Great Story

This is a terrific wine story, and lesson, for all we wine snobs in the world:

"Two-Buck Chuck" is used to beating competitors in price, but now it appears it has beaten rivals in taste, winning bragging rights to best California chardonnay at the state fair's commercial wine competition.

While full results from this year's competition aren't available yet, wine industry sources confirm the 2005 Charles Shaw vintage was the highest-scoring chardonnay in a blind tasting by judges who reviewed wines without regard to price.

It beat 350 other Chardonnay's.

Wine competitions and wine judging are by all estimations pretty subjective. But they do tend to separate good from bad wine. Clearly Charles Shaw, a product of the Franzia empire, is a good wine. I'm not sure I would give it an award over higher priced Chardonnay's, but who knows? Perhaps I should do a blind tasting myself. It might save me some serious $$$$.