Australia’s “Two Buck Chuck”

The oversupply woes that have hit Australia’s wine market over the past couple of years appear to have generated a wine that many in America will recognize.

The Aussies are referring to a wine that hit the shelves there at a price of $1.99AU as "Two Buck Chuck" in reference to the Charles Shaw wine of the same American dollar price that Trader Joes sells and which is made by the Franzia family.

The Australian wine industry doesn’t like this turn of events:

"Wine Grape Growers’ Association executive director Mark McKenzie
said there was no way wine could be sold economically at such low
prices, and fire-sales would hurt the industry in the long run if
consumers came to regard such prices as normal.

"Other popular branded premium products at $10 or less would
certainly be under pressure if consumers feel the quality of the wine
is reasonably comparable," he said.

I suspect the wine could be sold economically if the producer got the grapes or juice cheap enough and made enough of it to allow the very small margins to accumulate.

However, just like in America, there just isn’t enough Two Buck Aussie Chuck in that country to convince drinkers that this is the price at which most wine ought to be sold. That said, it appears there will be time and restructuring to rid Australia of the lake of wine that exists there.

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4 Responses

  1. Jon - July 22, 2006

    Something that may not show up to American readers is that in Australasian slang “chuck” means vomit, so “two buck chuck” has always had a more, er, perjorative ring! Explaining, I think, why the term would be adopted where there is no Charles in sight…

  2. Winesmith - July 23, 2006

    Tom,
    I don’t know much about the ins and outs of wine economics and policies. Can you enlighten me as to why Australia would go the route of turning their wine surplus into inexpensive while the EU turned theirs into disinfectant?
    Thanks!

  3. tom merle - July 25, 2006

    Bear in mind that two Australian bucks is the equivalent of $1.50 USD. An amazing deal! Also bear in mind that Fascinating Freddy has created a number of new wine drinkers in the US of A.

  4. Mike Taylor - August 28, 2007

    Congratulations …
    Really good blog
    Wine Hugs from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
    Mike


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