Remember the blog post on HuffPo alleging that Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw wines, better known as Two Buck Chuck because of their initial price of $1.99, contains animal blood among other hideous things?
It’s gone.
The link now takes you to this editor’s note:
This blog post contained un-sourced claims about Two Buck Chuck and its proprietor, Bronco Wines. It has been removed from the site in accordance with our blogger terms.
“Unsourced claims?” That is one way of putting it. The post was basically a three-year-old rant from a Quora forum that took hits at Bronco and the Central Valley (a hard-working region which is the backbone of the U.S. wine industry so lay off). The piece ended up on the HuffPost Taste blog as a sponsored post, aka native advertising. Except that there was no “sponsored post” notice and only a Quora tag to tip you off that this wasn’t a straight op-ed.
The piece caused some breast-beating in the wine and media worlds including from me.
Here are Bronco CEO Fred Franzia’s thoughts, as delivered to CNBC.
Wondering where that was shot? I had a feeling I recognized that faux wood paneling so I checked and, yep, Fred was in his palatial Central Valley offices, to wit a single-, not double-, wide trailer. Because that is how he rolls.
The lesson: Don’t believe everything you read on the Internets.
Unless I wrote it, of course. That you can take to the bank.