{"id":3252,"date":"2026-03-30T18:59:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T18:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=3252"},"modified":"2026-03-30T19:07:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T19:07:50","slug":"mass-producers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=3252","title":{"rendered":"Mass Producers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sometimes in Power Tasting<\/em> we have used the term \u201cmass producers\u201d with a bit of a sneer.  That\u2019s unfortunate, both because it\u2019s a bit snobby and because it\u2019s not fair.  There\u2019s no definition as to what constitutes \u201cmass\u201d.  Sure, a vineyard that grows enough for 5,000 cases or less is small (or perhaps the winemakers would prefer the term \u201cpetite\u201d).  But does mass start with 10,000 cases? 100,000?  A million?<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Gallo factory in Fresno, California.  Photo courtesy of the Fresno Bee.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Yes, Gallo turns out 70 million or more cases of wine a year and they certainly are America\u2019s largest producers.\u00a0 Most of the wines they make are intended for people who are not sophisticated wine drinkers.\u00a0 But Gallo also owns numerous labels and some of them make wine of a pretty high quality.\u00a0 One of these is J, producer of some pretty good sparkling wine that we have enjoyed.\u00a0 To be fair, these days we don\u2019t buy wine under the Gallo label.\u00a0 But we sure did when we were younger<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we do buy Mo\u00ebt & Chandon Champagne.\u00a0 They make 2.5 million cases annually and that\u2019s still pretty massive.\u00a0 And that doesn\u2019t include their Chandon<\/a> bottlings from California and Argentina, which probably add up to the same number of cases.\u00a0 Of course, the best price we have seen for Mo\u00ebt & Chandon is around $45; there are Gallo wines that sell for less than five dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point is that quantity is not necessarily relevant to quality in judging wines.  And for those of us who enjoy wine tasting, we should not avoid visiting the tasting rooms of the larger producers just as a matter of principle.  There are several reasons for this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One is that makers of lower priced wines often have higher-end lines as well.  Perhaps there is no better example of this than Guigal in the Northern Rh\u00f4ne, that makes a C\u00f4tes du Rh\u00f4ne that sells for under twenty dollars and top-ends such as La Mouline, La Landonne, La Turque, and La Reynard that are among the most coveted wines in the world.  In the US, Louis M. Martini (a Gallo label, by the way) sells a lot of their low-price Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon but are now making some quite respectable higher-end wines.  And for that matter, the Sonoma Cab is a quite respectable wine for picnics and barbecues or Tuesdays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another reason to visit some of the bigger wineries is that even though they primarily sell inexpensive, lower quality wine, the owners often give their winemakers some latitude to choose the best grapes and make a more crafted wine that is sold only at the tasting room.  We have had that experience once at Clos du Val in Napa Valley, which at that time was making 90,000 cases, surely enough to be called mass producers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, it might make sense to visit a tasting room of a mass producers because there are times that we might be looking for what we call \u201cTuesday wine\u201d.  Alas, we don\u2019t open Mouton or Lafitte every night at our house; sometimes a simple red is just fine.  And it helps to try them before we buy them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes in Power Tasting we have used the term \u201cmass producers\u201d with a bit of a sneer.  That\u2019s unfortunate, both because it\u2019s a bit snobby and because it\u2019s not fair.  There\u2019s no definition as to what constitutes \u201cmass\u201d.  Sure, a vineyard that grows enough for 5,000 cases or less is small (or perhaps the winemakers … Continue reading Mass Producers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3252"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3269,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3252\/revisions\/3269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}