My lady friend has a childhood friend that is an opera singer and lives mostly in Milan, Italy and spends some time in New York City.
Recently for health reasons she was in St. Louis for an extended stay. Her Maestro was flying from California to New York, and decided to stop in St. Louis to visit one of his sopranos and a friend. My girlfriend opened her house to them and had a small dinner party with the Maestro cooking.
I had asked about one of the wines that was brought that I especially liked. It turned out it was an inexpensive wine from one of the local Italian grocery stores. The Maestro then told how he bought 3 Buck Chuck aka Charles Shaw wines from Trader Joes 3 cases at a time. It derives its name from the fact it cost $2.99 a bottle. It is a very drinkable wine, and when you consider the price a bargain.
He went on to tell how he would have dinner parties for some of the opera crowd in New York. He would serve the 3 Buck Chuck from the bottle wrapped in a white towel. He went into great detail how his dinner guest would do the whole wine ritual of swirling the wine, sniffing and sampling, then comment on how good the wine was. California grapes sold at $2.99 a bottle. The manner in which he presented the picture of the elegant crowd performing the ritual and complimenting the wine was more than a little hilarious.
I told a few folks the story including my brothers. One of them likes to go to a fancy restaurant in Tulsa that generally runs $75 to $100 per person. He had taken my other brother there as thanks for some accounting services he had performed. That brother told the waitress at this fine eating establishment about the Maestro and the 3 Buck Chuck.
A few months later, my first brother was back at the Tulsa restaurant. The waitress had gone to California, stumbled across some Charles Shaw and remembered the story so she tried some. She was so impressed she bought a couple cases and gave the wine as Christmas presents. California grapes sold at $2.99 a bottle.