Our Daily Red


• By Allen Dale "Ole" Olson   |   Saturday, July 4, 2009 at 4:00 pm   |     |   Print   |   Permalink

It’s a label I couldn’t resist. It’s been around a long time, but it was the first time I’d seen it. It was on a supermarket shelf under a hand-written sign “Really good.” I was in one of those supermarkets that has recently stepped up its wine selections and I wanted to to see what was there and how prices compared with my usual haunts. The wine is called Our Daily Red.

It being a supermarket, there was no one around who could speak to the wine. At $6.99 a bottle I couldn’t help remembering something Olivier Humbrecht told a class we were teaching in Strasbourg. “The cost of a bottle, a cork, capsules, and labels, along with the capital costs related to equipment and vineyard labor aren’t terribly different from one winery to the next,” he said. “So if the cost of the bottle into which you put the wine is 50 francs and the total sale price for the wine is 75 francs, you know the value of the wine is only 15  francs.” (At the time, five francs equalled a dollar.) “A top-growth Bordeaux at 1,000 francs has the same basic  production costs as a local farmer,” he explained.

The bottle I was looking at in that supermarket  had originated in California, retailing in Indiana for only $6.99, and I wondered how much of that sale price represented the value of the wine versus all the logistical costs of creating it and shipping it. Never mind, it had caught my eye, and I felt that at $6.99 I couldn’t lose.

Part of the eye-catching was label information claiming Our Daily Red to be America’s most organic wine with no sulfites detected. At a comfortable 12.5% alcohol, I didn’t care that the label divulged no varietal information.

The Nevada County Wine Guild web site tells about the two partners who produce Our Daily Red (along with some other catchy labels such as Well Red) and provide a good explanation of what it means to be organic and how they manage to keep from adding sulfites. The site also includes copies of awards for their high quality “green” production.

Well, how about the wine, you ask. Whoever wrote the shelf note that it’s really good had it right. It is not complicated nor assertive. It caresses the palate and leaves it with a fresh, creamy short-lived finish. The web site describes it as a ”claret style,” but the Cabernet Sauvignon is actually blended with Syrah and Carignan which give it more of a Rhone character. Even so, I have to call it one of the best $6.99 wines I’ve had for a long time.

2 comments

• Pegi Flahault   |   July 23rd, 2009 at 7:49 am    

Where can I find this wine in Bloomington – which grocery store(s)?

• Allen "Ole" Olson   |   July 23rd, 2009 at 2:55 pm    

Pegi

I haven’t looked for it in Bloomington, but my bottle came from the IGA in Nashville — a fine area supermarket for high quality good value wines.

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