The Auswine Forum

“The reds, however, were mostly the same old alcoholic, structureless Aussie swill.”

I was previously unaware of winejoe.com. Who is winejoe? The website explains – “My name is Joe Coulombe. "winejoe.com" is my web nom de vin. I founded Trader Joe's Company in 1958 and ran it until I quit in 1989. Trader Joe's built its name first on wines, then on foods. During my years as Trader Joe, I tasted at least 100,000 wines. Most of them were not terrific, but on the other hand most samples were submitted by vintners who were desperate for money. That's how Trader Joe's got those low prices. That's also how I learned that a lot of wines that are marginal can be very good--if served with the right food.”

winejoe travels to distant places and often tastes the wine. I think he looks more for value than great wine – maybe its all those years as Trader Joe! But his anecdotes and descriptions make for interesting, and often amusing, reading. He certainly does not go overboard in his tasting notes - brief would be an overstatement.

I wonder when he will visit the Barossa Valley and taste some serious “swill”.

Mike

PS Trader Joe's is best known these days as a seller of Two Buck Chuck.

Lesse... he flies all the way from duhmerica to go to Orange?

Hope at least he got to try the new carbonated, cola flavoured wines they're making for the US market....

manning wrote:Lesse... he flies all the way from duhmerica to go to Orange?.........

Unless I'm severely mistaken this guy can afford to fly anywhere he wants to go. And as the site shows he does get around.

While I find the winejoe site more amusing (and certainly narrow minded - no one picked that up from the site?) than serious, I do give the guy credit for at least recognizing that Orange might be a place where reasonable wine could be made. A lot of folks dismiss it without a second thought.

Mike

Lesse... he flies all the way from duhmerica to go to Orange?

Hope at least he got to try the new carbonated, cola flavoured wines they're making for the US market....

Ahhhh....nice to see that overgeneralized and simiplistic characterizations of the American wine drinker are still going strong down under. We all know, of course, that the average wine drinker in Australia has a much more sophisticated palate.

Sean

"Average" is an interesting concept. Average wine drinkers drink average wine, but in OZ the wine consumption per head of population is far higher.

The latest Roy Morgan research shows "In an average 4 week period 55% of Australians of drinking age have drunk on average 21 glasses of wine. This is well ahead of the US where in an average 4 week period only 30% of people have drunk an average of 10 glasses of wine."

In 1997 in Oz, we consumed 19 litres a head vs 7.4 litres a head in the US.

TORB - OK, Australians, on average, drink more wine than Americans. That's fine. I think you understand my point.

Sean,

Absolutely! The average US wine drinker consumes Yellow Tail and Two Buck Chuck (don't know why they didn't call it $2 vomit ) and our average wine drinker consumes $5 'ardys Rough Red and cask wine.

However I would like to think that as Australia has more wine drinkers per head of population and they have been drinking wine for longer, that some of them would have progressed up the pecking order to slightly better wines.

Two Buck Chuck (don't know why they didn't call it $2 vomit

Yep. It has often been said that the proper term is $2 UPCHUCK.