In this week’s mini, the biddies discuss Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw wine, more affectionately known as “two buck chuck”, and how it came to be. Learn how Charles Shaw started a winery, lost a winery and ended up with a wine with his name on it but no control over the product.
Listen:
Sources:
- Two-Buck Chuck: Who Is Charles Shaw, Man Behind Trader Joe’s Wine? (businessinsider.com)
- Two Buck Chuck Trader Joe’s Wine: An Oral History – Thrillist
- Image Credit: Business Insider
Study Notes for Two Buck Chuck:
“The irony is that Charles Shaw wine used to be great–and nobody drank it. Now it’s terrible and it’s selling like gangbusters”
AKA CHARLES SHAW
- Called “Two-Buck Chuck” because of its affordable price tag
- Charles Shaw wine dates back to the 1970s
- HE HAS NEVER EARNED ANY MONEY FROM IT
- Charles had moved to Paris and fell in love with wine
- Wanted to bring French wine to America
- Bought a vineyard in California and rolled out his first Gamay in 1979
- He won awards for this wine which also was served at three White House dinners
- Cue series of unfortunate events and a divorce
THE BACKGROUND
- Joined the Air Force and traveled the country negotiating contracts
- Ended up in California in the 1960s and met a girl named Lucy who he married and the had children with
- She came from a family of wealthy rice farmer family and inherited a large amount of money
- They bought a winery in Napa Valley and lived there for a bit before moving to larger one using her family money and taking out bank loans
- That Gamay that he created and won awards with and was at the Whie house was not bought by the general public so he had a ton of unsold wine
- Sold his wine to a Stanford alum friend (Joe Colom aka Trader Joe)
- Colom sold this wine for $2 a bottle with a different label on it
- Does this mean the original Two Buck Chuck was Gamay!? Jealous
- He then started making Chardonnay and PInot Noir
- It was an incredible money making opportunity for him and then he said “It was just so wonderful, so the thing is, what could go wrong, right?”
TOO CONFIDENT
- Wine was accidentally polluted by a supplier
- Then phylloxera
- Banks called in his debt
- And turned to his wifes capital
- Lucy wanted a divorce and to take control of the winery and the money should had put into it
- The sum was around $450,000
- Her plan to run the business didn’t work out and she declared bankruptcy
- The vineyards were snapped up by a local competitor and sold to the Bronco Wine Company
- This was run by Fred Franzia
- In 2002 – recession starts leading to a massive wine surplus
- Fred Franzia decided he needed offload some of his bottles and then went to Trader Joes
- Became two buck chuck
- Fred Franzia decided he needed offload some of his bottles and then went to Trader Joes
MISTAKES MADE
- Released a wine in small wooden barrels that had paraffin wax versus bees wax and it tainted the wine
- Hundreds of thousands of dollars lost
- Had a bad agreement with national distributors and over produced too much Burgundian style wine when that wasn’t a popular style
- After Franzia bought it and slashed the price, they were sued for the levels of arsenic in the wine
WHY SO CHEAP?
- First rumor is that he slashed his prices to spite his wife and devalue the brand
- Branches, dead birds, and insects were fermented as filler along with the grapes to cut down cost
- Ok so this isn’t totally illegal – the FDA has requirements on how much bird and bug guts is OK in your wine
“You know, I actually like the name Two Buck Chuck. It ties it to me. It’s better than the brand disappeariing – or being forgotten”
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