Category:Wine Curmudgeon

Remembering the State Fair of Texas wine garden

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Cotton Bowl stadium at State Fair of Texas
The Texas wine garden was at the top of the picture, more or less.

A decade ago, we struck a blow for Drink Local

Shelly Wilfong, a well respected Dallas wine writer, sent me an email over the weekend: “Sounds like a neat gig you had doing the wine chats.”

Which brought back a bunch of memories that I had almost forgotten about — the five autumns that John Bratcher and I did wine talks at the State Fair of Texas wine garden. The first couple of years, we did Wine 101 (first, with the late Camille McBee, and then with Dan Peabody). The next three years, we did interviews with Texas winemakers, sommeliers, chefs, and assorted local wine personalities. I always compared it to a mini-talk show, minus the monologue but with a terrific theme song.

Shelly does a fine job recapping what happened, including the Texas Legislature’s foolishness that ended the wine talks (which, as dumb as it was, doesn’t hold a candle to its power grid shenanigans). She was also quite polite when I sent her a longish e-mail in return, with more information about the talks then she could have imagined.

We did good work, and people still ask me if John and I are going to do it again. So what do I remember the most?

• The enthusiasm of the audiences. Really. We actually had people come early, and especially when we did the interviews. They wanted to know about Texas wine, and this was one of the few places to get it then.

• The enthusiasm of the people we interviewed. We had some big names (including Dean Fearing, a leading celebrity chef, and TexSom impresario James Tidwell) and I didn’t have to do much to convince them to come. Which speaks volumes about how important they thought Texas wine was.

• The crowds during Texas-OU weekend, which came for the football game but ended up attending many of the talks. Our location had chairs, beer for sale, and was next to the Cotton Bowl, where the game was played. The result? I tell people I never had to deal with hecklers in the Catskills; John and I had drunks during Texas-OU weekend.

13 bottles of wine for $158 (and that includes a $30 white Burgundy)

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Mexican bandit
“Premiumization? We don’t need no stinkin’ premiumization!”

Despite wine’s worst intentions, it’s still possible to buy quality cheap wine – and lots of it

For all the hand-wringing about the evils of premiumization (here and elsewhere), and the idea that no one makes or cares about quality cheap wine anymore, it’s still out there. Which is what this recent shopping trip demonstrated.

The average price here, including the retailer’s various discounts but not sales tax, was $12.15 a bottle for the baker’s dozen. Throw out the $30 white Burgundy, and it was just $10.67 a bottle — more or less what it has always been in the almost 16 years I’ve written the blog.

And, of course, none of the wine was crappy.

Rather, it’s about buying smart and following the guidelines that have served all of us well who want quality wine but who refuse to pay jumped up prices for it. That means staying away from California, looking for grapes and regions that aren’t as common, and to be wiling to try something different. This time, given the emerging grape glut, I was also able to find some marked down previous vintages.

My shopping cart included:

• Four bottles of vinho verde, which I would have bought even if the last eight weeks here had not seemed to average 105 degrees a day.

• One French and one Spanish white blend, staying away from the premium charged for chardonnay – even cheap chardonnay from France.

• La Vieille Ferme – three roses and one red. I didn’t buy any white because the store was sold out.

• A couple of previous vintage roses, including the one-liter Cote Mas Aurore.

More about buying cheap wine:
• Inflation? What inflation? 10 bottles of wine for $114
• Suck on this, premiumization: 14 bottles of wine for $148
• Premiumization be damned: $139.36 for 14 ½ bottles of cheap wine

Ask the WC 40: Gallup poll, premiumization, RTDs

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Bald Old Fat Man Doodles
“This is how every wine gets 92 points — pay attention.”

This edition of Ask the WC: More about this year’s Gallup Poll, plus premiumization and ready-to-drink cocktails

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 saw what you wrote about the Gallup Poll and wine falling to third after beer and spirits. What does that mean?
I drink wine

Dear Wine:
Gallup’s annual alcohol survey offers some of the best numbers about what Americans drink, how often we drink, and who drinks. But, as one analyst told me, the survey’s numbers are more important when taken as a whole, and not necessarily by individual years. We can believe that about one-third of Americans don’t drink because that result has been consistent for decades. So that, for one year, wine is third isn’t as important as the trend over the past several years, when wine and spirits were mostly tied. The time to worry is when wine stays third, and the gap gets bigger.

•

Dear Jeff:
Aren’t you tired of writing about premiumization? If someone wants to spend $40 for a bottle of wine, that’s their business, isn’t it?
Stop whining already

Dear Stop:
Anyone can pay as much or as little for wine — or anything else, for that matter — as they want. My job is to find wines that offer value and quality. And if  providing that service is seen as whining, then what’s the point of wine criticism? Let’s just give everything a 92 and let it go at that.

•

Hello, Wine Curmudgeon:
What are these RTDs that I see in the liquor store? Are they really cocktails in a can?
Confused

Dear Confused:
Yes, they are, and they’re one of the hot trends in the liquor business (and one reason why spirits are becoming more popular). Now, why anyone would want to buy a cocktail in a can is beyond me, save for the convenience, since you don’t know the quality of spirits, the mixers and so forth. But I also won’t pay $25 for

More Ask the WC:
• Ask the WC 39: Drinking less, affordable wine, cheap wine
• Ask the WC 38: More about negative reviews, inflation, availability
• Ask the WC 37: Blog future, negative reviews, California rain

Photo: “Bald Old Fat Man Doodles” by psd is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

How to make the blog even more fabulously successful?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

old-time newspaper newsroom
“You’re all going to be replaced by free, outsourced content. Because this is all about what is best for me.”

Be like the NYT, and outsource its content

The Wine Curmudgeon, courtesy of the New York Times, has discovered a way to make the blog even more fabulously successful than it already is – I can outsource the content to someone who works more cheaply than I do.

That’s what the Times – my once beloved New York Times – did when it said it would close its sports department in favor of running stories from a website called The Athletic. How and why this happened is still a bit of a muddle; it apparently has something to do with the paper’s long-running union troubles as well as its not too brainy $550 million purchase of the money-losing Athletic in 2022.

Full disclosure: I was an employee of a Times subsidiary when I was the sports editor of the daily in Houma, La. Even then, the company’s management style was brusque. I was told that if I did a good job, I could move to the paper in Florence, Ala., or Lakeland, Fla. Which, not to denigrate the quality of those cities, didn’t have much appeal to a young, ambitious, newspaperman.

Still, if I overlook how despicable outsourcing the sports department is – it’s something that a sleazy leveraged buyout company would do – this might work. I can probably find a variety of young writers who will work for free for the exposure and the experience, and then I can use their copy under my banner. How 21st century, Elon Musk and Jeff Zuckerberg-style capitalism is that? They do the work, and I reap the benefits.

Now, will the blog be as well-written or as informative or as much fun as before? Of course not. But that’s not the point. The point is that I am making more money for myself, and the rest – the employees, the readers, the service that I am performing – be damned. Because, of course, 21st century, Elon Musk and Jeff Zuckerberg-style capitalism.

The catch is that I can’t overlook how despicable the Times’ action was. It’s supposed to be one of the bastions of American journalism, and not this company or this company (whose failings I know all too well). So I won’t outsource the blog. I will cancel my subscription to the Times, though. and hope its bosses eventually see the error of their ways.

Because one of us has to do the right thing.

Ask the WC 39: Drinking less, affordable wine, cheap wine

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

women talking
“So what is this sober curious thing the WC is writing about?”

This edition of Ask the WC: More about young people drinking less, plus affordable wine and cheap wine quality

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:
What’s all this about people, and especially young people, drinking less? I thought drinking was a rite of passage. Is that some more of those bad studies you’re always writing about?
Don’t believe the numbers

Dear Don’t:
The numbers seem to be true, and are consistent across a variety of studies and surveys – fewer of us say we drink, more of us say we want to drink less. I got a release this spring with these numbers: one-third of us want to drink less in 2023, almost half are interested in going to a sober bar, and about one-third have tried alcohol-free beer. Yes, it’s difficult to measure drinking, but – as the blog’s official numbers expert has told me more than once – consistency does seem to mean something,

•

Hi, Wine Curmudgeon:
I keep seeing wines advertised as values at my package store that cost $30. What’s going on?
Looking for value

Dear Value:
More of the evils of premiumization, sadly. That’s pretty typical of of my emails – lots and lots of wines, from both PR types and retailers, touting wines that cost $30, $40, and even $50 as values. It’s so bad that one PR company pitched me a $30 booze-free wine – which means it’s $30 grape juice. Why would they think anyone would pay that?

•

Oh cheap wine guru:
Do you ever get tired of tasting bad cheap wine? I would imagine you taste a lot of it.
Palate cleanser

Dear Palate:
Oh yes – and the more I do this, the more bad cheap wine I taste. Most of it is a tinge sweet, very alcoholic, and the reds all pretty much taste the same regardless of where they’re from or what the grapes are. The whites do vary depending on varietal, though the sugar is there more often than not. But not to worry – that’s why I’m here, so you don’t have to taste the junk.

More Ask the WC:
• Ask the WC 38: More about negative reviews, inflation, availability
• Ask the WC 37: Blog future, negative reviews, California rain
• Ask the WC 36: Restaurant wine, holiday wine, past vintages

Photo: “IMG_7272” by JodiWomack is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Can a wine glut boost the wine business?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

People tasting wine
“$10? Really? That’s damn fine wine.”

Of course – if the wine business wants to turn out quality $10 wine

Dear Wine Business:

Once again, the Wine Curmudgeon takes keyboard in hand to offer some help in your current crisis. Which, if possible, just got worse. Turrentine Brokerage, one of the most respected companies in all of wine, reports that bulk wine levels – dare I say? — are past a crisis (complete with fancy colored charts):

“Total California statewide gallons actively for sale are now up to 22.4 million. This volume of wine has only been available on the market four times before, and each time was after a record or near-record sized harvest. In contrast, the 2022 harvest was the lightest in a decade. The elevated volume of bulk wine actively for sale shows the concern of wineries over slowing consumer sales.”

In other words, wineries are making less wine because they finally figured out consumers are buying less wine. That means the wine they don’t use goes to the bulk market, where it waits for someone else to buy it – and waits and waits and waits. Because “current inventory can feel more like a liability than an asset, so don’t get left behind because you are hoping for a higher price.”

Since there won’t be one.

Fortunately, the WC has a solution to this problem: Cheap wine.

I can’t take credit for all of this. Much of it must go to the blog’s official European correspondent, who told me: “This should surely be a moment for someone to create a good value $10 brand.”

To which I said, “Eureka,” and wrote this post.

In fact, there is nothing unusual about this. “Wineries” make wine all the time without actually growing any grapes; instead, they buy grapes and wine on the bulk market, invent a name for the wine, bottle it, and sell it. These days, it’s mostly done with higher-priced wine because of premiumization, but I’ve been doing this long enough to remember terrific $10 brands like Line 39 and Yellow + Blue that did the same thing.

So why not do it again? The quality wine is available, and at more than fair prices, says Turrentine. Besides, what do you have to lose by trying? It’s not like the wine is going anywhere, and there’s more than an even chance that consumers might buy quality $10 wine. And then buy some more.

Or at least that’s what they tell me.

Your pal,
The Wine Curmudgeon

Has the WC’s neighborhood become too trendy for the WC?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

map of northeast Dallas
That’s the WC’s house, mid-century plumbing and all, about where the d is in “and.”

Can someone who appreciates quality $10 wine live in “America’s most-sought neighborhood”?

A new study says the Wine Curmudgeon lives in perhaps the hottest real estate market in the United States, which raises serious questions about my lifestyle – wine included.

Here’s the thing: I don’t have granite counter tops. I don’t have a Wolf range or Bosch refrigerator. I don’t have a sauna or swimming pool. I do have mid-century plumbing and a paid-for, stick-shift Honda Fit.

And, of course, a passion for quality $10 wine.

So when the study said my part of Dallas was “America’s most-sought neighborhood,” I was at a loss for words (which, as regular visitors know, is almost impossible). How can this be? I live there. Doesn’t that automatically disqualify my neighborhood?

Most importantly, does it mean I can no longer drink the wine I love?

Because, as the study notes, real estate seems to be the culmination of 21st century American culture – that we’re a “a nation of virtual carpet treaders” who love “Zillow porn.” Which I can vouch for: I have a neighbor who probably spends as much time on Zillow as I do looking at wine store inventories. Plus, just now, I got yet another text asking to buy my house, which happens with astonishing regularity.

Hence my conundrum. If my neighborhood is really this trendy, what will the hipsters say when I buy this instead of this? And what will they do when they find out that I write – and most convincingly, if I may say so – that expensive wines are not necessarily better just because they’re expensive? Don’t both of those actions defeat the entire purpose of trendy?

Will they snub me when I walk Churro, the blog’s associate editor? Will they point me out to their visitors, shaking their heads and sighing, as the neighbor who is just a little “off?”

Fortunately, the study has its flaws, as the authors acknowledge. If nothing else, it’s based on Zillow data, which may be even less accurate than many of the wine and health studies that claim we’re drunk every night – even though fewer of us drink and most of us are drinking less.

And, as my mother is probably thinking as she reads this, the last thing I care about is fitting in, and especially fitting in with people who don’t understand the value of a paid-for, stick-shift Honda Fit – or a fine bottle of $10 Gascon white wine.

Map: Courtesy of Zillow