Yellowtail is called “easy drinking” for a reason, it’s mass produced wine that preaches to the lowest common denominator. Yellowtail is to wine what McDonalds is to food, find the simplest flavours and exploit them.

Yellowtail wines are notoriously over oaked and sugary sweet, just the sort of flavours that will appeal to the masses and assure that they sell millions and millions of bottles a year.

I don’t want to go all wine snob on you, my palate is not even close to being worthy, so let’s wander the wine web to see what others are saying on the topic.

Take Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk for example. He gets that these wines are safe and easy drinking, and that’s the problem. You’re not doing your palate any favours by soaking it in oak and sugar.

Want some more?

“If you wanted to visit the Yellow Tail winery (for instance) you would think you were visiting an oil refinery. These wines are made in such staggering large quantity that the wine must ferment and age (if they do that) in huge above ground tanks.” [ezine]

“Yellow Tail is a marketing phenonmena, and many love it, but I don’t think its popularity has much to do with its quality. It’s mass produced, and I (and most people I’ve encountered in the wine world) find it overly fruity and sweet.” [Ottawa Citizen]

“Once home, I opened the bottle and right away smelled the ‘Yellow Tail aroma’ – Gigantic bunches of red fruit. I sensed I was about to drink a glass of cherry-flavored HI-C … So imagine you drink wine for the first time and it happens to be Yellow Tail Shiraz. Rather than swearing off wine because it tastes like vinegar and going back to beer, you think, “Wow, wine is yummy.” [basic juice]

Yellowtail is not about wine, it’s about marketing. It’s popularity launched an entire genre called “critter wines.” Cute names, fun labels and always involving an animal. Why? Because that’s what women want.

There are some other local brands you might see getting hyped up that are using the exact same approach as Yellowtail. Painted Turtle and Wild Horse Canyon are nothing more than marketing campaigns for cheap, bulk sourced juice. Don’t waste your money on either.

Today, Celebrity Chef Jason Roberts swaggered his Aussie accent around Nat and Drew and hyped up Yellowtail for the 95Crave morning show.

His promo team left behind a gift basket for me that I gave an extra special treatment.

Life’s too short to drink bad wine Yellowtail.

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Tags: insight