Taber is an old-school journalist who relishes the reporting as well as the writing of a story. In his wine writing, he seems to love the legwork of reporting - reading, interviewing, traveling, double- and triple-checking anecdotes and facts - at least as much as the palate-work. Just about all that needs to be said to point readers to bargain wines can be summed up in around 150 pages, which is more or less what Taber devotes to that angle of the story he has to tell. He dedicates just as much space, however, to the "innovators, iconoclasts, and...revolutionaries" of the book's subtitle, folks responsible for challenging old shibboleths about winemaking, wine marketing and wine appreciation. They not only are making value wine more accessible but they're helping make consumers more comfortable with their choices.
Those people include Tim Hanni, a Master of Wine who has conceived a "taste profile" that he's convinced will help consumers determine wines better suited for them than traditional reviews and ratings, and Taber includes in the book Hanni's taste-sensitivity test to help buyers better meet their expectations in buying wine. He profiles Robert Hodgson, the California researcher whose multi-year study of judges at the State Fair in Sacramento calls into question the significance of commercial wine judgings. He reviews the immense if often underappreciated impact of California's Franzia family on the accessibility of value wine to the multitudes. And speaking of multitudes, Taber also looks closely at the forces awakening and shaping the wine trade of China, already the world's sixth-largest producer and fifth-largest consumer of wines, and positioning itself to be a much bigger player, despite a frequently unreceptive climate for growing grapes.
Aside from his timely report on China's wine industry, much of the first half of the book is old news to seasoned wine enthusiasts, though Taber's authoritative voice and brisk pacing add fresh perspective to each chapter in the first half of the book.
As to bargain wines outlined in the second half, I have no argument, based on my experience with many of the same releases. A bargain wine to Taber, incidentally, costs $10 or less; he also lists, however, a few "splurge" wines, priced about $25. These are grocery-store and wine-shop prices, not restaurant prices. His specific recommendations are grouped by varietal or style, followed by chapters about what he considers the top value brands from 12 wine-producing regions, such as Santa Julia and Crios of Argentina, Yalumba and Hardys of Australia, and Cousino Macul and Veramonte of Chile. In his estimation, California's top-10 bargain brands are Barefoot Cellars, Beaulieu Vineyards, Beringer, Charles Shaw, Delicato, Fetzer, Gallo, Oak Leaf, Sutter Home, Three Thieves, and Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi. Wait, that's 11, right? Well, Taber does have a few nit-picky errors in the book.
Taber is ecumenical in his approach, finding many bargain wines to his taste from California as well as regions more often associated with value buys, such as Australia, South Africa, Argentina and Chile. Of local interest, he includes two varietals from Bogle Vineyards at Clarksburg, the chenin blanc and the sauvignon blanc, but, curiously, not the petite sirah, of which Bogle is the largest producer in the country. Just two other of the 10 chenin blancs he lists are from California, and both, like the Bogle, originate in the San Joaquin/Sacramento River Delta - the Dry Creek Vineyard and the Pine Ridge.
As timely as Taber has attempted to be, the book comes up short in addressing the impact that "social media" and "crowd sourcing" is having on the wine trade. To be fair, however, the rise of wine reporting and criticism in cyberspace still is in its infancy, perhaps too young for its influence, range and duration to be evaluated studiously. Nevertheless, Taber sounds smitten with wine bloggers, writing, "This group is able to avoid the conflicts of interest that haunt its predecessors, and many in this group advocate inexpensive wines." Get that? The implication is that oldtime wine writers for magazines and newspapers not only have been unduly influenced by the trade, they haven't given due respect to bargain wines, even though value wines have been the subject of scores of articles and columns over the past several decades. I see no evidence that the new wave of wine writers and critics is devoting any more attention to bargain wines than the old, nor are they any less susceptible to the enticements of vintners. Taber points to Gary Vaynerchuk as "the most important member of the wine blogosphere" Vaynerchuk is the instigator and star of the online video series "Wine Library TV." Later, however, Taber also notes that "the focus of (Vaynerchuk's) attention is generally on the high-priced, premium wines that give him the best profit margins in his store." When it comes to conflict-of-interest, they don't come much more blatant than that.
With "A Toast to Bargain Wines," Taber has turned out a fast, smart and supportive overview of high-value everyday wines very much in the extensively researched and even-handed vein of his earlier wine books, which include "Judgment of Paris" and "To Cork or Not to Cork."
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