For a while now I've been walking past the display of $2.97 wine at Whole Foods. Today, I decided to buy a bottle of Three Wishes Cabernet to try.
The friendly folks at Whole Foods assured me it was:
- definitely wine
- definitely has alcohol
- and isn't bad for $3 wine
I admit that I have low expectations.
But what interests me more is how it is even possible to make a bottle of wine in California, ship it to Milwaukee and sell it for under $3.
Real estate to build wineries in Livermore and Ripon, Calif., can't be cheap. You then have to pay taxes on it. You need to buy equipment to work a vineyard. You need to plan vines and wait a few years for them to bear fruit. You need to tend the vines on a regular basis.
Grapes must be harvested and pressed and vinified. You need tanks and barrels and a press and other equipment and a place in which to do this work. You need people to do all this work (thank the lord there's immigrant labor to do it).
You need bottles, labels, foils, caps or corks. You need cartons. You need folks and machinery to bottle, cork, label and box up the wine. Then you've got to ship it a few thousand miles down the pike to Prospect and North, where some folks will unload the cartons from a truck. They need to be paid, too.
Then the wine takes up more real estate in what I assume is a pretty high-rent storefront. Folks need to be paid to ring up the $2.97 wine.
How on Earth is this possible?
And if the wine turns out not to be any good – and it seems a good bet based on this review from SF Weekly – is it even worth all of this effort, carbon emission and bone scraping finance?
Follow me on Twitter, where, tomorrow, I will tweet what I thought of the wine.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
