Category:Wine reviews

Wine of the week: Avalon Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2005

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

image Time was, the Avalon was $10. The Wine Curmudgeon used to drink it by the case, buy it for visiting wine types and make them guess how much it cost (one of these days I’ll have to share the story about the Avalon and the visiting Australian wine marketer), and recommend it at every opportunity.

It’s not $10 any more (closer to $15, though you can find it for $12 every once in a while). But it’s still one of the best values in the wine world, with almost all of the rich, fruity character of Napa cabernet at one-half to one-third the price.

How does Avalon do it? For one thing, the company only makes cabernet. For another, it doesn’t own land or  touristy production facilities. It’s based on the French negociant model, which allows it to keep costs — and prices — down.

Serve this with a Father’s Day barbecue. Or buy a case and toast Dad with it throughout the year.

Barefoot wines: Value or just cheap?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

imageWine Curmudgeon note: This post is attracting so much traffic that new visitors should know that I wrote another Barefoot post in September 2010 — Barefoot wines (again): Value or just cheap? It updates this post and offers some thoughts on the Barefoot merlot. There is also a review of Barefoot riesling, written in December 2009.

Original post: Barefoot Cellars wines get a lot more publicity than most inexpensive wines. The $6 cabernet sauvignon and merlot showed up on The Wine Trials' top 100 list. The $6 pinot grigio earned raves last week from the Wall Street Journal's respected wine columnists, John Brecher and Dorothy Gaiter. And the $10 extra dry sparkling wine got a gold medal at the prestigious Dallas Morning News competition this spring.

Is it time for the Wine Curmudgeon to take another look at Barefoot?

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Wine of the week: Hey Mambo Sultry Red 2006

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

imageSimple, fruity red blends from California are not what they once were. This is upsetting, because  the Wine Curmudgeon appreciates simple and fruity wines quite a bit. Not every occasion requires a $50 bottle of wine. But prices for simple, fruity red blends have gone up or quality has gone down, or both, in the last couple of years.

The Mambo (about $13), though, has remained consistently satisfying. It's a six-grape blend (no cabernet sauvignon or merlot, thankfully) that offers dark fruit and medium tannins. Serve it with Italian food, hamburgers or anything else that requires a simple, fruity wine.

And yes, it has a silly closure called a zork that does seem to do the job — and without need of a corkscrew.

Wine of the week: Solaz Blanco 2007

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

image The Wine Curmudgeon has a closet full of free wine, samples from producers who want me to try their stuff and write about it. But I use my money to buy Solaz — and a lot of it. And why is that?

Because it's cheap, around $7. And it's well-made. And it tastes good. What more can a wine drinker ask for?

Solaz, as regular visitors here know, is the wonderfully inexpensive wine brand from Spain's Osborne, one of my favorite producers. The various red blends have long been in the $10 Wine Hall of Fame, and the white has been in a couple of years. It's made from the viura grape, a mostly Spanish varietal that produces clean, crisp and floral wines with just a bit of apple fruit. Serve this chilled with salads (I had it the other night with a chef's salad with Russian dressing), Mediterranean food like hummus or bulgur salad, or on its own.

Wine review: Nobilo Sauvignon Blanc 2007

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

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There are many reasons why the Wine Curmudgeon is so fond of this wine. The
Nobilo is cheap, still around $10 despite
the horribly weak U.S. dollar. It's well-made, displaying all the aromas and
flavors that New Zealand sauvignon blanc should have.

And, perhaps most importantly, it's tremendous fun to taste with people who
aren't familiar with this kind of wine. That's because New Zealand sauvignon
blanc has a tell-tale red grapefruit smell and taste. Which means half the
people who taste it for the first time hate it, and half of them think it's as
good a wine as they've ever had. This difference of opinion is one of the things
I love most about wine. Each of us is different, and what one person wants no
part of another wants a case of. If only the wine snobs, with their scores and
magazines, understood this.

Serve this wine chilled with anything remotely resembling seafood, from crab
cakes to boiled
shrimp to tuna salad. It's also terrific with anything cooked with olive
oil, garlic and rosemary or parsley.

$70 wine: When is it really worth it?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

image I was drinking wine with a couple of friends last weekend and mentioned that they would enjoy the sparkling wine. One of them took a sip and said, yes, that was pretty good. But it doesn’t taste like one of your $10 wines, she said. (Now I know how actors feel when they get stereotyped.)

The wine, of course, was not $10. It was Ruinart, perhaps my favorite bubbly and not cheap at all at $70. And, to add insult to injury to my reputation, the other bottle of wine that night was Domaine Borgeot Puligny-Montrachet Les Charmes 1999, which cost around $65.

Which raises the question: Is there something to these wines that makes them worth that much money? The answer is yes, but the point is not how much they cost, but what they deliver.

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Wine of the week: Raats Original Chenin Blanc 2007

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

image South African wine doesn’t get a lot of respect, and sometimes deservedly so. So when the Wine Curmudgeon finds one that is well-made, inexpensive and food friendly, it’s a reason to write about it.

The Original uses a grape that is too often mishandled in South Africa, producing sweet, uninteresting wines. Raats, on the other hand, treats the grape seriously, and turns out a dry, refreshing wine that is fruity (think pineapple and orange) and even has some minerality on the finish. It’s a lot to expect from a $12 wine.

Serve this chilled with salads, Thai food (though it’s not sweet, it’s fruity enough to stand up to spice) or on its own.