San Jose Rep took advantage of a semi-captive audience during the production of The Immigrant and made it easy for subscribers to renew — they had a card preprinted with everything but our credit card number waiting for us when we sat down. And they even offered an incentive: a free bottle of wine if we renewed that day, versus an implication that they’d be telemarketing subscribers who didn’t renew.
So we renewed our subscription (we were going to do so anyway) and brought our bottle home, where it would have spent some time in the wine fridge until its number came up.
But we’re not the only ones in our havurah who are Rep subscribers, and the other family brought their bottle to the Super Bowl party, so, of course, we opened it. (Well, we opened ours, because it was already at the right temperature, but let that pass.)
The wine was a Cedar Brook 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon, and it was perfectly pleasant; it went well with pizza, and was fine with salmon the next night, too. What struck me as interesting, though, was the text on the back label, which said that “Cedar Brook wines are produced exclusively for hotels and restaurants throughout the world.” So I guess I won’t be restocking this one.
I was curious, though, and after a little research, I discovered that Cedar Brook is yet another label from the ubiquitous Bronco Wine Company, which is probably most infamous for its biggest seller, Two-Buck Chuck (aka Charles Shaw). I’ve had a couple of their other wines, too (Black Mountain and ForestVille for sure, and probably others), all of which have been drinkable, unlike Two-Buck Chuck (which, I am happy to report, Trader Joe’s cheerfully took back).