Bronco Wine Company (Franzia)

Franzia is owned by The Wine Group, LLC.  The winery is particularly known for their five liter “wine in a box.”

The Franzia winery is located in Ripon, California.  The San Joaquin Valley location boasts Mediterranean climate with warm days, foggy mornings, and cool nights.  The soil is made up of sandy loam, silt loam, fine sand, and silty clay.  Their unique WineTap wine boxes are extremely environmentally friendly, reducing CO2 emissions, packaging waste, and wine waste by keeping wine fresh for significantly longer than traditional bottles.

Winemaker Gary Nakagawa is the senior winemaker and plant operations manager for Franzia.  

Franzia produces three lines of wines: Vintner Select, First Crush & World Classics, and House Wine Favorites.  The Vintner Select are true to their varietal without heavy oak flavor and include Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Shiraz.  First Crush & World Classics include White Zinfandel, White Grenache, White Merlot, Chablis, Rhine, Burgundy, and Chianti.  These wines focus on fruit forward flavors and old world, traditional methods.  The House Wine Favorites are fruity, crisp wines that include Sunset Blush, Chillable Red, Crisp White, Fruity Red Sangria, and Refreshing White. 

The Franzia Mountain Chablis was rated average, receiving 70-79 points from Robert Parker. 

Fun facts: in 2007 88,019,050 glasses of Franzia wine were served in American restaurants.  The website also offers recipes, complete with wine pairings.  Franzia also has an Executive Cycling Team that competes regularly at cycling events.