Category:White wine

Upgrading your wine for the holidays

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

image You ?re pretty confident about wine, as far as it goes. You know a good $10 or $12 bottle from a not-so-good one, and if one of your friends needs a recommendation for a decent red wine to take to someone ?s house for dinner, you can offer two or three suggestions.

But there ?s a holiday coming up, and so it seems like the right time to spend a bit more ? whether it ?s as a gift for the significant person in your life or to treat yourself. But if all you know is $10 wine, what do you do?

Consider the following:

? Find out if the $10 wine you like has a more expensive label. Bogle, one of the best $10 wineries, does a couple: The Phantom, a red blend, and a Russian Rover pinot noir, both around $17.

? Buy a less expensive bottle from a winery that makes high-end wines. Ridge and Newton are both expensive and well-regarded California names. But Ridge ?s Three Valleys, a red blend featuring zinfandel, is a steal at about $23. Newton ?s Claret, made with mostly merlot in the Bordeaux style, is another terrific $25 wine.

? Buy a nicer wine from a region that you like. New Zealand is famous for its $16 sauvignon blancs and pinot noirs. So why not try something like Cloudy Bay, whose prices are closer to $30?

? Upgrade your grocery store favorite. Most offer not only a basic line, but one or even two more at higher prices and, usually, better quality. Kendall-Jackson, for instance, sells its vintner ?s reserve wines for $12 to $18. The next step up is the grand reserve, where prices run from $20 to $35.

Wine of the week: McPherson Cellars viognier

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

I like Kim McPherson. He’s funny, he tells a good story, and he always returns my phone calls. But I’d recommend this wine even if he wasn’t any of those things.

His viognier (about $13) is one of the best examples of what Texas wine can be. It has viognier character, which means it’s a white wine with crisp apple and pear flavors that isn’t as heavy as chardonnay or as citrusy as sauvignon blanc. But the wine doesn’t taste like it was made in California or France, either. It’s lighter and more fruit forward, and it’s easy to drink. Note to wine snobs: Easy to drink is not a crime, but a goal that well-made wine should aspire to.

Serve this with white wine dishes or on its own, chilled to about 55 degrees.

Dessert wines

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Yes, winemakers really do let the grapes freeze to make icewine. The Wine Curmudgeon has a deep, dark guilty  secret. It ?s dessert wine ? sweet, rich, luscious, and often pricey dessert wine.

In those respects, it is frequently everything that drives me crazy about the wine business. But dessert wine almost always gets the benefit of my doubt, because it is that much fun to drink. Pour a glass after a dinner, sniff it, swirl it around in the glass, and sip it. More often than not, it caps off the evening without recourse to over-chocolated desserts, the current chef-fusion-fruit concoction or whatever form of cheesecake is making the rounds.

Dessert wines come in a variety of flavors and styles. Some are made with fruit other than grapes, some are sparkling, and some use grapes that have frozen on the vines. (There are also cognacs, ports, sherries and Madeiras, but we’ll worry about those some other time.)

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Thanksgiving wine suggestions

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Actually, pairing wine with Thanksgiving dinner is a thankless task. There is sweet food, sweet and sour food, rich food, poultry, and whatever happens to be a tradition at that particular table.

So drink what you like. It will probably match something.

MarkWestCentralCoastPinotNo ? Pinot noir is the traditional wine, since it’s turkey-friendly. Mark West California 2006 ($15) is one of the few value pinots around, and it’s a pretty respectable effort. It’s fruity, but not overly so, with a touch of what wine types like to call rusticity. If you want to spend more, consider Orogeny Pinot Noir Green Valley 2005 ($30), full of red fruit and very easy to drink.

? Chardonnay, since it goes with almost anything. $8 will get you Baron Philippe deMacon-01 Rothschild Chardonnay 2006, which offers a fair amount of value. It’s not white Burgundy or Napa, but it’s more than sufficient. Even more value at $20 is the bright, crisp and green apple-y Maison Verget Macon-Villages 2005. It’s unoaked, which means it’s lighter than its California cousins.

image ? Sparkling, which is never out of place. Availability is limited, but I really like the Greg Norman Estates Sparkling Chardonnay/Pinot Noir ($11). It’s value bubbly the way it should be. The Zardetto Prosecco Brut ($18) is much drier than most Proseccos, and has a bit of chardonnay to give it some oomph. Surprisingly good.

Off-brand whites

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Please, try something besides chardonnay. In 2006, almost one out of every four wine dollars was spent on chardonnay. That not only makes it the top-selling varietal in the U.S., according to The Nielsen Company, with almost twice the sales of cabernet sauvignon, but puts chardonnay so far ahead of every other white wine that it’s kind of spooky.

In the Nielsen report, consumers bought three times as much chardonnay as pinot grigio and pinot gris, and six times as much chardonnay as saugvinon blanc. Riesling was barely mentioned, and viognier and gewurtztraminer weren’t even counted. Now, the Wine Curmudgeon loves chardonnay as much as the next oenophile, but enough is enough. There is more white wine than chardonnay.

How has this happened? Some of it, certainly, has to do with pronunciation. Chardonnay is easier to say, which means it gets ordered more often in restaurants. Some of it is style. Not only is most chardonnay fruit-forward and easy to drink (with less citrusy flavors), but it’s consistent There are differences between producers and regions, but chardonnay is pretty much chardonnay regardless of who makes it and where it’s from. That isn’t true for pinot grigio and gris, for example, where it’s sometimes difficult to believe the Italians and Alsatians use the same grape.

But that doesn’t mean you need to drink chardonnay all the time. The next time you reach for the usual, think about one of these:

• Gainey Riesling 2006 ($10). I was pleasantly surprised by this California label, which is just a touch sweet (or, as it’s called in the trade, off-dry). It has riesling’s characteristic floral aromas, with a bit of peach-like flavor. Serve this chilled with spicy Chinese or Thai food, and it should even work with roasted turkey.

• White Knight Viognier 2006 ($13). Viognier, a Rhone grape often used for blending, has had fair success as a varietal in the U.S. This California wine is dry, but very soft without any harsh tannins or oak. Look for the orange-ish bouquet and a peach pit kind of finish. Serve chilled with chicken braised in white wine, using this for the wine.

• Mulderbosch Chenin Blanc 2006 ($17). This dry white from South Africa, which is fruitier (think tropical flavors) than its French counterpart and doesn’t have the earthy funkiness that plagues so many South African wines. Serve it chilled with roast pork loin and apples.

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