Tag Archives: $10 wine

Update: How much should an everyday wine cost?

Update: How much should an everyday wine cost?How much should an everyday wine cost? Between $5 and $12, according to the poll that ran on the blog and that you can find at the bottom of this post. Thanks to everyone who participated. Several thoughts about the results:

? The $5 to $12 range, of course, is completely at odds with the wine industry’s view of how much everyday wine should cost — $12 to $18. That range came in second, but it wasn’t particularly close. Yes, this was not a scientific effort with margins of error, and yes, the results were almost certainly skewed because it was hosted by someone whose reason for being is cheap wine. But I was still surprised. I thought $12 to $18 would win, because that’s what the experts keep telling me wine drinkers want. But sometimes even I forget wine drinkers are usually smarter than the experts.

? Ultra-cheap wine, less than $5, finished fourth, barely ahead of expensive wine. This was also surprising, given how much of this wine is sold each year — some 5 million cases annually for just Two-buck Chuck, the $2.99 (or whatever) wine sold by Trader Joe’s. Either $5 fans didn’t do the poll, or many consumers see Two-buck Chuck and its ilk as something to keep in the fridge when they want a glass, but not necessarily something to open when they want a bottle of wine with dinner.

? Fewer than 2 percent of the votes were cast for expensive wine. Which also surprised me. I guess I need to remember why I do this and why so many people read what I do.

? The comments were almost as much fun as the poll, thoughtful and well-written (you can find them at the link at the top of the post). How about the guy who makes his own wine so he doesn’t have to pay for it? Or the several intelligent discussions about wine quality and price? Which is another reminder that the wine business misses an opportunity when it underestimates the intelligence of its customers.

Lists on Ranker

Wine of the week: Alliance Loire La Cloti re Rose 2012

La Clotiere roseOne of the Wine Curmudgeon’s best friends in the wine writing business hates rose. This is something I have never understood, because his palate is impeccable in almost every other way. He is even open minded when he tastes Tennessee wine, hardly something that one sees very often.

So, Tom, the La Clotiere rose ($10, purchased, 12%), made with the gamay grape in the Loire region in France, is for you. It’s not a dry white wine that happens to be pink, something you insist is the case with most roses. Rather, since it’s made with the same grape that’s used for Beaujolais, it’s soft like that style of red wine. But because it’s much more than just a red wine that’s pink, there is also an almost tropical fruit flavor along with the cherry, and the softness is balanced by a bright acidity that gives the wine a surprising freshness. And, of course, it’s dry.

The La Clotiere rose is an excellent example of the quality and value that one can find in modern rose, and is exactly the kind of wine to review in anticipation of tomorrow’s annual rose extravaganza. I stumbled on it while looking for something else, and bought it because it’s almost impossible to find a badly made $10 rose anymore. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2015 $10 Hall of Fame.

How much should an everyday wine cost?

everyday wine costThe Wine Curmudgeon, working through his tasting notes on CellarTracker (the blog’s unofficial wine inventory web app) found this January comment for the 2007 Robert Mondavi Oakville cabernet sauvignon: “Nice every day wine at this price point.” The price? $45. Is that how much an everyday wine should cost?

Which raises one of the most contentious issues in wine, and one that doesn’t get enough discussion: How much should an everyday wine cost? This CellarTracker user (and no, I’m not going to name names) figures that an everyday wine runs the cost of a car payment each month, $315, and you only get to drink wine seven week nights a month to ring up that total. Even Eric Asimov at the New York Times, whose savvy is as good as it gets, figures discerning drinkers need to spend as much as half of that, in the $18 or $20 a bottle range.

My views on this are well known: One reason Americans don’t drink more wine is that we’re told we have to spend too much money to do so, and so we don’t. Or, as the guy who checked me out in a grocery store several years ago said, when he saw that I had bought several bottles of $10 wine: “Why are you spending so much money on wine?” And he didn’t say it nicely, either.

But my views aren’t the only ones. Hence this poll, courtesy of Ranker (the blog’s unofficial polling app): How much should an everyday wine cost? Click on the respective price range — those of you who get the blog via email may have come to the site to vote. The poll will run until May 22, and I’ll recap the results on May 24. Vote away, and don’t be shy about leaving your opinion in the comments.

Lists on Ranker

Wine of the week: Pedroncelli friends.red 2012

Wine of the week: Pedroncelli friends.red 2012The Wine Curmudgeon, despite his crusade for wine labels that look like they belong in the 21st century, was more than wary about this wine. “friends.red”? Talk about chalk on a blackboard.

Still, the wine comes from Pedroncelli, one of my favorite producers and one that has long cared about quality cheap wine, so I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt. For which anyone who buys this will be grateful, because we’re talking $10 Hall of Fame quality.

The Friends ($10, sample, 13.9%) — sorry, I can’t type it with the dot red — is a red blend with mostly merlot and syrah, the kind of wine I wish more California producers were interested in making. That means it’s not only priced correctly, but interesting, with more than syrupy fruit flavors. It’s surprisingly rich and full, probably from the barrel aging, and something that rarely happens with wine at this price. Look for red berry jamminess, soft tannins, and the correct amount of acidity for this style of wine. Plus, there’s no residual sugar, which I thought I tasted in the previous vintage.

Doing a Mother’s Day barbecue? Then this fits the bill. It will pair with almost anything, and it’s soft enough for people who might not like red wine and will still please those of us who do. Highly recommended.

How to find dependable cheap wine

dependable cheap wineHow do you find dependable cheap wine? That’s the question the Wine Curmudgeon recently discussed with Laurie Daniel, who writes for the San Jose Mercury News and is a top-flight wine judge. The result was her piece in the newspaper, which is a fine read. But it focused on California and wines that cost $20 or less, so I thought it was worth going into more detail. That comes after the jump:

Continue reading →

Wine of the week: Root:1 Pinot Noir 2012

Wine of the week: Root:1 Pinot Noir 2012Today’s wine of the week is another lesson in tasting the wine before you judge it. Regular visitors will remember the Wine Curmudgeon’s ambivalence toward Chilean pinot noir until I was forced to taste it last summer; in addition, Root:1 wines have rarely impressed me, being inconsistent more than anything else.

Nevertheless, I tasted the pinot noir ($10, sample, 13.5%) with an open mind, because that’s what I’m supposed to do. And guess what? The wine was worth the effort. It’s light, fruity (some sort of red berry?), and balanced, without any of the excesses that plague other $10 pinots — like adding syrah or grenache — to make them taste fruitier and heavier. And, blissfully, the tannins were more or less what they were supposed to be.

It’s not exactly pinot noir, lacking the earthiness and subtle of great pinot. In this, it tastes more like Beaujolais, which seems to be the case with a lot of $10 pinots from South America. But it’s clean, food friendly, and a fine value for $10 — so fine, in fact, that it merits consideration for the 2015 $10 Wine Hall of Fame.

Winebits 330: Cheap wine, more cheap wine, and corrupt wine writers

Winebits 330: Cheap wine, more cheap wine, and corrupt wine writersBet you never thought you’d see cheap wine in a headline with corrupt wine writers:

? Nothing more than $10: That’s the verdict of the British wine drinking public, where 80 percent of the wine sold costs 6 (about US$10) or less a bottle. And less than seven per cent are willing to pay more than 10 (about US$17) for a bottle.This doesn’t surprise the Wine Curmudgeon, of course, who has long been an Anglophile, complete with Tom Baker Dr. Who videos, a Winston Churchill poster, and a London Underground coffee mug. And it shouldn’t surprise any intelligent U.S, wine drinker, who has followed the blog or seen the most recent Wine Market Council study (which found that even the richest wine drinkers buy cheap wine). But you know the wine business — someone, somewhere will claim it’s all a lie, and we’re actually drinking $25 wine that gets a 93. Nuts to them. I want some of the 4 Adli rose in the article in the first link.

? Even the experts love cheap wine: A tip of the WC’s fedora to visitor Julia B., who sent this to me: Some of the hippest winemakers in the business drink wine that shows up on the blog. Like the Little James Basket Press red and whites. Like the Muga rose (recommended by a guy who used to make a $20 rose). This demonstrates two things: That people, when paying their own money, are fussier about what they buy, and that the quality of cheap wine — as preached here so many times most of you are probably sick of it — has improved dramatically.

? The Chicago way? Last week’s post about wine as bribes turned this up: That a French author claims her country’s wine critics are regularly bribed and that winery ratings are influenced by “surreal criteria,” such as parking spaces. And you think we had disagreements over scores in the U.S. Isabelle Saporta writes in “VinoBusiness (Albion Michel, $23.75)” that the French wine business is a “cruel, medieval micro-society” where powerful chateau owners care more about profit than wine and that French critics write favorable reviews in return for cash. One, says Saporta, allegedly demands US$7,000 for writing nice things about a producer’s wine — something I do for free. It’s hell to have ethics, no? Think of all the white Burgundy I could buy with a glowing review of crappy cheap wine.