wine is an individual pallet and i think it’s a good value as production wines go.

By: Larry

Larry — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 16:40:38 +0000

I bought two bottles of the Chardonnay, with the thought: Well, it’s really cheap because Walmart is keeping the price down. After trying the first glass,and then opening the second bottle to make sure the first had not gone bad, it went down the drain. Other folks who left comments apparently like it and I really am happy for them. But it’s just not working for me.

By: Christine

Christine — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:47:17 +0000

I moved from Upstate NY to Texas a couple of years ago, and was sad to see so little NY wine on the shelves here. I had my NY favorites, and what I had tasted from Texas so far just didn’t fit the bill. I almost didn’t buy the OL for two reasons, its is dirt cheap, and I like med sweet red wine that does not have the oak aged taste, so sweet red could potentially be a oaky tasting syrup. I figured for $2.77, what do I have to lose… I have purchased many bottles since, I love this wine, and have turned several people on to it. It is light and smooth, a lot of fun to drink. Tastes best chilled. I have not had a bad bottle. I do not want Walmart to know that I would pay more for this

By: Cheryl St. Germaine

Cheryl St. Germaine — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 05:55:59 +0000

Bought the Oak Leaf Sweet Red to cook the mushrooms in, took a swig and ended up drinking the whole bottle. Next day…went and bought another. So Good!!! I just told my best friend in France about this wine and she laughed. Wait til she tries it! It will blow her mind. 2.97 a bottle!!! And, tastes better than some of the 30. dollar wine I have bought.

By: ppgp

ppgp — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 20:32:50 +0000

thought a $3.oo wine must be awful, but having tasted the Oak Leaf Chardonnay when i first arrived in Fla, and was having it at many parties, loved it. Really loved it!. Ususally i would buy better wine because cheap wine gives me a terrible headache, but this is a winner. Have been buying it for years. Trying to find out what it would cost to ship a case.
thanks
pogo

By: Elaine Horetski

Elaine Horetski — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 22:04:41 +0000

Just stumble on your page glad I did. Going to Walmart
tomorrow going to buy one of each….Thanks everyone

By: Jerry M

Jerry M — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:32:10 +0000

Oak leaf is a very good and you cant beat the price☺☺☺☺☺☺☺
♣♣♣♣♣♣♣

By: Katylee

Katylee — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 00:41:44 +0000

I love the Cabernet. Personally, after returning from a 6 year stint in Europe, I was dismayed at the cost of a decent bottle here in the states. The Oak Leaf wine is quite acceptable, and I am happy to have it sans pretentiousness!

By: chuck

chuck — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 03:18:28 +0000

Okay, you’re going to laugh (or yawn) at my automotive analogy, but it bears hearing:

I once asked a colleague as to why – just WHY general motors was making a Cadillac version of their suburban/Yukon vehicles which truly held their segment in a historically dominant fashion.

His answer was – the plant was being underutilized – meaning it had excess capacity and was hence not being leveraged hard enough.

Okay. I can see that. Add another model and get more use out of your expensive tool (the plant/workers).

Click your heels and come back to Wal-Mart wine country:

You have to admit, these buyers at Wal-Mart are intelligent and shrewd.

They looked at the challenge of introducing a house brand wine, analyzed the wine industry and concluded that there was a lot of excess capacity.

Crudely translated – that meant the “market” could only absorb a certain amount of big label, mid price to pricey wine variants.

More specifically, even though Sterling Chardonnay is a pretty good mid priced bottle, the market only wants so much of it and the producers are left (literally) with grapes on the vine (excess capacity).

Enter Wal-Mart geniuses.

They see this situation and enter into clandestine agreements to purchase that excess capacity without disclosing the source.

At their plant, they carefully mix and blend these batches to come up with a palatably (is that a new word?), semi consistent concoction they can call a pinot girigio, or chardonnay, or Shiraz or cab sav.

This is my conclusion, because after sampling multiple bottles over a year, I have determined palatable inconsistencies with their labels – which in themselves are inconsistent with industry standards (translation: a bottle of Sterling chardonnay tastes consistent 90% of the time) – Wal-Mart labels are much less so.

Interpretation: they are purchasing industry excess capacity and bottling it under their house name.

How else can you conclude it?

$2.97 for a bottle of Shiraz that tastes 75 – 80 % as good as a $15 bottle????

I’ll suffer that trade anytime.

Sure, I’ve had a bad (inconsistent bottle or two), but that risk (IMO) outweighs the benefit.

Here’s mud-in-yer eye!