WHAT WE LIKE THIS WEEK

Two Perfect 10 wines live up to their playful, provocative names

By Amy Culbertson
Ft. Worth Star-Telegram Staff Writer
September 26, 2004

They come in Blonde and Brunette, and they're California girls, via Texas. They're both a little spicy, with good bone structure underneath.

They're Perfect 10 wines, the pet project of Chad Auler, second-generation vice president of Fall Creek Vineyard, founded in the Hill Country near Tow by Chad's parents, Ed and Susan Auler.

You may have seen the wines at World Market or Central Market, with their labels featuring paintings of willowy women in evening gowns -- gold for the Blonde, a chardonnay, and red for the Brunette, a merlot.

The name refers not just to the ladies on the label but to the fact that the wines are made to sell for $10. It's all part of the trend toward making wine more fun, accessible and even frivolous, and for Fall Creek it's the first step toward the next level of growth.

"We have been looking to expand our portfolio of brands to include other regions than Texas," says Chad Auler. "We can't get our hands on enough good Texas grapes."

So they looked to California to make these wines -- Monterey for the chardonnay, Paso Robles for the merlot -- and trucked them to Texas at the end of the winemaking process to be bottled. Subsequent bottlings -- and there will be subsequent bottlings, as "we've essentially sold out of everything we've bottled" since the June launch -- will be entirely in California. The wines are in stores in five states outside Texas, and the intention is to go national with them.

The Perfect 10s are everything they're supposed to be -- accessible, fun and a great value, because both are way more than drinkable. Auler says they've received equally enthusiastic response from women, "who love fun labels," and from men, many of whom buy the wines as gifts for their "Perfect 10" wives and girlfriends.

And, yes, there is a redhead -- a cabernet -- on the way.