Tag Archives: $10 wine

Wine of the week: Aragonesas Los Dos 2012

Wine of the week: Aragonesas Los Dos 2012One of the joys of wine is stumbling on something enjoyable when you least expect it. Which is also one of wine’s frustrations, since stumbling on something enjoyable doesn’t mean it’s going to be generally available.

Which pretty much sums up the Los Dos ($8, sample, 14%), a Spanish red blend made with garnacha and syrah. The producer, Bodegas Aragonesas, a decent-sized Spanish winery, doesn’t list the wine on its website, which means the wine may be a one-off made for the export market or not made every year. Hence my concern about availability, given the way these things work.

Still, if you can find the Los Dos, it’s worth buying. It’s not quite $10 Hall of Fame quality; it’s too simple, even for a $10 wine. But it delivers much, much more than its $8 cost. Look for garnacha-style red fruit (cherry?) and a certain richness in the mouth. There isn’t much else going on, but the fruit and alcohol don’t overwhelm the wine the way I thought they would. It’s clean and professional, and someone tried for balance when making it, which isn’t usually the case with wines targeted for the U.S.

This is a food wine, for red meat and barbeque, and a very pleasant and welcome surprise. Assuming we can find it on a store shelf, of course.

Wine of the week: Cave de Lugny M con-Villages 2012

Wine of the week: Cave de Lugny M con-Villages 2012One of the most amazing things about the Golden Age of Cheap Wine is that it’s amazing despite the dollar’s weakness against the euro. Its decline, dating to the beginning of this century, has increased the price of European goods by as much as 20 percent, and cheap wine has mostly followed suit.

Case in point are the French wines from Cave de Lugny, a growers’ cooperative in the Macon region in Burgundy, which makes some of the best grocery store whites in the world. The catch, thanks to the weak dollar, is that they aren’t priced like grocery store wines these days, costing $15 or more. Which is why I haven’t reviewed a Cave de Lugny wine in three years.

Which is also why the Wine Curmudgeon was so excited to see Lugny’s Macon-Villages ($10, purchased, 13%) at this price. And, frankly, I should have bought more than one bottle. It’s a chardonnay that is always dependable and always varietally correct, made in the traditional Macon style — no oak. That means some lemon and green apple fruit, lots of crispness, and a very clean finish that hints at the minerality of a more complex wine.

Serve this chilled with almost any white wine dish. And if you see other Lugny wines, like the Les Charmes, for $10 or so, don’t hesitate to buy it. You can enjoy it while pondering the mysteries of exchange rates and international banking.

Wine review: Rene Barbier Mediterranean White NV

Wine review: rene barbier Mediterranean white NVThe Wine Curmudgeon’s enthusiasm for cava, the sparkling wine from Spain, is well known. It’s cheap and well made — no doubt much of the wine world shakes its head and sighs every time I recite its wonders. But how can I help myself? It’s $10. And it tastes like this. And this. And this.

So what does this have to do with the Barbier ($5, purchased, 11.5%), a white blend from Spain? It’s made with the same grapes that cava is made from, and tastes mostly like cava without the bubbles — some lemon with a bit of tartness (like a lemon square minus the sugar?). It’s not as well done as most cavas and it won’t win any awards, and when I tell people how much I like it, they shake their head and sigh yet again. But it’s clean and refreshing and it doesn’t have any flaws, and it only costs $5. How many other wines at that price can you say that about?

Serve this well chilled (an ice cube never hurts it), and drink it with almost anything that isn’t red meat. And, if and when winter ever ends, this is the kind of wine that makes porch sipping such a pleasure.

Finally, a sad note: Rene Barbier also makes an excellent $5 rose, and I just tasted it again — fruitier than other Spanish roses, but well-made and a step up from the white. So, of course, because the wine business works this way, the rose is being phased out. No more will be made after this year. Which means that if you see it in a store, buy a case, because you won’t be able to buy it again.

Wine of the week: Joel Gott Sauvignon Blanc 2013

Wine of the week: Joel Gott Sauvignon Blanc 2013Whenever the Wine Curmudgeon gets depressed about the quality of cheap California wine, Joel Gott’s wines always cheer me up. Gott not only makes impressive cheap wine, but he is passionate and committed about it, and believes that consumers deserve the best value possible for their money. Would that more California producers felt that way.

Case in point is the 2013 sauvignon blanc ($12, purchased, 13.9%). This is top-of-the line California sauvignon blanc, comparable to wines that cost as much as $10 more. Look for citrus (lemon and not grapefruit) and trademark California grassiness (the smell of a freshly cut lawn) in the front, but also some tropical fruit (melon?) in the middle, a quality most of the people who make cheap wine don’t bother with.

It’s not quite as impressive as the 2012, but that may be because it had just been bottled when I tasted it. Regardless, and assuming I can find it later this year for $10, it’s a candidate for the 2015 Hall of Fame.

Pair the sauvignon blanc, chilled, with grilled seafood or roast chicken, or drink on its own. And, when you do, toast someone who understands that most of us want quality wine we can afford to drink every day, and who makes wine for that purpose.

Wine of the week: Le Coq Rouge 2012

Le Coq Rouge The Le Coq Rouge is a perfect example of why you shouldn’t judge wine before you taste it. Because it offers plenty of reasons to do just that:

? Cutesy label. How many chickens, birds, and assorted fowl have we endured over the years?

? Odd Rolling Stones referece in marketing material, because Coq Rouge means Red Rooster in French, and the Stones covered Howlin’ Wolf’s “Little Red Rooster.”

? Descriptors that bear no relationship to the wine, including “a lovely mix of chocolate and vanilla” and “wooded notes” — whatever that is.

Chalk it up to French marketing envy, under the mistaken impression that American consumers need that kind of foolishness. What does matter is the wine’s pedigree and what’s in the bottle, and both are impressive.

The Le Coq Rouge ($10, sample, 13.5%) is from the company run by Sacha Lichine, whose father was the legendary Alexis Lichine, one of the men who gets credit for introducing Americans to wine. The wine is mostly grenache, with enough red fruit to be pleasant but not so much as to confuse it with other, more over the top critter wines. It also has a bit of a back and soft tannins; in this, it’s a more modern version of another red blend from southern France, La Vielle Ferme, but more consistent and better made.

A tip ‘o the Curmudgeon’s fedora to Chris Keel at Put a Cork in It, who did a tasting with this wine when I did a cheap wine book signing at his store last month and put me on to the Coq Rouge. Because, otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered, despite my best intentions.

 

Take heart: Charles & Charles has three great cheap wines

Take heart: Charles & Charles has three great cheap winesTake heart, everyone who loves cheap wine. Charles & Charles has not only released its new, always excellent, rose, but a white and red as well.

“We try to have fun with the labels, and we want people to have fun drinking our wines, but that doesn’t mean we don’t pay attention when we make them,” says Charles Bieler, who was in Dallas this week to promote the inexpensive Washington state wines he makes with Charles Smith. “We couldn’t be more serious.”

In this, Bieler is as passionate as the labels are unconventional — think 30-something winemakers as urban music superstars. Our discussion covered the costly winemaking techniques not usually used for cheap wine but found in Charles & Charles wines; high alcohol, and why the Charleses don’t like them; the changing face of the wine business and the need to attract new wine drinkers; and that rose is quickly becoming an acceptable wine to drink in a way that I never thought it would be (and for which Bieler didn’t treat me like a cranky old man).

Most importantly, we tasted the wines, which are priced at $13 but can be found for as little as $10 (and all were samples):

? Charles & Charles Rose 2013 (12.6%): This is consistently one of the best roses in the world, fresh and crisp with red fruit, and the 2013 is no exception. The best news is that production almost doubled for this vintage, so there should be plenty of wine to go around.

? Charles & Charles Chardonnay 2012 (13.3%): Bieler emphasized the wine’s French style, but I saw more Washington state, with a touch of oak, rich fruit, and a subtle balance. It’s practically subversive, given what most cheap chardonnays taste like.

? Charles & Charles Post No. 35 2012 (13.6%): This red blend, cabernet sauvignon and syrah, was my favorite of the three. It’s a stunning wine for the price, dark and interesting but with telltale Washington state black fruit and amazing tannins. The catch? The 50,000 cases are almost gone, thanks to a 90-point review in the Wine Spectator. How dare it deprive us of such a wonderful wine.

Finally, consider this irony: We met at a restaurant where there was only one wine on the list that cost less than $30, and most were overpriced and quite ordinary. Maybe I should have mentioned the Charles & Charles to someone there?

America’s Test Kitchen finally figures out wine

America's Test Kitchen finally figures out wine
Chris, do you need a bottle of cheap wine with that chicken?

America’s Test Kitchen, the PBS cooking show, has always pursued the best possible recipe with enthusiasm and skill. This, in a world of food TV that revolves around celebrity chefs who haven’t chopped an onion since culinary school, makes the program worth watching for anyone who enjoys cooking. Plus, bow ties are cool.

The catch, though, like so many other food programs, is that it never really understood wine, figuring more expensive was better because it was more expensive. This always seemed odd for a program that delighted in finding that the cheapest cocoa powder produced the best brownies.

Happily, this is no longer the case. In the new ?The America’s Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook, ? the program embraces cheap wine with such gusto that the Wine Curmudgeon had to write this post. Consider:

? Slow-Cooker Beef Burgundy: ?Don’t spend a lot of money for the wine in this recipe ? in our testing, we found that California pinot noir wine in the $6-$20 price range worked just fine. ? Mark West pinot noir, anyone?

? Coq qu Vin: ?Use any $10 bottle of fruity, medium-bodied red wine, such as pinot noir, Cotes du Rhone, or zinfandel. ? How about the Little James Basket Press?

? Sangria: ?After trying a variety of red wines, we found that inexpensive wine works best. (Experts told us that the sugar and fruit called for in sangria throw off the balance of any wine used, so why spend a lot on something …?) ? Rene Barbier Mediterranean Red, perhaps?

Call this another victory in America’s slow, steady march toward common sense in wine. And the producers figured this out, apparently, without any help from the cheap wine book. Imagine how much better the recipes would be if they had read it ? think I should send Christopher Kimball a copy?