Our price range runs up to about $8 or $9 per bottle, with an occasional splurge up to
$12-$15. Most often we stick to the low end of that scale....about
$6.

A couple of years ago, our local wine society had a tasting of Gallo
wines bottled under other brand names. All sold for about eight
bucks or less, and I thought all but one were excellent. The other
tasters (N 50) thought so too. The scores, IIRC, were around 17 or
18 out of 20.

There's no reason Gallo shouldn't produce outstanding wines. Ernesto
and Julio can afford to hire more enologists, agronomists, chemists,
blenders, etc., than could fit in most wineries. Even their "Hearty
Burgundy" jug wine, at $2.78 per gallon (in PA), which wine snobs
pooh-poohed, beat out much higher-priced wines at blind tastings back
in the 1960s. Really shocked the snobs.

A popular saying goes, "You get what you pay for." Nothing could be
further from the truth! No economist believes that. It's a saying
coined by someone who wanted to overcharge consumers for his product,
and has been picked up and perpetuated by other sellers with the same
goal.

We've found both the Yellowtail ....

The current Consumer Reports gives Yellowtail chardonnay a "best buy"
rating. I tasted some a week ago, and I thought it was as good as any
chardonnay I could recall.

I must confess it's even better than mine! (Man, that hurt!)

Camelot....

As you may know, that wine is made by Kendall Jackson.

It is a widespread practice among manufacturers of various kinds of
goods to sell *exactly* the same product at two different prices, to
increase profits by garnering two different groups of consumers.
Marketing people call it "market segmentation." Economists call it
"pricing discrimination."

This may seem irrational to someone not familiar with economic
analysis, but it increases profits by a surprisingly large amount. It
is far more profitable than trying to increase sales of one brand at
one price.

A good friend who owns a local winery (Mt. Nittany Winery; I think
some roffers visited it during one of the claves). A couple of years
ago, we were tasting some of his wines, when a mutual friend asked,
"Joe, what 's the difference between the regular chardonnay and the
"Proprietor's Reserve"?

Joe said, "It costs five dollars more."

Whether Kendall Jackson and Charles Shaw sell the same wine at two
different prices, I have no idea. They don't tell me their business
secrets. But I wouldn't be surprised. I'd be more surprised if they
don't .

I wouldn't expect them to be that dumb.

vince