The fascinating fate of Two-Buck Chuck

This week’s edition of the New Yorker looks at the man who brought America “super-value” wine. Fred Franzia, the C.E.O of Bronco Winery, is a convicted felon (got caught mislabeling grapes) and a politically incorrect cowboy.

Unfortunately the entire article is not online, only an abstract. But if you have any interest whatsoever in cheap wine, you should pick up a copy. Among the highlights:

— Franzia keeps his predecessor’s ashes in a wine bottle in his trailer office. Yes, he may own more than $300 million in vines alone but his office is in a 30-year-old trailer that’s never been updated.

— He’s constantly buying wine names and trademarks. He doesn’t like to pay to invent his own labeling so he waits until wineries are in bankruptcy and buys them just for the brands. He claims to have “20 or so” wine brands he’s waiting to use.

— One of the brands Franzia bought on some courthouse steps is Charles Shaw. Better known as two-buck Chuck, which he re-released in 2002. The actual Charles Shaw started his eponymous label in the 1980s but went bankrupt in a divorce. Charles Shaw is still alive but doesn’t see a penny of the money from the wine with his name on it; he works the night shift at an IT firm in Chicago.

— While out tending to his vines, Franzia tried to get an owl to shit on the New Yorker reporter because he thought it would be funny.

— In the house he’s currently building, for his daughter’s room he installed windows positioned so “nobody can peek at her titties.”
 
Reading the article calls to mind another California family — the Beverly Hillbillies. Both Franzia and the Clampetts are wildly rich and don’t act it. That makes for an entertaining story, especially while drinking a glass or two of cheap Bronco wine.