Good Grape Wine Company

November 13 2006

“10-Clam Cam” and Too Much of the Good Stuff

You know a phenomenon is happening when you sign up for a shopping club for fifty bucks so you can buy $10 wines.

A loss leader?  I think not. 

So it goes as my Costco membership card showed up in the mail last week.  Sure, Costco is the largest retailer of wine in the country, but I long have had a membership to Sam’s Club and, really, as it is, I have enough paper towels and deodorant sticks in the house to last through a sustained Proctor & Gamble shutdown and, well, frankly, enough wine to last me through a winter of discontent, too, if I had to go a spell without shopping for food and wine stuffs. A membership to Costco was just extraneous. 

That was before the clarion call of vino became too strong ... 

It started with a quadruple set of circumstances.  Cameron Hughes came up in a professional conversation, I saw a news article on the so-called “10-Clam Cam,” I went to Wine 2.0 where they were pouring, and I’ve been contemplating how to reign in my ‘spiraling out of control’ wine buying into a more manageable (read: cheaper) stratosphere.  Or, put simply, I’ve been looking for a Lefevere family house wine.

Founded in 2001, Cameron Hughes wines have been growing in popularity over the course of the last several years.  Sold, for now, exclusively through Costco, with a noticeable hedged discomfort from the guy pouring the Cameron Hughes at Wine 2.0 last week when asked when they would be available elsewhere, the wines are generally priced anywhere from $7.99 to 13.99 and present themselves as wines that *could* retail for $30 - $50.

In a day and age where credibility in marketing is somewhat suspect and people actually go out of their way to avoid products that are advertised, the transparency of Cameron Hughes wine marketing is refreshing.  They completely expose the bulk wine market, spin it into a positive and make you feel like you are getting a deal. Sure Fred Franzia gets articles in Wine Spectator, but Cameron is one heckuva marketer that I would let go toe-to-toe with Fred for market savvy.

From the Cameron Hughes web site (excerpted):

- At the high-end of the wine business, winemakers make more than they need ...
- Winemakers are constantly trying new vineyard sources and discontinuing old sources.
- Many wineries sell off certain lots of wine before bottling for cash-flow purposes.
- Declassified wines that don’t fit the (need) for a $50 bottling make an outstanding wine value at $14.99.

This would all be well and good IF the wine didn’t deliver.  If it were crap wine, it would just be another example of lipstick on the pig.  But, here’s the thing: this is pretty good wine!  Good certainly for $10, and maybe good for $20-25.  I take a small amount of exception to the assertion that these could be the equivalent of $50 wines, but not enough to stop me from going to Costco and buying a ton of this stuff.

At the Wine 2.0 tasting last week I lingered for much longer then I should have tasting through the entire line-up of reds—a couple of Cab’s, the Barbera and a Merlot.  Each of them were, seriously, a very good value.

If you’re like me and a one-club shopper kind of person (in the form of Sam’s Club), I cannot urge you enough to throw down the dough to go get a Costco membership and get in on some of these everyday drinking wines.

Sigh.  Now, if could just get Cameron to update his blog which has sadly laid languid since this past August. 

Don’t hold that against him, though, he’s probably busy drinking his own good juice. 

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