Wine Snobbery

From Felix Salmon at Reuters:
"Mike Veseth reprints the most depressing list I’ve seen in a long time:
The top ten individual wines (by volume not value of sales) in 2008 were (drum roll) …

1)Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay
2)Cavit Pinot Grigio
3)Beringer White Zinfandel
4)Sutter Home White Zin
5)Inglenook Chablis
6)Ecco Domani Pinot Grigio
7)Mezzacorona Pinot Grigio
8)Copper Ridge Chardonnay
9)Yellow Tail Chardonnay
10)Franzia White Zin

The top-volume wines are always, by definition, going to be mass-produced wines. But that doesn’t mean that every single one has to be white (or the abomination known as “White Zinfandel”, which is basically wine for people who think that Yellow Tail Chardonnay is too dry).

Franzia White Zin retails for as little as $13.11 for a 5-liter box; if you assume the wholesale price is say $12, and assume 125ml glasses of wine, that puts the cost to the restaurant of a glass of wine at just 30 cents. You can see why restaurants would be keen to push this stuff. And you can also see why any self-respecting diner would rather stick to Budweiser."

TW: This is a post from Salmon is a nice metaphor for how urban elites can get all snobby. Americans drink a lot of wine, much of higher end but the big volumes are in less foo foo varietals and price points. This has always been so not only for wine but for most consumer products. The folks selling wine know this, of course. Sometimes they create slightly more sophisticated sounding brand names (i.e. Ecco Domani and Copper Ridge from Gallo) to advance their cause. But at the end of the day the mass market is far different than those in the big cities would think.

But then how is white zinfandel so different from French rose (without naming names but I know some serious yuppies who really like French rose) except for the provenance (and some technique)?