Wine Experts Agree: All of You Are Wrong About Josh Wines

The wines of Josh Cellars sit comfortably in the $12 to $25 range. They run the gamut of all popular varietals—pinot noir, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc—and the company’s bottles are mass-produced and widely distributed, to the point that you could likely find them incubating in a Target or a CVS. In both accessibility and reliability, Josh Cellars occupies the same terrain of other mid-tier national brands, like Yellow Tail or Jam Jar. But unlike those other vintners, Josh has recently been immortalized by a wave of mildly caustic memes. The root of the joke is in the name: Here is a stately cream-colored label, emblazoned on a gorgeous glass bottle, bearing a single word rendered in frilly cursive: Josh.

You get the idea. The internet is having a great time with the juxtaposition of winemaking—a craft reserved most often for the idle bourgeois—and the name Josh, which is reserved primarily for P.E. coaches and viral public stunts. (For what it’s worth, there’s a wholesome origin story: The founder of Josh Cellars, Joseph Carr, named the winery after his dad.) Even before the company’s curious traction in cyberspace, it’s fair to say that Josh did not have the best reputation among amateur sommeliers. In a Reddit thread posted to r/Wine last year, one poster referred to Josh as “fat, round, consistent, and boring”—in other words, “the Toyota Camry of wine.” Another user concurred, taking a slightly more Eurocentric approach with their critique: “Josh makes wine for basic Americans.”

But this reputation began to change, ever so slightly, when the first of these memes were posted, on Jan. 6, by a Twitter user who goes by @OptimusGrind__. He snapped a photo of his most recent Josh haul and attached a caption that read, “I’m not gonna keep telling y’all to grow up and leave that Stella and Barefoot alone.” The Stella and Barefoot he’s evoking represent the epitome of unsophisticated, outer-suburbs drinking culture, of which, he argues, Josh is the cream of the crop. I am pretty sure OptimusGrind was making this point sarcastically, but here’s the thing: He’s absolutely, unequivocally, 100 percent right. Wine critics across the board respect Josh, no matter what the algorithm says.

“We’ve reviewed Josh a number of times over the years, and it generally hits our good-to-very-good range,” said James Molesworth, senior editor of the authoritative Wine Spectator magazine. “The scores range from 80 to 89, so it’s never hit the magic 90, which is a number that people latch on to, but we do like to emphasize that a wine we rated in the 80s is still very good.”

Wine Spectator doesn’t grade on a curve. The magazine uses a blind testing method to test its wines. In practice, that means when Molesworth sips on a flight for review, all areas of potential prejudice—the wine’s label, its price point, or, really, anything other than the grape varietal and region of origin—will be kept hidden. “It removes that inherent bias,” said Molesworth. This means that when Wine Spectator evaluates a $14 bottle of Josh, it might be doing so while simultaneously gauging a much more prestigious (and expensive) imprint from the moneyed enclaves of Napa Valley. That has to count for something!

As for flavor profile, Jon Rogers, a critic who runs the website Honest Wine Reviews, identified a lush, mocha aroma on the 2019 cabernet sauvignon, with notes of “hazelnut, blackberry, and the slightest hint of cinnamon” on the palate. (He was similarly pleased with the “refined tannins” of the 2020 red blend.) In general, Rogers believes that good wine isn’t found exclusively at premium spirit emporiums—you know, those places that wouldn’t dare stock Josh, or even plastic handles of Evan Williams for that matter.

Supermarkets “carry wines with good reputations,” said Rogers, who responded to my questions over email. “I’d say don’t hesitate to try stores like that and just experiment.”

For what it’s worth, Josh Cellars seems to be taking all of this attention in stride. Over the weekend, the company posted some of its own homemade memes to its Instagram page, in concert with the brand’s new reputation on the internet. (A stock image of a man holding an iPhone, superimposed with the trademark white block text of memes, reads, “Live look at a guy named Josh emailing a guy named Stanley,” which is a remarkably web-literate allusion to the burgeoning Stanley cup mania brewing in other corners of social media.) The comments, of course, are all aberrant and absurd in the ways you expect. “Faded off dat Josh,” wrote one user. “We getting Joshed tonight,” added another. As someone who became acquainted with the debauched magic of Franzia in my college years, I am happy that the youth have discovered a new brand of cheap wine to sop up their weekends. Perhaps Josh should start selling its product in plastic bags to catalyze this new demographic?

Regardless, last night, I sank into the couch with two bottles of Josh purchased, with the guidance of the experts at Wine Spectator, from a liquor store sheathed in bulletproof glass. Both Molesworth and Rogers were right. The merlot was enticingly peppered, with a sharper blast of heat than I expected from a national cellar. The chardonnay, meanwhile, was pure butter and extremely American—delicious, if a tad cloying. Both, of course, were much better than the wine I subsisted on during my first drinking adventures. (Please, for the love of God, get that Yellow Tail away from me.) It all gives me hope for a better future. If the Josh memes enshrine the cellar as the budget wine du jour, then, folks, we’re in good hands.