Yes, indeed they are. Don’t you hate when you’re thinking one thing, but then say something completely giraffe instead?
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It’s been known for quite some time that Californians are quite capable of producing wines that are superior to those produced in France. And oenophiles are prepared to spend a lot of money on top quality Californian wines. So enough with the Thunderbird, and the Ripple. They aren’t really representative of anything.
I think the US is like Canada in that it has a byzantine collection of weird rules and laws about selling booze across state/provincial borders. All rooted in the flaky prohibition days, with a heady dose of protecting the local cronies thrown in.
Wasn’t Smoky and the Bandit all about smuggling beer between states?
If you consider Coors to be beer, yes.
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Okay, so how do we go from “California wines are popular exports” to “those furriners love our MD 20/20”? There are plenty of American wineries with great products. Not just in California, but almost every state of the union has wineries that make decent stuff. Sure, maybe it’s not Chateau Whatsit '63, but honestly, who except James Bond and the Grey Poupon crowd can afford to drink that stuff?
This! So much, this…
Because there is no equivalent to $5/bottle wine made in France? And the flip side, there is no $20/bottle wine made in California?
Taste is relative, snobbery is voluntary.
Smokey & The Bandit was about smuggling Coors, because at the time Coors was illegal in most states because it wasn’t pasteurized.
As an european, I didn’t even expect americans to know how to make wine. Don’t americans simply smoke Marlboro and drink tastless light beer?
My mom went to Paris a few years ago. She thought it was hilarious that at least one restaurant had “two-buck-chuck” on the wine list, among several other California wines.
It’s actually a fairly subtle wheels-within-wheels thing: we can make wine, using our soulless technocratic techniques and brutal globalizing tendencies; but it turns out that our terroir, just as an intrinsic quality of the new world itself, practically transcending any one material aspect of it, is cigs and shitty beer. Different combinations, and according to different customs for serving, suitable accompanying snack food, and so forth.
In some areas, you do find the Marlboro and Budweiser combination that has so grown to symbolize the essence of Americanism. However, you can go right down the highway, just an hour or two, and find that Dorals and Natty Ice are the expression of place.
It’s really quite fascinating.
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Was there a markup?
To be fair, the figures for 2013 suggest that the US wines made up only 10% of the wine sales for the UK, compare that with 13% Chilean, and 24% French. Whilst the European market may be a large part of the US export market, partly due to the sheer volume of wine drunk by Europeans, compared to our US cousins, US wine (some of which by the way is very good) is still only a minor player in the European wine market. I’m not sure what the figures are for the much larger asian market, but I do know that most US exporters do not consider it a worthwhile opportunity; fortunately there are plenty of importers from places like Australia that can see the potential and are happy to ship both cheap californian chardonnay as well as premium wine from the US to asia and make a tidy profit in the process.
Hah! That’s actually a good question. She didn’t tell me, and I have a really hard time with currency conversion so I’m not sure I could tell anyway. 
I’ll bet you two bucks that there was a markup, and it was big enough that you could have noticed it even with the currency conversion, or a Fermi estimation
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NB: Ripple is long out of production.
The few remaining units were either recycled into paint remover, or chewed their way through their bottles and sank to the core of the Earth.
I believe that Mom still has this button, tucked away somewhere.
I’m not so sure it’s as fascinating in Europe, where going “right down the highway, just an hour or two” can take you to a foreign country with an entirely different language and quite different culture.
I suspect they don’t use grapes. Well, maybe for “Grape Flavor” MD 20/20. But probably not.
