1. Perfect Angle Torrontes Live life through the perfect filter with this fresh and fruity Torrontes. Aromas of guava and tropical flowers will transport you to a magical place where the light is golden, your hair always looks amazing, and every side is your good side. Go ahead, snap a selfie – you look great.
2. Birthday Cake Vineyards Cake Batter White Wine (Specialty Grape Wine with Natural and Artificial Flavors Added) With the flavors of decadent cake batter, Birthday Cake Vineyards flavored wine is a true gift to your senses. Whether at a party, at home or at the beach, Birthday Cake Batter could be the most delicious wine you have ever tasted!
3. Nice Guy Red Blend We’ve taken the most unlikely of grapes, and put them together in this full-bodied red blend that’s always there when you need it. And sometimes when you don’t. You wouldn’t think Malbec, Tempranillo, Pinot Noir, Tannat, Nebbiolo, Petit Sirah, Zinfandel, and Charbono would go together, but one sip, and we know you’ll agree they’re meant for each other. Kind of like us.
4. Low Hanging Fruit Keep it simple, go after the Low Hanging Fruit. The obvious choice.
5. Trim Cabernet TRIM is a well-crafted Cabernet Sauvignon sourced from outstanding vineyards in California. Our winemaking team works with some of the best vineyards to produce a lush, well balanced, and fruit forward Cabernet Sauvignon. This is the best valued wine on the market. Sophisticated Flavor, Sensible Value
6. Barely Legal Moscato We took our fruity and frothy signature Moscato, and added fresh mango puree for an even more fun twist. And speaking of twists, we’ve added a hot pink twisty straw to every half-bottle so your pout will stay on-point. Barely Legal: for the young at heart.
7. Easy Virtue Viognier She smells of peaches and jasmine, warm summer nights and mystery. It’s so easy to talk to her, and yet the more she talks, the less you know about her. Ponder what’s under the surface with this smooth, lush Viognier.
8. Surfer Chick Sauvignon Blanc Want to know what it’s like when everyday’s a day at the beach? Just ask a Surfer Chick. Her highlights are real. Her legs are tan. She smells like coconuts. She can balance a surfboard on a beach cruiser and swim with the dolphins. She wears a wet suit, not a business suit. She’ll stay up late and get up early for dawn patrol the next morning. She likes seafood, sunsets, SPF and Sauvignon Blanc. Not necessarily in that order. She’s more than a sister. She’s a state of mind.
9. Flirt California Red Wine cheat on your wine, your other wine will never know. You’ve been with your current wine for some time now. And things are fine. But maybe fine isn’t good enough. Maybe you’re bored. Maybe your eyes are starting to wander. And here we are. And here you are. And we’re not going to say anything…
10. Handsome Devil Red: Forbidden fruit always tastes sweeter. Tempted by rich, sinful wines? Then it’s time you met this Handsome Devil from California. Our Winemaker’s Blend is tempting indeed. Alluring fresh raspberry and vanilla aromas lead to juicy cherry and berry jam flavors with whispers of spice and vanilla. This luscious wine is lively on your palate, with silky-smooth tannins and a lingering finish.
11. Single and Loving it Rosé You’re out on your porch watching the sun set with a big, cool glass of this refreshing rose of Grenache and Mourvedre with your best girlfriends, without a care in the world. You still get to enjoy ‘me’ time whenever you want! Your whole life is ‘me’ time! Go ahead and throw in an ice cube, no one’s watching!
12. Sequin Rosé captures the life of the party – light on its feet, yet dreamy and fresh. Delicate bubbles and shimmering flavors of lush strawberry, exotic lychee and lively citrus make this enchanting wine always worthy of a toast. Serve chilled and dazzle the senses. Opt for pure and simple with a chilled glass, or get creative with a signature wine cocktail. Pair with soft goat cheese, grilled prawns with mango salsa or seafood paella.
13. Bake Shop Chardonnay With tempting aromas of toasty oak and vanilla and a rich, buttery mouthfeel, our signature Chardonnay feels more indulgent than a whole bakery’s worth of cronuts. Pull out your biggest glass and feel your worries melt away. Who’s counting calories, anyway?
14. Lone Sandle Pinot Grigio You’ve always wanted a cottage by the sea, and now you’ve finally got one. Break out that watercolor set, throw on some oversized linen pants, and start living your dream. Lone Sandle is crisp, refreshing, and the perfect accompaniment to your second act.
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1. fake, 2. real, 3. fake, 4. real, 5. real, 6. fake, 7. fake, 8. real, 9. real, 10. real, 11. fake, 12. real, 13. fake, 14. fake
Tags: diane mcmartin, humor, wine
Number 9 is real???
I know, right? These descriptions are all pulled from the website or the back of the bottle. I couldn’t believe some of them, either!
I think my favorite is number 4, but that’s probably because I’m too clever for my own good a lot of the time. Just like whoever came up with that wine brand.
How in on the joke is the person who came up with that name, that’s what I want to know.
I wanted all of them except “Nice Guy” and “Barely Legal” to be real. I’m actually surprised “Bake Shop” wasn’t.
It sounds a lot like Cupcake chardonnay, which does exist in real life! They also have wines called Red Velvet and Angel Food. There’s something almost like Barely Legal IRL, too. Sofia Coppola sparkling wine comes in a little can the size of a red bull with a straw.
I’m mystified by the whole category of wines named for desserts. It says something about our culture, women, etc., but when I think about it too hard I just get angry…
I think it’s because (for Americans at least) a lot of us were raised on sugary sodas, juice and chocolate milk and things like that. So a drink with acid and tannin is a shock to the system. (Just look what we did to coffee by creating frappuccinos!) Wine with a desserty name reassures us that it’s sweet while appealing to our ~sophistication.~
I didn’t do great on this quiz but I did know Birthday Cake was too vile to be fake…
…well, I SAY too vile. I bet if you put it in a blind taste test and called it a $50 buttery-vanilla-oaky Chardonnay I’d be all over it.
I was once at a blind tasting where an entire group of wine students thought that Yellowtail Chardonnay was the most expensive of the lineup. Mortifying!
This is timely for me, as I recently opened a bottle of wine someone left at my house; it is called “Red Headed Stepchild,” it has a doodle of a little girl on the label, it is the color of raspberry Kool Aid and it tastes like grape juice. Everything about it is terrible but I drink a glass a day because I have a thing about not wasting food or drink.
However, perhaps I shouldn’t judge, since my inner goth is always trying to get me to buy second-to-bottom shelf wines with labels that depict gnarled trees or vaguely Celtic knotwork.
I think Red Headed Stepchild is from the same people who make Surfer Chick Sauvignon Blanc.
Perhaps I should do a tasting of all of the offerings from this homogenized wine product facility.
You’ll get a sugar high real fast if you do!
They make a Chardonnay (Middle Sister, I think it’s called – gag) that is actually OK, but I’d imagine red wines from them would be…problematic.
But Gnarly Head wine really isn’t that bad! I think we should all just be honest and admit that we mostly shop by wine labels anyhow.
Wine like that is excellent for sangria!
I’m going to have to disagree! I like a sangria that still tastes like red wine, and this particular red wine tastes like Hawaiian Fruit Punch.
Ouch, that’s bad. …Add brandy?
I always want to buy Apothic Red, but then I remember that I don’t particularly like red wine.
Actually, Apothic Red was pitched to me as a great red wine for white wine lovers like myself and I agreed. Not that it tastes like a white, but it’s not very tannin-y. (Also, there is Apothic White.)
#6: Thank Bacchus that one’s fake.
One of my favorite wines is called The Crossings, and it makes me think me of a rehab center every time I look at it.
Ooh, that is unfortunate.
Birthday Cake Vineyards Cake Batter White Wine (Specialty Grape Wine with Natural and Artificial Flavors Added)
Thank you for this helpful gift-giving advice! Sometimes I need a wine recommendation that really expresses how I feel about my relationship with a person, and I think that this one, in particular, will really express my complicated feelings in regards to my mother, especially as it relates to her troubling relationship with alcohol.
Dammit! I would’ve gotten a perfect score had it not been for #14. Sounds soooo real to me.
When I wrote that one I thought, you know, I would buy that. I’m not sure what that says about me, but it’s nothing good, I’m sure.
“Break out that watercolor set, throw on some oversized linen pants, and start living your dream.” This speaks to me powerfully. If it were real, I would buy it.
(Also hello, fellow DC wine person! I’m a retail wine buyer and everyone I meet through work seems to be a dude my dad’s age. One of them was once trying to sell me a low-calorie wine with a butterfly on it. He described it as, “it’s for young women, millennials, people who aren’t that sophisticated.” I was 24 at the time. My boss bought a buttload of it over my objections. Your article is sooooo refreshing.)
Did you stab him with a broken wineglass?
No, but one time I accidentally spilled wine on him. That’s way less than the hundreds of times I’ve spilled wine on MYSELF, but still- revenge!
I spilled wine on Oz Clarke once.
He was not amused.
Did it sell??
Actually it did. 🙁 I would love to be like, “a bunch of dudes sat in a conference room discussing the buying habits of your demographic, then made a cynical ad campaign and bought the cheapest bulk wine they could find.” BUT that would be the wine equivalent of the hipster coffee house, we probably wouldn’t have any more customers.
Hi! Thank you so much for the kind words. I get sooooo much mansplaining. Feel free to find me on facebook if you want to gossip about which reps in our are the most annoying 😉
Ok, I shall! You’ll know it’s me because my fb picture is also a tiny dog.
Actually some of them are real dears. One rep (the most mild-mannered gentleman you could ever hope to meet) has been on a fitness kick lately. He demonstrated squats from his “Ass N’ Abs” class in his work clothes, in my wine department. My other favorite is basically a cross between Cary Grant and Mr. Rogers. He owns a LOT of sweater vests and says cheerful things like “aha!” and “why yes!” He once excitedly showed me his new hat- a real fedora with attached earmuffs- and asked me if it was dashing. XD
I recently was gifted a bottle of wine from Cupcake Vineyards that surprised me with how tolerable it turned out to be.
The Cupcake wines could be a lot worse. The Prosecco is actually decent; I’d buy it in a pinch. With a lot of these mass-market wines, the worst things about them are the branding. What’s actually in the bottle is often drinkable, if boring.
I don't particularly like wine, in general, at all, but I quite like Apothic. It's mellow.
I've seen 2, 4, 9 and 10 at my local LCBO. They've also been shilling something called Farmer's Daughter lately in the baskets in the front, but I haven't read the copy. I should.
(I should add that my taste in wine was shaped by early sips of my mother's sugary white German favourites, and mostly lies just this side of alcopop, so some of them actually look tempting to me. My favourite wine, though, is Sandbanks Baco Noir. I love it. Fortunately, other humans with actual taste usually like it too, so I can drink it in public without shame.)