Oak Leaf Vineyards / Two Buck Chuck
August 2, 2008
Over six months I have had the Oak Leaf Vineyards wines listed on my site. This is my biggest wine on my site. When I first started this site I thought Two-Buck-Chuck was the best wine under $4.00. I may be wrong. The responses from all you visitors have been all positive. I do not think I have one negative comment on Oak Leaf Vineyards. Let’s let the challenge begin. Tell us what you thing of th taste between the two, the occasion you enjoyed or hated it, or what your guest thought about it.
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13 Responses to “Oak Leaf Vineyards / Two Buck Chuck”
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We like the Oak Leaf Pinot Grigio/Chardonnay and for an every day wine, it cannot be beat!
Oak Leaf Chardonnay is a great white wine. It does’nt matter if you are serving it on your deck, patio, driveway or at your formal dining room table it will get rave reviews!
We’ve tried the Oak Leaf Cab and White Zin. We enjoyed both better than two buck Chuck. The cab is a bit thin but smooth and a good buy for the $3 price.
We discovered Oak Leaf wines while working in Tampa. We have moved to Mississippi and Oak Leaf is not sold in Wal-Mart stores here. Where is the closest location where we can buy a case or two?
For the price oak leaf can not be beat. it is a great wine. It stands the test against the other more expensive wines out there…im used to drinking robert mondavi but i have found my new choice of wine and it is oak leaf.
I like the Merlot, it tastes good and it’s $1.97 at Walmart, I did notice that I don’t get the same Jolly Buzz that I get from Mondavi Merlot. But it tastes good and if you want to drink wine daily for the taste and health benefits and your on a budget you can’t beat a bottle of wine that costs the same as a tall can of beer…….
This is a California wine and tastes better than alot of $10 wines from Australia and New Zealand.
The Oak Leaf Pinot Grigio/ Chard is one of the best wines because it goes with just about everything, including wine snobs who only have their $50 – $95 bottles. I faked them out saying it was gift I wanted to share. They were most impressed and didn’t know it was not an expensive wine!!!! It doesn’t need to cost a lot to have a nice taste and pull one over on pretentious wine-snobs.
I agree it is every bit as good as Australian and New Zealand wines.
Oak Leaf Vineyards (Ripon, Calif.) does not really exist as such; instead it is a production facility of The Wine Group, Inc. Oak Leaf wine is the private label non-vintage wine marketed by The Wine Group (the box wine people) only to Wal-Mart stores. (Not E&J Gallo as some reviews contend.)
Headquartered in San Francisco (about 70 miles west of Ripon), The Wine Group’s labels include such well known brands as Corbett Canyon, Inglenook, Mogen David, Franzia, Almaden and Glen Ellen wines. The firm recently relocated their operations center from San Francisco to Livermore, Calif., about mid-way between San Francisco and Ripon.
Privately held, The Wine Group was once part of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of New York. And being privately held, its operation and products are kept pretty much secret. It doesn’t even have a corporate website, although it does have brand-related sites. Strange for the second largest wine producer in California (more than 40 million cases produced annually), second only to Gallo.
Oak Leaf wines are very similar to Bronco’s Charles Shaw wines (affectionately nicknamed “Two Buck Chuck”) which sells for $1.99 at Trader Joe’s stores. Headquartered in Monrovia, Calif., Trader Joe’s 300 stores has sold millions of cases of what the trade calls “extreme value wines.” Due to transportation charges to outlying states, the price can be a dollar more.
The Charles Shaw label is a brand of the Bronco Wine Company (Ceres, Calif.) owned by John and Fred Franzia (formerly of Franzia Brothers wines.) The Franzias (nephews of Ernest Gallo) sold the Franzia brand name to The Wine Group and started Bronco Wines and they are competitors. The Franzia family, which now has no relationship to Franzia brand boxed wine, has made wine in California for over 100 years. Bronco is California’s third largest wine producer.
Oak Leaf Vineyards (which doesn’t even have its own telephone number) is one of hundreds of wine brands bottled by The Wine Group in Ripon. It does not release the private labels of the wines it makes but there are many.
Oak Leaf wines come in five varietals: Cabenet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio/Chardonnay and White Zinfandel. The standard 750-ml bottles with an artificial cork have an elegant label that shows four seasonal oak trees, one for Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter.
We are not one to place a lot of importance on awards since it seems all wineries get them. But Oak Leaf Vineyards did win a gold medal at the prestigious Florida State International Wine Competition and Silver and Bronze at the 2008 San Francisco Wine Competition. Incredible for a $3 wine! And the Summer-2008 edition of “O at Home” magazine (an Oprah Winfrey publication) featured Oak Leaf wine on its cover with the tag line: “The $3 bottle of wine that will blow you away.” On page 19, they picture Oak Leaf Chardonnay and call it “The steal of the season.”
I like the Cabernet Sauvignon best myself. It is a full favored, medium body wine with a fruity aroma of berry, spice, vanilla and oak …pretty smooth and no unpleasant aftertaste. This is not a sophisticated wine but a terrific value at $2.97.
Wine snobs won’t like it because it is inexpensive and comes from Wal-Mart. But the fact is that it is better than one would expect. I certainly have had $10-$15 French wine far worse. Wal-Mart sells out of it fast, so I buy several bottles whenever they have it. So far, it has been consistently good …a problem with low price wines. (One bottle may be good, the next not so good.) The Oak Leaf brand is perfect for an everyday wine to compliment dine-in dinner and snacks on the patio. Goes with almost anything. I rate it an “80″ out of 100.
I was in Walmart buying red wines. I always get what I like and tried before, and always try a bottle of a red wine that I haven’t tried. I am always looking for a good tasting, inexpensive wine that I like. When I came across Oak Leaf Merlot, I thought Walmart was running a speical on it and I picked up a bottle. Went home and had several glasses, liked the wine, and ran back to Walmart (several days later) to stock up on this wine (bought a case) before the “special” was off. Walmart moved the wine from the end of the aisle to the middle where the other wines were. I thought it ran its course and they would not get anymore. I was really shocked to learn that it wasn’t a “special price”, that this was a wine that they were going to stock, and that the Oak Leaf wines were going to be that particular price from now on and can always find it in amongst the other wines. I always purchase Oak Leaf Merlots or Cabernets and now my friends are buying this wine. It’s truly a good tasting, inexpensive wine.
Jackie from Canada
I was golfing in Ladies day last week and the ladies started talking about wines.
I have tried a lot of different wines including Australian , New Zealand and French wines, but the girls suggested I try a California wine called OAK LEAF and I can get it at the Walmart Store in USA for a real good price. Spending quite a bit more for differnt chardonnay wine I decided to try OAK LEAF and to my amazement I was very impressed with the great taste and I will definately keep buying this wine and suggesting to my friends that they also try it.
[...] as being part of Gallo; however, I recently found out that this was not the case (scroll down here to read a detailed profile of the true, and somewhat mysterious, origins of this “extreme [...]
I think this wine has turned me into a WINO. Granted I am a novice when it comes to wine (plan on getting better eventually), but the White Zin is better than some I have tried at 3 times the price. Please don’t discontinue this wine.
I consider myself to be an intermediate-level wine drinker. I’ve had a fair number of wines, from most regions of the world. I have purchased many wines while visiting the regions in which they were produced – Australia, France, Germany, etc. – and many of these wines would have been much more expensive had I purchased them in the US (that is, anyone buying them here would think of them as “expensive” wines, which many people equate with “good” wines.) I also have friends who knows a lot more about wine than I do, and they have given me gifts of (supposedly) very good wine. So, while I don’t know a lot of technical information about wine and specific vintages, I think I have a handle on what tastes high-quality. I generally drink wines in the $10-$15 range, and although that is inexpensive, I have found some great wines in that price range.
I was recently in Wal-Mart picking up some last-minute grocery items, and headed to the wine section in search of a very cheap white wine to be used in cooking. I saw a large display of a few varieties of Oak Leaf, which I knew was “the Wal-Mart brand of wine.” Wal-Mart was selling Merlot, Chardonnay, and Chenin Blanc/Pinot Grigio for $3.97 a bottle, which is quite a bit more expensive than what people are listing for prices here – I do live in a more expensive part of the country – but still amazingly cheap for wine. I grabbed a bottle of what I thought was Pinot Grigio and then thought, hmmm, since this is so cheap and I’ve never tried Oak Leaf, I might as well get a second bottle.
When I got home, I realized that the Pinot Grigio was actually 80% Chenin Blanc, 20% Pinot Grigio. (It does say Chenin Blanc on the label, but Pinot Grigio is written more prominently.) As it happened, I had just had a bottle of South African Chenin Blanc which a wine-connoisseur friend had given me. I have to say, I tried this wine as soon as it was chilled enough, and was very impressed. Although it does have 20% pinot grigio, it was very much like the South African Chenin Blanc I had just tried, although it was perhaps slightly less… sour, I guess you could say. Overall, it was BETTER than the Chenin Blanc.
This is definitely a great wine for both sipping on the deck during the summer, drinking with lunch, or with a full dinner. A great all-purpose wine.
One other thing – the Oak Leaf label is attractive and does not look like a “cheap wine” label. Of course anyone who knows “the Wal-Mart brand” will know it’s inexpensive, but I still think this wine label makes a difference. It looks like a nice wine.