Why is franzia so cheap

There's no shame in loving a budget bottle of wine, but drinking it could impact your health. The cheaper the wine, the more arsenic it's likely to contain — a major buzzkill, considering arsenic is a known carcinogen that's highly toxic. Its effects have been compared to what happens when you smoke cigarettes, the damage compounding over time.

The bad news comes from wine-whistleblower Kevin Hicks, who spent 15 years in the wine biz before launching BeverageGrades, a Denver-based lab that analyzes wine. Unlike food and non-alcoholic beverages, which are highly regulated by the feds, the government doesn't require much disclosure on alcohol.

Some states, like California, impose their own laws on local manufacturers. When Hicks tested more than 1, bottles of wine, about 1 in 4 had higher levels of arsenic than the EPA permits in drinking water. Luckily for my purposes, fussing about wine isn't necessary. Most of what I know about wine I've learned with my mouth full.

A sip, without a bite to chew it with, is a sip gone to waste. This understanding exists at the level of common sense, and has little to do with expertise.

If there's steak in my mouth, I'll grab the closest glass of red and be quite happy with it. Despite being uneducated in wine, I'm more than capable of observing a key distinction in the wine world that usually flies under the radars of those who most need to know about it: the folks who don't have the money to flush down the toilet in the crapshoot that is fine-wine selection. As with other crapshoots, the house usually wins.

Cheaper wines are often made from blends of grapes, and there is a good reason for this: a skilled blender can coax good wine from mediocre grapes. Most prestigious and expensive vintages of wine are varietals, which means they're made from just one variety of grape.

Those who can afford it will often keep track of which years were good for which types of grape from which areas, and will pay good money for excellent wines. But if they aren't careful, and lucky, they'll also end up paying silly prices for mediocre wines. In contests, blended wines don't usually compete against varietals, because that would be unfair.

And some mixers have put their skills to use in more profitable ways, infiltrating the wine market with counterfeit vintages, carefully packaged in old bottles with oxidized labels. A recent article in The New Yorker documented how easily a good mixer can fool a top-level wine expert into authenticating counterfeits priced in the five figures. But don't take my word for it. Go buy a box of Franzia Cabernet not the Merlot or Chianti , which I consider a decent yardstick of value in a good cheap blend.

Unless you choose well or get lucky, the Franzia easily wins at least half the time. For you. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more. A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation. Good Subscriber Account active since Shortcuts. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile. Log out. US Markets Loading H M S In the news.

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