Show Notes

Episode 159: Just How Good Are Trader Joe’s Reserve Wines?  00:00

Hello! And welcome to The Wine Pair Podcast. I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and this is my wife and my wine pairing partner in crime, Carmela. And we are The Wine Pair! 

If you are new to our podcast, here is a quick orientation! Each week, we explore a different wine varietal or blend — like Picpoul or Valpolicella or Malbec — and dive into what these wines are, what makes them special, and why finding new wines to learn about is so fun.  Our goal is to help you expand your wine knowledge in a fun way that is understandable and accessible to regular people, not just wine nerds!  We also taste and review 2-3 wines under $25 each, and share our scores and recommendations to help you find great wines without breaking the bank. So, thank you so much for joining us! And, we are proud to say that Decanter Magazine calls us fun, irreverent, chatty, and entertaining.

And, to just be a little braggy braggy, I just want to say that we are consistently finding ourselves in the top 100 of Food podcasts on Apple podcasts in the US. You heard me right. Not just wine podcasts, but Food podcasts, so that is pretty cool, and we want to thank you all who listen to us regularly and who tell your friends and family about us because it means a lot and it’s nice to know we are doing at least something right each week. 

Well, Carmela, it has been about 6 months since we did a Trader Joe’s wine episode, and so I think it is time we went back to the well and did a review of another one of the tiers of Trader Joe’s house label wines. Our Trader Joe’s and Costco Kirkland brand episodes are some of our most popular ones in terms of both downloads and in the Google machine when I look at the data. Or is it data.

I have mentioned this before, but part of the reason why I think these episodes are popular  is that professional wine reviewers and wine publications usually just ignore house brand wines like those from Costco and Trader Joe’s, which is both too bad and kind of dumb because a lot of people are buying those wines. Show of hands, how many of you have a Trader Joe’s brand wine or a Costco Kirkland wine in your house right now. Come on. Don’t be shy, even if you are on a walk right now you can raise your hand!

Ok, you can put your hands down, but did you all see what I saw, Carmela? Basically everyone listening to this podcast raised their hand. Amazing. 

We’ll talk in a bit about why Trader Joe’s wines are so popular, but I did want to go through the different tiers of the wines at Trader Joe’s again because it can be a little confusing, and because today we are focusing on specifically the Reserve tier. The expectation should be that wines in each tier are equivalent to wines 2-3 times more expensive, although that is just an estimation. 


Ok, now that we have covered that information on how you can interpret the Trader Joe’s different wine labels, it’s time to talk about why Trader Joe’s wines are so popular, and we have three Trader Joe’s Reserve wines we are going to taste and review today to let you know if they are any good . . . 

But first . . . we have to do our shameless plug.

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And, as we do every week, we’ll tell you someone we think you should recommend The Wine Pair Podcast to - because the best way for us to grow listeners is when you tell your family and friends about us - your endorsement by word of mouth is just so valuable. This week, we want you to recommend us to anyone who shops a lot at Trader Joe’s and buys wine there but is never quite sure if they should like it or not.


RESEARCH ARTICLES AND LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE


Topic: Why are Trader Joe’s Wines so Popular? 11:40

Carmela, we know Trader Joe’s is recognized as a place for affordable quality, and that is certainly true for how people see their wines. And their wines are popular - but there is really not very much information available about just how much wine they sell - they keep it a bit of secret. Which is a little annoying to me, and when we get to the wines we selected section, we’ll talk about that a bit more. 

But before we do that, let’s talk about why they are so popular, and it really comes down to a few simple factors:any idea what those factors may be? Yes, they are affordably, they offer a pretty good variety of wines from different countries and grapes in pretty small section, and they get the halo effect of Trader Joe's in general because Trader Joe’s has a good reputation - whether or not that reputation is deserved is a whole other story that I won’t go down now. 

So, it’s not rocket science, but it is pretty clever, and they obviously are doing something right because, again, they sell a lot of wine, and people are very curious about it, including those who just outright love it, and those who are a little more skeptical like me.

So, on that note, I think it’s time to learn a little more about the specific wines we are drinking today. Whaddya say?


Trader Joe’s Reserve Wines We Chose for This Episode 16:40

As usual, all of the wines we have chosen for this episode are under $25. In fact, since they are all Trader Joe’s Reserve - rather than Grand Reserve or Platinum Reserve but just plain old Reserve - they were all $9.99. Obviously all of them should be relatively easy to find because I bought them all at Trader Joe’s. 

However, it can be pretty hit or miss on what Trader Joe’s branded wine you are actually going to find in the store, so in order to be as precise as possible, we are going to give an annoying amount of detail about the name of each exact wine, including the exact location on the bottle and the Lot number. So, we can’t promise you can find these exact wines, but if you do, this should help, and we would expect wines relatively close to these at Trader Joe’s to be about the same quality. 

The first wine we are going to drink today is the 2023 Trader Joe’s Reserve Arroyo Seco Monterey County Chardonnay Lot #262. And, as usual, it is hard to find out too much about these wines. One thing I did note is that the wine label on the back does tell you who bottles the wine, and in this case the bottler is VinoEology LLC Sebastopol. I had ChatGPT do a little snooping, and they could not find any information that linked VinoEology to Trader Joe’s specifically, but the company is not noted as a bottler, but rather helps to connect companies to suppliers that bottle, and they seem to be affiliated with Kukeri Wines which may provide the production and bottling for them. 

Which brings me to a bigger topic which is why I am always so sus about Trader Joe’s. Why are they so opaque about who is doing the work? I just have a hard time trusting a company that seems so fun and positive with their funny shirts and stuff but then also is cagey about their business practices. But back to the wine.

Luckily, a website called Cheap Wine Finder found some information in the Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer about this wine, if you can trust their flyer! They say that the flyer indicates the producer used 50% French oak barrels and 50% American oak barrels. As we have mentioned before, French oak tends to be a softer oak in terms of impacting flavor than American oak. They do not indicate if they are new or used barrels, because used barrels impart less flavor, so my guess is that this will have some oaky vanilla spice but maybe not an overpowering amount. 

One last note, the grapes for this wine come from Arroyo Seco which is in the Salinas Valley in central California, about 40 miles from the coast. A place we have driven through many times when our daughter was at CalPoly. It is beautiful, but warm, so this wine will likely be ripe, and is probably a reason for the high alcohol content which is over 14%, which is high for a white wine.

The next wine we are going to drink is the 2023 Trader Joe’s  Reserve Paso Robles Zinfandel Lot #265. Again, it was very difficult to find out much about this wine. It does come from the Paso Robles area which is very well known for Old Vine Zinfandel, and we love Turley wines from there, but this wine does not indicate that it is Old Vine. Which means it is probably not.

Again, not much information exists about this wine, but the bottle says it is Bottled by Beckett Family Paso Robles. They are the founders of Peachy Canyon Winery that specializes in Zinfandel and Rhône varietals (like Grenache and Syrah) and was one of the earliest wineries in Paso. Interestingly enough, the sons of the founders of Beckett Family founded Chronic Cellars which focuses on red blends and makes some interestingly named wines like Dead Nuts Paso Robles Red Blend, Knight Mare which is a red blend, Rays in Hell, and Love Machine.

Because we don’t know much about the wines, we are going on a bunch of tangents.

So, we need to move on to our last wine, which is the 2022 Trader Joe’s Reserve Horse Heaven Hills Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah Lot #261. Horse Heaven Hills is right here in the great state of Washington, and is in the very south central area of the state on the Columbia River which creates the border with Oregon, just to the west of Walla Walla. Horse Heaven Hills is one of the newer AVAs in Washington, but it pumps out some high quality wines. 

For example, Quilceda Creek Winery got a 100 point rating from Robert Parker for their 2002 and 2003 Cabernet Sauvignons. Some other famous wineries that make wines from Horse Heaven Hills are Andrew Will and Passing Time. There is a very famous area of vineyards in Horse Heaven Hills called Champoux - spelled C H A M P O U X - and wines from that area can be very expensive. Horse Heaven Hills also makes up about a quarter of all wine production in Washington state, and remember that Washington state is only second to California in the US for wine production. So they make a buttload of wine. Which is actually a technical wine term, believe it or not. 

(A butt is half of a tun, which is the largest unit of measurement in the English wine cask system. A butt is technically equal to two hogsheads, which is 63 gallons each. A standard wine barrel holds about 60 gallons of wine. The term "butt" may come from the word for "large wooden cask" or "two-wheeled cart".)

There is a bit more information about this wine which is a blend of 74% Cabernet Sauvignon and 26% Syrah. One really interesting thing I found on a website called Vinopointer is that for a wine to be labeled as a single varietal bottling it has to have at least 75% of that grape, but they stopped at 74% on this one, which is really curious. More conspiracy theories about Trader Joe’s?!? 

I checked with Cheap Wine Finder, but they could not offer any information about this wine on the Fearless Flyer insert, so I can’t really tell you much more except when it comes to the vintner and bottler which is Airway Cellars which is, strangely enough, in Santa Rosa. Which means they had to truck the grapes down there. Not very climate friendly, TJ! Again, I am just sus about Trader Joe’s. They weird me out a bit.

In addition, ChatGPT could not find out information about this so-called Airway Cellars, and could not find a business registered under that name. It was able to find a Wine of the Month Club and Wine Hooligans business registered at the business address 980 Airway Court in Santa Rosa. This is like Severance. Mysterious but important. 

Wine Hooligans is a wine production company based in Santa Rosa, California that specializes in bulk wine procurement and custom wine production, and they oversee multiple wine brands and they provide full-service winemaking, including bottling, labeling, and distribution. That’s probably who is making it, but why would Trader Joe’s not just say Wine Hooligans and instead say some unregistered business called Airway Cellars? Sus. Very sus. So if anyone has any information on that business or the connection to shady Trader Joe’s, let us know. 

But, I think that is enough information - let’s get to drinking! We’ll take a quick break and be right back. And, if you have these wines or similar wines, drink along with us to get some participation points, which you can trade-in for free stickers - and you can get some extra participation points if you can tell us if you are suspicious of Trader Joe’s as well! You just need to send me an email with your mailing address, and I will get those “I drink with The Wine Pair Podcast” stickers over to you!

LINKS TO SOURCES FOR THESE SPECIFIC WINES


2023 Trader Joe’s Reserve Arroyo Seco Monterey County Chardonnay Lot #262, 2023 Trader Joe’s  Reserve Paso Robles Zinfandel Lot #265, 2022 Trader Joe’s Reserve Horse Heaven Hills Cabernet Sauvignon and Syray Lot #261 Wine Tasting, Pairing, and Review 28:20

Wine: Trader Joe’s Reserve Arroyo Seco Monterey County Chardonnay Lot #262
Region: California, Monterey County 
Year: 2023
Price: $9.99
Retailer: Trader Joe’s
Alcohol: 14.3%
Grapes: Chardonnay
Professional Rating: Sipped Wine Reviews 91, Vivino had no ratings

What we tasted and smelled in this Trader Joe’s Reserve Arroyo Seco Monterey County Chardonnay Lot #262:


Food to pair with this Trader Joe’s Reserve Arroyo Seco Monterey County Chardonnay Lot #262: Hard to pair with food, a cocktail wine, stinky cheese, brie in pastry and fig jam charcuterie board, tapenade, would not be a great seafood wine
 
As a reminder on our rating scale, we rate on a scale of 1-10, with no half points, where 7 and above means that we would buy it, and 4 and below means that we are likely to pour it down the sink, and a 5 or 6 means we are likely to drink it and finish it, but we are probably not going to buy it. 

Trader Joe’s Reserve Arroyo Seco Monterey County Chardonnay Lot #262 Wine Rating: 


Wine: Trader Joe’s  Reserve Paso Robles Zinfandel Lot #265
Region: California, Paso Robles
Year: 2023
Price: $9.99
Retailer: Trader Joe’s
Alcohol: 14.3%
Grapes: Zinfandel
Professional Rating: Reverse Wine Snob: 7.3, Vivino had no rating

What we tasted and smelled in this  Trader Joe’s  Reserve Paso Robles Zinfandel Lot #265:


Food to pair with this Trader Joe’s Reserve Paso Robles Zinfandel Lot #265: Cheap pizza and wine night wine, Domino’s Pizza, cookout hot dog and burgers

 Trader Joe’s  Reserve Paso Robles Zinfandel Lot #265 Wine Rating: 


Wine: Trader Joe’s Reserve Horse Heaven Hills Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah Lot #261
Region: Washington, Horse Heaven Hills
Year: 2022
Price: $9.99
Retailer: Trader Joe’s
Alcohol: 13.4%
Grapes: 74% Cabernet Sauvignon and 26% Syrah
Professional Rating: Vivino

What we tasted and smelled in this Trader Joe’s Reserve Horse Heaven Hills Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah Lot #261:


Food to pair with this Trader Joe’s Reserve Horse Heaven Hills Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah Lot #261: Stew, steak, barbacoa, a food wine, a good cooking wine

Trader Joe’s Reserve Horse Heaven Hills Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah Lot #261 Wine Rating:


Which one of these are you finishing tonight?


Taste profiles expected from 2023 Trader Joe’s Reserve Arroyo Seco Monterey County Chardonnay Lot #262, 2023 Trader Joe’s  Reserve Paso Robles Zinfandel Lot #265, 2022 Trader Joe’s Reserve Horse Heaven Hills Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah Lot #261  46:47


Trader Joe’s Reserve wines are a bit meh, and you can do better if you spend a little more

Outro and how to find The Wine Pair Podcast 49:46

Ok, so, Carmela, it’s time for us to go, but before we do, we want to thank you very much for listening to us - and if you haven’t done so yet, now would be the perfect time to follow or subscribe to our podcast and also a fantastic time to leave us a nice rating and review on our website or Apple podcasts or other podcast app - and it is an awesome and free way to support us and help us grow listeners.

We would also love to hear from you about a wine you would like us to taste and review. You can leave a message for us on our website thewinepairpodcast.com and you can join our email newsletter there - and if you missed our latest newsletter, email me and I will send it to you. You can do that by reaching out at joe@thewinepairpodcast.com. And tell us some things you want to hear us do, or not hear us do!

Alright, with that, we are going to sign off, so thanks again, and we will see you next time. And, as we say, life is short, so stop drinking shitty wine.

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