Happy April Fools’ Day! Have you played a prank or been told a
joke yet? Or, perhaps, you have been wily enough to avoid getting
the
”
wool pulled over your eyes
”
so far today.
Happy April Fools’ Day! Have you played a prank or been told a joke yet? Or, perhaps, you have been wily enough to avoid getting the “wool pulled over your eyes” so far today.
So what does April Fools’ Day have to do with wine? Well not much other than it is an invention of the French. The French connection started in 1586, a few years after Pope Gregory XIII changed the calendar to the Gregorian. King Charles IX of France adopted the new calendar, switching News Year’s Day to Jan. 1. Europe had been using the Julian calendar, invented by Julius Caesar, and holding its New Year celebrations around the vernal equinox, usually ranging from March 21 to April 1.
The news of the calendar change didn’t spread fast, and the people living in the small towns of France continued to use the old New Year’s Day for their parties. The city folk in Paris didn’t like the new edict being ignored and began to make fun of these traditionalists, sending them on “fool’s errands” or trying to trick them into believing something false. The British adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, and April Fools’ Day started being celebrated there and in its colonies.
In the world of wine, I know many consumers feel like they are being sent on a fool’s errand when they are asked to make a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up a bottle of wine for dinner. Or, perhaps, you have been on the receiving end of a $2.99 bottle of wine that tasted suspiciously like grape juice or water.
I’m going to introduce you to a wine brand you can get at the grocery store that is a sure bet for price and quality. I discovered this wine in a consumer magazine, one of those that compares the best cars of 2004 or best toasters for bagels. A little sidebar was discussing the best quality for the value in imported wine. The wine that came in first was Yellow Tail, a wine that has taken the United States by surprise and by storm.
Still relatively unknown, the Yellow Tail brand is fourth in Australian sales outranking several well-established brands like Penfold’s. Yellow Tail is the brainchild of an immigrant family from Sicily and the genius of John Soutter an Australian marketer and brand manager.
Filippo and Maria Casella arrived in Australia from Sicily in 1957. Filippo had spent seven years as a prisoner of war in India, worked as a cane cutter in Queensland and picked grapes in Griffith, Australia. By 1965, the Casellas paid a deposit for a farm in Griffith and built their home which still exists. Now, it is surrounded by huge fermentation tanks and sheds to accommodate the huge production of millions of cases of wine.
Production started in 1969 but the big break came in 2001 when the family, with the help of John Soutter, introduced the Yellow Tail brand in the United States. Yellow Tail is now not only the number one Australian wine but also the number-one imported wine in the United States.
Yellow Tail exports three wines to the United States. The Yellow Tail Shiraz is a full-bodied, flavorful and balanced wine, while the Chardonnay is blended to please the palates of American wine drinkers who prefer fruit-driven wines with a slight sweetness and not much oak. They also produce a Cabernet Sauvignon, but, to me, it has a muddy flavor. The wines retail from between $4 to $7 and are good everyday wines to drink and cook with.
So, this April Fools’ Day you can celebrate the Julian New Year with a good choice of wine off the grocery store shelf. The low price may seem like a joke, but it isn’t.
