But You Can Still Go To Mass Market Cheap Wines!

by Brandon Wainscott

So in my last post I complained about corporate winemaking, but now I am going to praise Yellow Tail. This is not meant to contradict my previous post, but that if nothing else it’s what you drink when on a budget. And of all the mass market wines, Yellow Tail is the best. You can see my reviews here and here. “Two Thumbs Up” wine reviews gave it a good rating, too, calling it, in their cliché lingo, “fine wine”; and although I would not quite say that, it is high quality. If you have to go cheap, go buy a bottle of Yellow Tail. I won’t kill you. Nor will our Philosopher King.

What I look for in a good wine first is what's on the nose of course. If I get a hot smell even before I put my nose to anything, right when I open the bottle, I generally know I am not in for a great wine, but one in the 70 range score wise. If some sort of nice aroma comes out from the popped cork I know I am in for something in the 80s usually. With Yellow Tail, at least with the reds—I don’t drink white often—I know I am going to get good wine in the mid to high 80s, at least that is how I rate it.

Their sparkling wine is rather good from what I remember, a few dollars below the go to Korbel. The only problem I have with the stuff is that bloody new-fangled safety cap or whatever it is supposed to be. It took me forever to get the damned thing off—poor hand-eye coordination I admit!—and ruined the whole romance of opening a champagne bottle. Yes, it pops, but it’s not the same. Of course one of my favourite wine bloggers, LadyParker, may disagree because she prefers screw caps, but I’m  a romantic, so I say keep the corks and normal wired corks. But maybe they want to avoid some lawsuit from drunks on New Year’s Eve shooting their eye out? What is this? A Christmas Story? I think you’ll sooner hurt yourself the new way than the old way, but I digress. Actually I really was impressed with the sparkling wine, that aside. It had a nice crisp and decent complexity with that sort of tang, if that’s the right word, that I like in a sparkling wine. It was fruity if I recall without unpleasant taste of fruit juice plus with carbonation. Granted it wasn't like that $60 dollar champagne I got drunk on to remember Marie Antoinette one time (I sympathise with monarchy), but it was a good New Years sparkling wine. They call it "Bubbles", a rather ubiquitous name that is rather catchy.

As for the Yellow Tail reds they are almost always good. I would say you may have problems when the vintage first comes out, as it will taste too young. The grape comes out, not something I want to actually smell or taste in my wine even though that’s what it’s made from. How often do you hear: “I get grapes on the nose…and in the mouth grape”? But within say six months after a new vintage it is pretty good. The wine is meant to be had young, but I think a few months in the bottle helps after it first appears on shelves. I remember looking for the previous vintage when the new one came out and passing over Yellow Tail until the new vintage improved. Is it fine wine? No, but I think it can easily score in the 80s.

When I think of Yellow Tail, I think of a casual evening with friends over a casual dinner or for some reason a group of girls getting together to get drunk and do whatever girls do together. I think that is why I share Aristotle's view on women, forgive me readers!.

Isn't a vampire supposed to say, "I never drink...wine"? Actually it's rather sexy, sort of like Nina Dobrev having red stuff coming down her neck. On The Vampire Diaries they drink...wine...but of course they are immune to crosses so it's rather moot that they drink wine.

I love women, but, well, they're women. I suppose they need their Merlot girls nights out to let the guys have their Symposium:

Plato's Symposium (Anselm Feuerbach, 1873)

So what exactly is love, guys, Socrates wants to know? Well, I am actually writing a book on the nature of platonic love versus romantic sexual love, but I digress. I think, like in the Symposium, wine can be an aid to discovering the nature of love, or at least the action of making it.

As for Yellow Tail's negatives I suppose it is jammy and vulgar, and when I use the latter term I mean it in the Latin sense of the word--common or pedestrian. But not so pedestrian as say Sutter Home or Franzia. I think for one who is humble enough to admit a wine tastes good if is simply good quality wine. I would say they average out in the mid eighties or so though which I base not only on the taste itself, but the wine itself--if it is a cheaper wine, I give it more leeway than a higher priced wine. Jammy is a positive term in wine but Yellow Tail goes too far perhaps, making the wine lack the sophistication of a truly great wine. 

Still, though it lacks sophistication, looking at my last paragraph I think vulgar is too strong an adjective for Yellow Tail. Even pedestrian perhaps may be too strong.  My main problem with it goes back to the anti-corporate philosophy which is not black and white. It also goes back to my belief in conservative, Old-World winemaking. Yellow Tail is clearly New-World, but there is no problem with New-World in itself, as it can be made conservatively as Ravenswood proves. In fact in the process of writing this post I had shared the last post on a web forum and I was told I was being a bit hypocritical in my censure of corporations. But the objections were a bit unfair. Is someones moral opposition to say Apple or Google hypocritical because they use it? No, that is a very fallacious accusation. We can't avoid corporations completely and so it's like politics--you work with the opposition but oppose them nevertheless. Only zealots and idealists think in black and white and they never get anything done. Though on the other side Francis Underwood forgets everything but power, because as Lord Voldemort would say, that's all there is.

So why do I drink Yellow Tail? Well, one because I rather like it, but also because in the cheap wines, it is very good. I would prefer something more conservative. But I have to go with what I can afford. Besides the last thing lovers of wine want to be is snobs. A lot of expert wine tasters have done blind tastes of cheap wine to which they give a very high rating and when they find out what it is they are surprised. So above all else it is never black and white. If it seems that way from whatever I post, forgive me. In fact in my next post I am going to write on three $10 and under wines.Then perhaps sometime later try some box wines because I do think there are some rather decent ones. Box wines are convenient for going to the park and other such places where a bottle would get in the way. Or for a big party where it is more cost efficient.

By they way, remember to subscribe to this blog and pass it along. Cheers!


PS....I understand that Yellow Tail is family owned and all that (a thing to be praised), but it is of a corporate nature. They are sold en masse, and though very well made, still are part of the en masse spirit of corporate wine. Wikipedia explains it best how they operate.