What I Learned in Wine Class (alt. title The Ugly Truth About Yellow Tail).
(alt. alt. title I Am A Sucker And You Probably Are Too But Don't Feel Bad Because They Know What They're Doing.)Yellow Tail (TM) was a brand before it was a wine. Marketeers decided that they wanted to brand an inexpensive, textbook wine that would appeal to the mid-to-upper income, college grad women in the 35-55 year age bracket. In short, the wines in this line are designed for perimenopausal women to bring to girl parties. The wines also have a higher alcohol content than most wines (16-17% versus the standard 12-14%) to make them seem sweeter to the palate. The major problem? Women metabolize alcohol more slowly than men, which basically means that these wines are meant to make women drink more and get drunk faster.
And the kicker? These wines are made with grape concentrate - not fresh grapes. Apparently this is becoming a common practice to produce 'decent' cheap wines for the masses.
My wine class prof - aside from loathing Yellow Tail for its shall-we-say unethical marketing practices- also has a problem with these wines because they are simply average. You can't even say they completely suck. They are exactly what an "ideal" in the plebian, standard sense, is in terms of varietal fingerprints (that is to say, the telltale signs of a particular style of wine).
I am appalled and will never drink Yellow Tail again. I REFUSE TO BE A STATISTIC DAMMIT.
Will you?
posted by Oy Vey at 6:17 PM
2 Comments:
Um, I should be appalled. But really I'm just thinking perfectly average, drinkable wine on the cheap...sign me up! Although if I actually learned more about good wine vs. bad wine rather than, this tastes good, pour more, I might feel differently.
That's terrible! How can they get away with it? Scandalous.
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