We tried 8 types of Trader Joe's 'Two Buck Chuck' wine, and one stood out above the rest

Áine Cain

April 23, 2019 6:11 PM

We recently sampled a few of Trader Joe's Charles Shaw wines.

trader joes charles shaw cabernet sauvignon

Business Insider's retail desk picked out the cabernet sauvignon as our favorite "Two Buck Chuck."
"I've paid much more for worse wine," one taster wrote.
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Trader Joe's Charles Shaw wine is primarily known for being cheap.

"Two-Buck Chuck" doesn't cost $1.99 these days; it currently goes for $3.99 in New York. But a bottle of wine under $4 is still a pretty thrifty option.

Unsurprisingly, when Business Insider's retail desk hosted a Charles Shaw tasting last week, some of the wines got a pretty polarizing reaction.

We collectively decided that a gnarly few, like the white zinfandel, weren't even worth such a rock-bottom price.

But the group had nothing but praise for one of the wines: namely, the Trader Joe's cabernet sauvignon.

Keep in mind, the cab was the last of eight wines that we sampled. So it's possible that we were in better spirits at that point in the tasting than we were at the beginning. Given that we started off with the white zinfandel, you can't really blame us.

Either way, the Trader Joe's cabernet sauvignon got the most universally positive reaction out of any wine that we tried. Reviewers like the "full-bodied" wine's "peppery" and "woodsy" notes.

Everyone agreed that this wine which was praised as both "excellent" and "delicious" was worth the price and a second try.

"I've paid much more for worse wine," one colleague wrote. "It's heavy but not crazy."

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