Category:Wine advice

Ask the WC 33: Wine consumption, bad wine, Earth Day

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

wine drinkers
“I didn’t know world wine production was decreasing — thanks, WC.”

This edition of Ask the WC: The decline in world wine consumption, plus how to tell when wine goes off and Earth Day

Because the customers always have questions, and the Wine Curmudgeon has answers in this irregular feature. You can Ask the Wine Curmudgeon a wine-related question by clicking here.

Dear Wine Curmudgeon:
Are there any actual statistics about the decline in wine consumption? Or are you just making that up?
A skeptic

Dear Skeptic:
How about The International Organisation of Vine and Wine, or OIV, which tracks world wine production? “In 2021 extremely low world wine production volume is expected, at a level similar to 2017. This would be the third consecutive year where the global production level is below average n 2021.” So less production means less consumption.
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Hi, WC:
I opened a wine the other day, and it smelled all funky and gross. Did it go bad? How can you tell?
Bad wine?

Dear Bad:
I get this question a lot, and most recently at a wine class I did a couple of weeks ago (emerging from the pandemic). Yes, wine can go bad — heat, light, and too much age can spoil it. The wine can taste like badly made brandy, taste like over-cooked tomato soup, or even not have much flavor at all. Ironically, about the time of the wine class, I wrote a piece for Pix.wine about this exact subject.
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Hey, Jeff:
You didn’t write anything about Earth Day and wine last week!
Green wine drinker

Dear Green:
I wrote an Earth Day piece a couple of years ago on the old blog, and no one read it. So I prefer to remind the wine business about its obligation to the planet the other 364 days a year — here and here, for example. And don’t worry — I’ll keep doing it.

Photo: Kelsey Chance on Unsplash

More Ask the WC:
• Ask the WC 32: Wine prices, wine and health, Ukraine
• Ask the WC 31: Pinot noir, minimum pricing, wine apocalypse
• Ask the WC 30: BYOB, wine for friends, California fires

Ask the WC 32: Wine prices, wine and health, Ukraine

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

men drinking wine
“Only $4800 for wine for a year? We spend that much on a couple of cases.”

This edition of Ask the WC: How much trouble does the WC have finding cheap wine to review? Plus, the latest wine and health update and Ukraine wine.

Because the customers always have questions, and the Wine Curmudgeon has answers in this irregular feature. You can Ask the Wine Curmudgeon a wine-related question by clicking here.

Greetings, Cheap Wine Guru:
I saw the post about how you bought 11 bottles of wine for about $11 each. How is that possible, given inflation and premiumization and all the rest?
$10 wine

Dear $10:
The short answer is that I spend a lot of time looking for wine to review that meets the blog’s criteria. The long answer is that I shop at close to a dozen retailers, including national supermarket chains, and it takes up a fair amount of my working week. Ironically, given the way the wine business works, I review very few samples — most are either too expensive, too poorly made, or both. In 2021, I spent $4,800 looking for wine for the blog.
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Dear Wine Curmudgeon:
Are you going to write a definitive wine and health post? There is so much confusion out there about whether wine will kill someone.
Healthy wine drinker

Dear Healthy:
Drink wine in moderation. That pretty much covers it. The rest — allowing for my lack of medical credentials — is smoke, mostly from neo-Prohibitionists who want everyone to quit drinking everything because too much alcohol is dangerous. Which, of course, is absolutely true. But hot dogs may be even more deadly (nitrites!), and I haven’t seen any of the researchers who are doing junk like this conducting similar pseudo-studies about hot dogs.
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Hi, WC:
You haven’t written anything about Ukraine and what’s going on there. How come?
Surprised

Dear Surprised:
I started a Ukraine post a couple of times — there is wine in the country, believe it or not — but could never quite figure out what to say. I’ve mostly stayed away from politics on the blog and there really wasn’t a way to write about Ukraine without injecting politics into it. But know that my family left that part of Eastern Europe more than 100 years ago, and the reasons then are just as applicable now.

Photo: MART PRODUCTION from Pexels

More Ask the WC:
• Ask the WC 31: Pinot noir, minimum pricing, wine apocalypse
• Ask the WC 30: BYOB, wine for friends, California fires
• Ask the WC 29: Birthday gifts, larger bottles, and on-line

Inflation? What inflation? 10 bottles of wine for $114

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

wine dinner
“I think the WC is right. I haven’t noticed wine prices going up that much.”

Inflation, shortages, and supply chain woes may be showing up in the rest of the economy, but they don’t seem to have hurt cheap wine yet

Gas prices may be close to $4 a gallon in parts of the country, and the cyber-ether is full of hand-wringing about the U.S. economy and the ravages of inflation, the supply chain kerfuffle, socio-political unrest, and all of the the rest of the specters haunting our post-(hopefully) pandemic world.

But wine prices going up? So far, I haven’t seen it.

Yes, there are still shortages and empty shelves. My local Aldi has moved on from the cheap imported wine that made me a regular customer, and is instead stocking not so cheap (and very ordinary) California wine. Which, no doubt, is because of all those supply chain problems. And it’s still difficult finding certain wines, be they Italian and Spanish reds or the $10 roses I drink year round. My kingdom for a Zestos rose!

But there is still plenty of value. The wine business, for whatever reason (and no, I have no idea what they may be) is holding the line on prices. During a recent shopping expedition, I bought 10 bottles for $114, or about what I usually pay. The wines included:

• South Africa’s Ken Forrester petit chenin blanc, one of my all-time favorite wines and difficult to find even in the pre-pandemic world.

• A couple of Spanish viuras including the 1-liter Spanish Azul y Garanza. The Azul, which is always a value, has been in short supply for the past 18 months.

• An $11 cremant from the Loire, a sparkling wine from Cote Mas. The Mas wines can be uneven, but this was a steal (and more on it later).

• A $15 Australian riesling, the Pewsey Vale. Aussie riesling is another great value around $15, and again has been difficult to find in Dallas for years.

• A $10 red Bordeaux, the Chateau La Freynelle. The white has always been fine $10 wine; have not seen the red for a very long time, as well.

Photo: cottonbro from Pexels

More about buying cheap wine:
• Suck on this, premiumization: 14 bottles of wine for $148
• Premiumization be damned: $139.36 for 14 ½ bottles of cheap wine
• Panic wine buying

Ask the WC 31: Pinot noir, minimum pricing, wine apocalypse

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

wine advice
“Mmmmm. … tannat. .,. yummmm.”

This edition of Ask the WC: When is pinot noir not pinot noir? Plus what’s minimum pricing and whether the wine apocalypse is coming

Because the customers always have questions, and the Wine Curmudgeon has answers in this irregular feature. You can Ask the Wine Curmudgeon a wine-related question by clicking here.

Hey, WC:
I liked the McManis pinot noir review, but some of it didn’t make sense. How can a wine be called pinot noir if there are other grapes in it?
Confused about pinot

Dear Pinot:
A varietal wine — a wine that has the name of the grape of the label — doesn’t have to be made only with that grape. Federal law allows varietal wine to have as much as 25 percent of something else, and most pinot noir that costs less than $30 often has 25 percent of something else. I wrote a trade story about this a decade ago, when inexpensive pinot became popular. One winemaker told me that his company used tannat, grenache, syrah, zinfandel, petite sirah, refosco, and dornfelder in pinot noir. The goal was to make the wine darker in color and fruitier, since traditional pinot is neither. So, when I write — as I did in the McManis review — that most inexpensive pinot tastes like a red blend, that’s because it was made to taste that way.
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Oh Curmudgeonly One:
What’s this minimum pricing I keep hearing about, where the government sets alcohol prices? That doesn’t sound very free enterprise. We don’t do it in the U.S., do we?
Free markets rule

Dear Markets:
Yes, we have minimum pricing in the U.S. Most notably, it’s in Connecticut and Michigan; the state decides the minimum a retailer can charge, though it may exist in other forms elsewhere given the tangle that is U.S. liquor regulation. The rationale is that if liquor costs too little, we’ll buy too much and all be drunk — the infamous “public health and safety” standard that allows states to regulate alcohol in their own way. So no, no free market in the U.S. in booze.
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Dear Wine Curmudgeon:
I’m getting a little tired of you talking about the wine apocalypse all the time, and how wine is going away. It’s a $100 billion business. isn’t it? How can that disappear?
Irritated and annoyed

Dear Irritated:
Wine sales in the U.S. are about $70 billion annually, so yes, not going away tomorrow. But that’s hardly good news. Wine sales have been flat for years (and may actually have decreased, depending on who did the study), per capita consumption has decreased, and younger people aren’t interested in wine. Hence the concern among those of us who love wine but refuse to be blinded by the industry’s obsession with prices and scores. And do you think I like writing about this stuff? Hardly. But someone has to do it.

Photo: Joey Nicotra on Unsplash

More Ask the WC:
• Ask the WC 30: BYOB, wine for friends, California fires
• Ask the WC 29: Birthday gifts, larger bottles, and on-line
• Ask the WC 28: Wine Curmudgeon ethics, sweet red wine, and wine spending

The WC video: Holiday wine tips one more time

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Top-notch holiday wine buying advice never goes out of style

Call this the blog’s newest holiday tradition — the Wine Curmudgeon opening a bottle of sparkling wine live and in one take. And I don’t even have any initials after my name. The original post ran here.

So solid holiday wine buying advice, which is always welcome. Click on the Watch on YouTube link to see the video; it’s age-restricted because we’re talking about alcohol.

Many thanks to host Michael Sansolo as well as everyone at the Private Label Manufacturers Association who put this together. Even better, they didn’t laugh too hard at the WC’s reaction after being told he would have to wear makeup.

Would that we had been able to continue the series, which was going to focus on buying quality wine at the supermarket. But the world intervened, as it often does.

And, as long as we’re on holiday wine suggestions, a shameless plug: First, a 12-month subscription to the blog (discounted, of course), as well as the cheap wine book.

Holiday wine gift guide 2021

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

holiday gifts
“That metal foil cutter looks super cool.”

The Wine Curmudgeon’s holiday wine gift guide 2021 — which, of course, includes things that aren’t wine

Do a Google search for wine gifts, and they tend to repeat each other — as if one gift guide borrowed from another gift guide which borrowed from another gift guide. Consider this waterproof Bluetooth glass holder so you can listen to tunes and drink wine while in the shower. It showed up in so many gift roundups that it’s sold out.

Which, of course, we don’t do here. Hence, the blog’s 2021 holiday wine gift guide, which includes things that aren’t wine. And, as always, keep the blog’s wine gift buying guidelines in mind:

• Steven Spurrier: A Life in Wine ($45): Spurrier, who died this year, could have been the most important wine writer in those ancient, pre-Parker days. If he had not held the Judgment of Paris, who knows how long it would have taken California wine to take its place in the world? But Spurrier was much more than a wine writer; he was also an important wine educator and leading wine merchant who owned a wine shop in Paris  — hardly something most Britons would do.

• Smith-Madrone’s riesling ($35, sample, 12.9%) is a wine that reminds me just how amazing wine can be. For one thing, California doesn’t do much riesling, and it certainly doesn’t do much well. But this one is a revelation, combining California-style fruitiness with the varietal characteristics that make great riesling so much fun to drink. That means lime zest, a bit of tingliness in the back, a hint of petrol, some sweetness floating around to remind you it’s riesling, just enough acidity to greet the sweetness, and stoniness in the finish.

• Regular visitors know that the Wine Curmudgeon is not much for wine gadgets; he’d rather buy wine. Still, there’s something about this metal foil cutter ($25) that strikes me as worthwhile. Too many bottles still have foil caps and too many of those refuse to come off with a twist. And, frankly, using a waiter’s corkscrew to remove the foil leads to cursing and cut fingers. So why not a foil cutter?

• Laherte Freres Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature ($50, purchased, 12.5%) is an amazing bubbly, everything that Champagne – the sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France – should be, and especially for those of us who prefer a cleaner, more minerally style.  One estimate gives it another 20 years in the bottle, and I wouldn’t argue with that at all.

And, finally — shameless plug alert! — give the blog as a gift: One year of the newsletter at 20 percent off, just $56. Click this link to send a gift subscription. Use the email address of the person you’re giving the subscription to where it asks for an email, add a credit card, and they’ll get the $10 Hall of Fame, the Cheap Wine of the Year, and all of the rest — plus the rants and analysis that have made the blog what it is.

More holiday wine gift guides:
• Holiday wine gift guide 2020
• Holiday wine gift guide 2019
• Holiday wine gift guide 2018

Seven things that should be banned from the holiday wine experience

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

holiday wine
“I know I saw a bottle of white zinfandel in there. I demand to know who brought it!”

No, wine shaming is not OK, and six other things we don’t need when it comes to holiday wine

Almost everyone who writes about wine – whether Winestream or Mainstream Media – laments how difficult it is to do wine for the holidays.

Phooey.

So when I saw this post from Lifehacker, I thought: We need something like that for holiday wine. Hence, seven things that should be banned from the holiday wine experience:

1. Bragging about how cheap the wine was. Even the Wine Curmudgeon is sometimes guilty of that, for which I am always severely reprimanded. The point, or course, is that the wine is enjoyable. Price only matters if someone asks.

2. Bragging about how expensive the wine was. The WC has never done this – but those of you who have done it know exactly who you are.

3. Bringing a bottle of wine to dinner that no one but you has ever heard of or could possibly like — because, of course, the goal is to show you know more about wine than anyone else.

4. Bringing Two-buck Chuck, Winking Owl, or any of the others in the $3 wine reviews to dinner because they’re cheap and for no other reason. It’s a holiday, dammit. It’s OK to spend $10 for wine for the people that you care most about.

5. Wine shaming (see No. 3). In other words, when you see a bottle of white zinfandel or Apothic on the table, it’s not OK to snigger, point to the bottle, and make a snarky comment.

6. Launching into an interminable discussion about wine and food pairings and how you spent three weeks and consulted seven sommeliers to find the perfect wine for this particular holiday dinner (see No. 3 again). No one cares. And why should they?

7. “Taste this, it’s really good,” and making someone try something they obviously don’t want to try. Wine is not a mud pie to force on your little sister, so don’t treat it like one.

Photo: CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash