Cameron Hughes Wine
A little under a year ago I stumbled across Cameron Hughes (CH) Wines and I am sure glad that I did. CH is a négociant (fancy word for a wine trader) and what that means is that they don’t own any vineyards or a winery, but rather they work closely with other producers to purchase, market, and sell wines under their own CH label. What’s great for us as consumers, is that they are constantly on the hunt for great deals - either wines that were overproduced or winery brands that want to protect their high-end business and not introduce a lower priced offering. A Forbes article that I found about CH did a nice job of laying out the situation that a lot of vineyards and wineries in California are facing: “The state is drowning in wine. For wineries that pride themselves on small production and selling only by allocation, it’s a little embarrassing to find their warehouses bulging with thousands of gallons of wine. Still, they don’t want to see their wines selling in Costco because of the perception of lower quality.”
To date, I have purchased 3 mixed cases of CH wine directly from their website and generally have been very pleased. About ⅓ of the wines I thought they were fine but not my favorite, another ⅓ were solid, and the last ⅓ were really good and I purchased more of them in my next order. I purchased a handful of wines in the $20-50 range and the majority in the $10-20 range, which you will see me posting about here on the site. One of my favorites so far has been a $20 Oregon Pinot Noir from the Yamhill-Carlton AVA that was an awesome deal! Since I will be posting about CH a fair amount, I thought I would leave you with a few resources to get to know them (and more importantly their wines) better: