waltondammerung

For the price of a bottle of coke from a machine...

...or not much more, I have finally purchased a bottle of Charles Shaw Chardonnay, also lovingly known as "Two-buck chuck". I bought it to use in a recipe, since it was cheaper than any cooking wine I could find. There was some left, so I am sipping it in the hope that it will enhance my creativity. I know I'm behind the times on this, but I've been curious to try it out because of all the buzz and the supposed "blind taste tests" in which good ole Two Buck beat out more expensive table wines.

My verdict: It's okay. It's actually better than some more expensive (and very nasty) wines I've tried. (Most notably, much better than some local wine we paid $30 for at a restaurant in Monterey on our anniversary. If I had been the one tasting it when the waiter brought it to our table, it would have gone straight back to the kitchen. Josh is too nice to do that, though, so we each had a few sips and left the rest for the chef's cats. Pleh.)

It doesn't have the nasty tannic flavor that most cheap whites have. It's not remarkable; there's nothing to distinguish it, to make you jump up and say, "Now THAT'S some Charles Shaw!" That might have something to do with the fact that it's a concoction of all of the leftover chardonnay grapes in the state in 1999. That's not necessarily a bad thing. While it might be considered a disadvantage that nothing distinguishes it as being particularly good, there are no odd notes to the flavor that make it stand out as being very bad, either. It's hard to ask for more from a $2 bottle of wine. I'll be happy when they start selling surplus Two Buck Chuck at the 99 cent store.