**Price:** $3.85 per 500ml or around $9 per magnum (not sold in standard bottles)
**Vintage:** NV
**”Bottled”:** July 9, 2022
**Varietal:** Cabernet Sauvignon (at least 75%)
**Alcohol content:** 12%
First of all, don’t laugh – this review is something of a chance interlude and does not impact my plans to ascend from the bottom shelf and taste a more serious wine in the near future. Today I visited my local Dollar General on a (successful) hunt for the comparatively far more prestigious bottle called Rosée de Montagne “Le Noir Total”, the latest limited-production cuvée from Château Pépsiceaux, but morbid curiosity got the better of me and my $3.85 when I noticed this Tetra-Pak half-bottle of California wine on the shelf nearby. Produced by Liberty Creek in the town of Lodi, this Cabernet Sauvignon – the first dry table wine I have reviewed – clocks in at a respectable-seeming 12 percent alcohol, which would be a sign of quality if it weren’t for the absurd fact that diluting wine is legal in certain circumstances under California law. To anybody with more knowledge about bulk winemaking, is this almost certainly the case here, or might this actually have been made from less ripe grapes?
**Nose:** Out of the box, the aroma is noticeably sweet, slightly floral and not complex, with blackcurrant and strawberry predominating alongside a faint hint of candy-apple, with noticeable tannins, but then some less pleasant aromas of straw and soap seem to make an appearance. In the glass, the aroma is very light, but the tannins and the sweet floral notes are both more pronounced compared to the two main fruit aromas encountered earlier. It is worth noting as well that the liquid appears to have purple around the edge when viewed side-on.
**Taste:** The first thing I notice when I take a sip is that this wine is quite dry and doesn’t completely fall to pieces on the palate – already putting on a better show than the cloyingly sweet and disjointed Meiomi, and having no notes of dish detergent or couch lint like “Clos du Bois”. I find the actual flavors quite hard to pick apart, but really can’t seem to find much complexity, with a very short floral note to start transitioning to a main body of sour cherry and some mulberry, alongside noticeable, but mild and unastringent, tannins reminiscent of black tea. As a whole, the flavors aren’t especially rich.
**Finish:** Towards the finish, the main fruit flavors diminish and the tannins intensify a bit, with a hint of floral strawberry, maybe a tiny bit of earthiness, and a whisper of mint, tapering off into a final faint note of plum.
**Conclusion:** Surprisingly, this isn’t bad enough to laugh at. I cannot conclude anything about this wine in relation to others due to my inexperience, but I personally consider it decent enough that I’ll probably finish the whole carton. It certainly isn’t complex, not being very fruity but not having many non-fruit notes either, and probably isn’t something I’d buy again, but the presence of noticeable tartness and tannins were a satisfying surprise considering I expected it to be nothing but a cloying, flabby procession of overripe fruits. I am now more eager to taste a serious red wine from the Old World to see how this industrial wine tastes by comparison, and am also curious as to how this stacks up against other budget wines, as far as providing the best value for money is concerned, since it’s not the only one in this price category.
Secret-Equipment4039
Did you pour the whole Tetra Pak into the glass? My lord.
Uptons_BJs
People may laugh at Tetra Paks, but the reality is, small format and alternative format wines are a fast growing segment. In many important ways, the Tetra Pak is legitimately better.
​
The traditional wine bottle and cork is actually kinda crappy as a carrying vessel. They are inefficient (they weigh like, 500g to carry 750g of liquid), they cannot be stacked, they are expensive, the glass is likely to crack, chip, or smash, you need a specialized tool to open, they have a failure rate of like, 5%.
​
Tetra Paks on the other hand, have a very efficient container to content weight ratio, are easy to carry, easy to open, easy to stack and is cheap to produce.
​
Objectively speaking, the only advantage glass bottles have over tetra paks is their ability to hold and age wine for very long times. They also subjectively look classier to most people. But for anything that isn’t intended for aging ([research shows that 90% of consumers typically consume wine within 2 weeks or purchase](https://www.winebusiness.com/news/article/207060)), the tetra pak is legitimately a better format.
Impossible-Charity-4
Is there an industry that cannibalizes itself more than this one?
bottlesnob
Thank you for a sincere tasting note on a value brand wine. I too wonder sometime how these value wines stack up. There are a lot of people out there who deserve to enjoy wine and for whom even a 10$ bottle is a bridge too far.
I drink a lot of entry level wine (not this tier, but still…), and there’s nothing wrong with drinking affordably. I don’t argue with people that some value brand Portuguese blend from Costco is as good as Chateau Dauzac, because I realize they are different wines for different times.
5 Comments
**Name:** Liberty Creek Cabernet Sauvignon
**Price:** $3.85 per 500ml or around $9 per magnum (not sold in standard bottles)
**Vintage:** NV
**”Bottled”:** July 9, 2022
**Varietal:** Cabernet Sauvignon (at least 75%)
**Alcohol content:** 12%
First of all, don’t laugh – this review is something of a chance interlude and does not impact my plans to ascend from the bottom shelf and taste a more serious wine in the near future. Today I visited my local Dollar General on a (successful) hunt for the comparatively far more prestigious bottle called Rosée de Montagne “Le Noir Total”, the latest limited-production cuvée from Château Pépsiceaux, but morbid curiosity got the better of me and my $3.85 when I noticed this Tetra-Pak half-bottle of California wine on the shelf nearby. Produced by Liberty Creek in the town of Lodi, this Cabernet Sauvignon – the first dry table wine I have reviewed – clocks in at a respectable-seeming 12 percent alcohol, which would be a sign of quality if it weren’t for the absurd fact that diluting wine is legal in certain circumstances under California law. To anybody with more knowledge about bulk winemaking, is this almost certainly the case here, or might this actually have been made from less ripe grapes?
**Nose:** Out of the box, the aroma is noticeably sweet, slightly floral and not complex, with blackcurrant and strawberry predominating alongside a faint hint of candy-apple, with noticeable tannins, but then some less pleasant aromas of straw and soap seem to make an appearance. In the glass, the aroma is very light, but the tannins and the sweet floral notes are both more pronounced compared to the two main fruit aromas encountered earlier. It is worth noting as well that the liquid appears to have purple around the edge when viewed side-on.
**Taste:** The first thing I notice when I take a sip is that this wine is quite dry and doesn’t completely fall to pieces on the palate – already putting on a better show than the cloyingly sweet and disjointed Meiomi, and having no notes of dish detergent or couch lint like “Clos du Bois”. I find the actual flavors quite hard to pick apart, but really can’t seem to find much complexity, with a very short floral note to start transitioning to a main body of sour cherry and some mulberry, alongside noticeable, but mild and unastringent, tannins reminiscent of black tea. As a whole, the flavors aren’t especially rich.
**Finish:** Towards the finish, the main fruit flavors diminish and the tannins intensify a bit, with a hint of floral strawberry, maybe a tiny bit of earthiness, and a whisper of mint, tapering off into a final faint note of plum.
**Conclusion:** Surprisingly, this isn’t bad enough to laugh at. I cannot conclude anything about this wine in relation to others due to my inexperience, but I personally consider it decent enough that I’ll probably finish the whole carton. It certainly isn’t complex, not being very fruity but not having many non-fruit notes either, and probably isn’t something I’d buy again, but the presence of noticeable tartness and tannins were a satisfying surprise considering I expected it to be nothing but a cloying, flabby procession of overripe fruits. I am now more eager to taste a serious red wine from the Old World to see how this industrial wine tastes by comparison, and am also curious as to how this stacks up against other budget wines, as far as providing the best value for money is concerned, since it’s not the only one in this price category.
Did you pour the whole Tetra Pak into the glass? My lord.
People may laugh at Tetra Paks, but the reality is, small format and alternative format wines are a fast growing segment. In many important ways, the Tetra Pak is legitimately better.
​
The traditional wine bottle and cork is actually kinda crappy as a carrying vessel. They are inefficient (they weigh like, 500g to carry 750g of liquid), they cannot be stacked, they are expensive, the glass is likely to crack, chip, or smash, you need a specialized tool to open, they have a failure rate of like, 5%.
​
Tetra Paks on the other hand, have a very efficient container to content weight ratio, are easy to carry, easy to open, easy to stack and is cheap to produce.
​
Objectively speaking, the only advantage glass bottles have over tetra paks is their ability to hold and age wine for very long times. They also subjectively look classier to most people. But for anything that isn’t intended for aging ([research shows that 90% of consumers typically consume wine within 2 weeks or purchase](https://www.winebusiness.com/news/article/207060)), the tetra pak is legitimately a better format.
Is there an industry that cannibalizes itself more than this one?
Thank you for a sincere tasting note on a value brand wine.
I too wonder sometime how these value wines stack up. There are a lot of people out there who deserve to enjoy wine and for whom even a 10$ bottle is a bridge too far.
I drink a lot of entry level wine (not this tier, but still…), and there’s nothing wrong with drinking affordably. I don’t argue with people that some value brand Portuguese blend from Costco is as good as Chateau Dauzac, because I realize they are different wines for different times.