These 'bulk' wines are fine wines, great values

It’s not exactly good form to cheer someone else’s hardship, but there’s no escaping the fact that value wine drinkers have benefited from the so-called “Great Recession.” (Those who still have a job, that is.) The global recession we suffered through in 2008 and much of last year helped create a glut of fine wine and has kept downward pressure on prices, even as the economy has been slowly recovering.

“There is a glut of wine all over the world—an oversupply so significant that it's compelled Australian winemakers to plow up their vineyards, forced French producers to turn wines into ethanol and brought wealthy Napa vintners if not to their knees then to their bankers in search of refinance,” wrote Lettie Teague in the Wall Street Journal last month. Despite ignoring the minor detail of global economic meltdown, Teague gives a thorough account of the rise of the “bulk wine” market that she attributed to “new vineyard plantings by ambitious producers, increased productivity at a time of plummeting demand, winemakers who have overleveraged their brands.”

Indeed, the misfortune of these vintners has been a boon to wine buyers. And one winemaker who is creating bargains for consumers while prospering from the wine glut is Cameron Hughes, who is what the French call a “négociant.” He buys surplus wine or juice from producers and then bottles or blends it under his own label, reselling it at a profit, yet at prices that are a fraction of what the wines otherwise command.

His first wine was reportedly a $27 California syrah that he priced at $8.99 and sold himself at a Costco store in San Francisco. He now sells about 250,000 gallons of wine a year. “Mr. Hughes takes the $100 California Cabernets that have gone begging for buyers and sells the very same wines under his own labels for $25 a bottle and less,” Teagues writes. “He packages them in generic-looking bottles with names like Lot 164 Rutherford Cabernet and Lot 135 Syrah and sells them on his website and to retailers like Sam's Club and Costco in 38 states.”

For more detail on Cameron Hughes, read Teagues' column in the Wall Street Journal or the profile of him and his partner/spouse from Fortune Small Business.

We picked up a bottle of Cameron Hughes Lot 90 2006 Lodi Tannat at Circle Wine & Spirits on sale for $10.99 (regularly $12.99 and $9.99 each for six bottles) both because we wanted to try one of these Cameron Hughes wines and because we were curious about wine made from tannat, a grape originally from the Basque region in Southwest France along the Spanish border, where is traditionally blended with Cabernet Sauvignon or Cabernet Franc in the wines of Madiran. The only tannat we had previously tasted, however, was from Uruguay. Apparently Basque immigrants brought the grape to Uruguay in the late 1800s, and it has become the national red grape, accounting for approximately one third of all wine produced there. More tannat is now grown in Uruguay than in its native France. But we digress. …

The Cameron Hughes tannat from Lodi – the wine region east of San Francisco known more for its old-vine zinfandel – tasted like tannat is supposed to taste (we’re told by the wine buyer who introduced us to Uruguay tannat and who tasted this with us); a big wine with aromas and flavors of dark fruit, but a real tannic backbone that indicates it might age well and would go great with a thick, juicy steak. It tasted like a much more expensive wine.

Circle Wine also has a $20 Russian River Valley chardonnay by Cameron Hughes, the Lot 115 2007 Russian River Chardonnay, Sonoma County, on sale for $17.99 ($15.99 each for six bottles) and will be holding a broad tasting of a Cameron Hughes wines at its “Chillin' & Grillin' – summerfest” on Saturday, June 19.

There is a seemingly random variety of Cameron Hughes wine available locally, including the 2007 Cameron Hughes The Flying Winemaker Zinfandel, which is priced at $12.99 at Bell Wine & Spirits on M Street, NW, (and for $11.69 each for six bottles and $11.04 a bottle by the case). Bell also has the 2007 Lot 98 GSM Red Blend on sale for $9.99 (regularly $11.99), a Rhone-style blend from Campo de Borja in Spain made from 60 percent grenache, 30 percent syrah and 10 percent mourvedre. See the slideshow below for a sampling of Cameron Hughes wines available at stores in DC, Maryland and Virginia and their prices.

Compare prices nationwide and find these wines online or at a wine shop near you.

Baltimore NPR affiliate WYPR Radio reviewed several Cameron Hughes wines on its Cellar Notes show, including Lot 115 Chardonnay, Lot 98 GSM Blend, The Flying Winemaker Zinfandel and The Flying Winemaker Tempranillo. You can listen to hosts Hugh Sisson and Al Spoler discuss the wines here.

We're in agreement with Sisson and Spoler, and if this first bottle we sampled is any indication, Cameron Hughes could become a value wine drinker's best friend.

Cheers!

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