2 Buck Vaynerchuk – Episode #212

April 10, 2007

Wines tasted in this episode:

Trader Joe’s

Links mentioned in todays episode.

Today Gary Vaynerchuk attacks the question that has been asked of him over 100 times a month.

Having trouble seeing this video? Click here for the Quicktime version

234 Responses

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April 11, 2007

YoungDave
I Love TJ’s, and they have pretty attractive prices for their fairly impressive wine selection (other than the Charles Shaw brand), but I’m kind-of glad that these wines showed as they did. It proves that you can SOMETIMES (2 out of 6) find a decent bottle of Two Buck Chuck (considering the price point), but most of the time you get what you pay for (sugar water with alcohol). This upholds my oppinion that you can deffinitely find some world class wines at the $10-12 range if you scout for them, but expecting anything interesting at $2-4 is unrealistic.
THANK YOU, BIG G., FOR SUBJECTING YOUR PALATE TO THE DIFFICULT-TO-SWALLOW (or even taste) CONTENDERS OF THIS EP.

QOTD: Bought a car for $4500 (worth $6500), drove it across the country, used it when I lived in LA for three months, then sold it there for the same $4500. Cost for three months of transportation and a great road trip: gas and insurance only.
April 11, 2007

Bill
Seriously, I don’t understand. I just watched Episode 18, and it behaved the way Web video should. Even if there are issues with your connection, you simply wait till the bar is solid to the end, and you can watch at your leisure.

Whatever crap technology this is, it starts over every single time. You wait 10 hours and have to hit “pause” five seconds into it, you’re back to the end of the line.

Yes, I’ve tried the link to the Quicktime version. It doesn’t even begin to work at all.
April 11, 2007

t_moderne
# 105 yipee!
Best bargain – my parents giving me life – didn’t cost anything.
other bargains – my own children –
somewhere in there as a bargain are some Caymus wines I bought for $14 – 90, 91’s and 92’s.
Now it’s 70 buck chuck (wagner).
April 11, 2007

Matt the Lurker
Ha, Chuck Shiraz is my go to wine for making sangria. Boy a lot of negative comments in here even after the disclaimers and anti-snobbery warnings. Classic episode by the way.
April 11, 2007

Panoca
Spectacular episode! I really enjoyed it. I never though you would be able to do an episode on 2 bucks. Great Job/effort/sacrifice!! You are the best!
QOTD: If we are talking about wine, i think the best values are from Argentina and Chile. When my wallet is thin, i buy/rely on the “X-Plorador” (Concha y Toro) or the Lopez (Argentina Blend, most Malbec). They cost around $ 5 and they deliver “the thunder” for that price.
April 11, 2007

Chris From NY
F… Charlie Shaw! F… Trader Joe’s! That L.T. comment was out of line. Lance Mehl????Dwayne Gordon??? Mo Lewis????? Jonathan Vilma????? Not even in Taylor’s league.
April 10, 2007

Marc
QOTD: Keyster’s in Urbandale, IA. Free beer starting at 5 on Fridays. Seeing as after a hard week’s work how much a beer is needed and seeing how free it really is, can’t get a better bargain than that.

Either that or going to all the strip clubs in Vegas for free thanks to a cabbie who was getting paid off to take us to them.

And you’re right Gary, Josh Smith? Doesn’t sound like a nice Jewish name to a levite like myself (Levine), but happy birthday dude.
April 10, 2007

BV
QOTD: Way back when, I spent $300 on an air conditioner for my brand-new Toyota Corona Mark II 1900.
It blasted cold air at me for 15 hot, humid summers. Best $300 I ever spent.
April 10, 2007

aaronT
My first two cases of wine were 2-buck chuck (merlot and shirah). I think it helps to drink a lot of crap so you know when you get something good. Or maybe that’s just rationalization…?
April 10, 2007

The Smartest Girl in San Francisco
WoW! What an opening shot! And there’s the little wristband! I feel like the wristband is like an easter egg — somewhere in every show, there should be a wristband…

I’m digging the hair today too! Nice and spiky. Sorta Wolverine-y.

LOL – I love it when you try to get the taste out of your mouth as you’re pouring the wine out. And I love it when you taste wines that you hate. It’s fun!

QOTD: Two free kitties.
April 10, 2007

Autumnfox
You poor man…how strong willed you must be to continue on to the next bottle.
QOTD: Not really a shopper but getting items at 80% with an added 30% off…who could resist?
April 10, 2007

johnmaki
QOD:
owned Chalone stock 100 shares for many years – did nothing $8-10.
Offer by Constellation Wines to buy at~ $12 and while selling for that price a $1 share wine credit
was offered with the buyout. I bought 900 more shares to get the wine credits knowing I would get my money back in a few months on the sale. Several weeks later, Diageo made an offer at ~#14 still including the wine credit. Also a fifteen year wine club offer was made for discount pricing and free tastings at the ~8 Chalone wineries. As it turned out with the Diageo sale, BV and Sterling were added to the wine club list. This year they’ve added a $.50 wine credit/share as a bonus.
In Summary, got $1500 of wine credits (worth 50% of wine club price) and the stock appreciation to pay for it all; i.e. ~$3500 of free wine!
April 10, 2007

Veronica
Thanks Gary!

My wine class did a Blind Tasting, and the Charles Shaw Cab was one of the ones we tasted. We all thought we were drinking Zinfandel, and at first, we liked it. But, as soon as we let the wine breathe, it turned into pretty much what you just tasted on your show. My suggestion to anyone still intent on drinking their cab, Do it really fast. You might even want to think about drinking directly from the bottle.
April 10, 2007

Brookhouser
Good episode…I’ll pass on the 2.00 wine and just eat the captain crunch!
April 10, 2007

ecola
We started buying Two Buck since we could afford to buy a case at a time (recovering beer drinkers, sorry!)

Now it’s been regulated to what we give our friends after the bar closes, since A.) they’re not wine drinkers & B.) they’re too hammered to tell that it’s crap, even though they don’t drink wine.

9 bottles left to get rid of, I think I may start using it for cooking.

ecola’s lady

QOOD: My WL wristband! I didn’t even know it was coming!
April 10, 2007

jason carey
best wine deal,,, 4 bottles 1982 Gruad Larosse in 1992 for 50 dollars a bottle.
April 10, 2007

GottaGoDrink
QOTD- Best bargain. In 2002, we get invited to a birthday party in the incredible isle of St. John, USVI, my buddy gets the villa for a week for the wife’s birthday, all of us stay for free, the following weekend at a benefit golf tournament, I win the raffle drawing…two free airline tix anywhere in the US or (you guessed it) USVI. Sweet! The buddy stocked the house with Turley, Dominus, and Heitz, and we rocked out into the night.

Gary- Great episode. You are the man of the people.
April 10, 2007

Capt M
Hey Gary, this has got to be the FUNNIEST WLTV episode EVER, bar non! I laughed from start to end. Your face when looking at the pale chard was to die laughing. This episode is worth a lot not just for the experience (that we don’t need to go through), but for the laughter it inspired. Do be careful with law suits, even though you were not trying to be funny, but were as sincere as ever. Good job. Again, I pay money for a good laughter if I have to. Time well spent.
April 10, 2007

Bobinnati
Hmmm. Must be a limit on the length of a comment. What I was trying to say was Purple Moon Shiraz is far superior to Shaw Shiraz and is only around $5 per bottle. Not life changing, but great QPR and quite pleasant.
April 10, 2007

Susan
Gary-
Surprising effort by you!
Can’t believe you did an ep on these wines!
You are truely creative!!!
April 10, 2007

Bobinnati
Very entertaining. Your facial expressions are priceless. You don’t even need to speak! I’ve tried some 2 Buck in the distant past – the Merlot, Beaujolais (which was given to me), the Cab and the Shiraz. The only one I thought was worth spit was the Shiraz. Even my unsophisticated and untrained palate could tell that the others were, how to say this politely, “deficient”.

Speaking of deficient, I was at my local grocery store last night perusing the wine selection. I spent some time in the little temp controlled room where the “good stuff” is kept just drooling over some of what was there, knowing it will probably be a long time before I can ever afford any of it. Then I went out to where the more pedestrian offerings were shelved and looked for what might be a bargain. I picked out a bottle of Pillar Box Red and then found a bottle of Shiraz from a brand from Australia called Fish Eyes. It was only $5.99 which set off some alarm bells for me, but I thought, WWGD – what would Gary do? Well, Gary would be open-minded and not have preconceived notions, so I said, what the heck, I’ll try it. As you mentioned in this episode, it’s hard to screw up a Syrah (or Shiraz) so it ought to be at least tolerable. Well I opened it tonight and I’ll have to tell you, at $5.99, it is WAY overpriced. Ba-a-a-a-a-a-d. No nose to speak of, light bodied, thin, almost no real wine flavor. Stay away, stay far away. There, I was open-minded and got my **s handed to me. Oh well, not an expensive mistake.

But on the bargain side, there is a Shiraz called Purple Moon that can also be bought at TJ’s for
April 10, 2007

H-Why
Okay, so I’m not running out to TJ’s to get wine. UnFortunately where I live in South Jersey, Trader Joe’s doesn’t carry wines, so I doubt that I will trek out to find event the Syrah. Thanks for taking the bullet for us all.
April 10, 2007

GlassRunnethEmpty
Interestingly, I added a Charles Shaw Merlot to blind tasting of random red wines. Everyone thought it was “very drinkable”.
April 10, 2007

Jer
Best deal — fee shippin from WL! Nice episode, but I think I’ll pass on the Trader.
April 10, 2007

Kathy
A trader Joes just opened up by me. Don’t understand the mania. Was scared to try the 3-buck chuck here. Glad I didn’t. Other wines were not a deal. Can get most of them cheaper at Costco.
I heard that Costco is the #1 wine retailer in the nation. Is that so?? I have found that for buget drinking a wine from there is safe. Just not very exciting.
QOTD
Buying a Ford Pinto for 500 bones. Fixing in up, driving it for 4 years and selling it for 250 bones. Those were the good old days.