"vincent p. norris" wrote in message
...

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.

I discovered Gallo's "Twin Valley" line a few months ago. I don't know
whether it's a new line or something I'd simply overlooked because it's in
the cheap domestic aisle. At any rate, it's drinkable and at $4 per bottle,
a very good deal.

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.

There is always a particle of truth in popular lies. This is what makes
aphorisms....which invariably fall apart when examined....so popular and
easy for people to swallow. My own favorite (well, one of them anyway) is,
"If you wrestle with pigs you get dirty......and the pigs like it".
Personally, I don't mind getting dirty and, as has been demonstrated, the
pigs don't like it one goddamned bit.

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!)

Didn't know that you are a vintner. What a marvelous array of talents is
ROFF!

Camelot....

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

Nope, I didn't know that. Given your remarks below, this is especially
interesting because we don't much care for the products sold under the
Kendall Jackson label. The Camelot merlot is one of Becky's favorites.
After sharing a bottle last night, I mentioned to her that while I think
it's o.k., I don't like it nearly as much as some of our other regular
selections, nor as much as she does. Some time soon, I'm going to try the
Kendall Jackson and the Camelot side by side.

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.

All of which bumps up against the principle of truth in advertising. I
suppose that most such practices stop short (to various degrees) of being
outright illegal, but they certainly raise some very interesting ethical
questions. Discussions of these matters always remind me of why I still
have a copy of Orvis's 1993 Spring Fishing and Outdoor catalog (vol. IV,
no.2). In the far upper right hand corner of page 43, one of several pages
dedicated to their fly selection, in very small type, are the words, "All
Orvis flies are tied in the United States or are imported".

Wolfgang