Tag Archives: $10 wine

Wine of the week: Little James’ Basket Press NV

Here ?s a challenge to the California wine business, and especially those who think the Wine Curmudgeon is too hard on it. Use your incredible resources and talent to make a wine like this ? a non-vintage red ? instead of the buckets and buckets of boring, fruit-juice grocery store plonk that you do make.

Because this French effort is not just a great cheap wine, but a great wine. As the guy at the store said to me when I bought it: ?This may be the best bottle we have, ? and his store has bottles that cost hundreds and thousands of dollars.

The point is not that California can ?t make a wine as interesting and delicious as the Little James ($10, purchased, 13.5%). Regardless of anything else, California is probably the world ?s pre-eminent wine region ? the best weather, the best winemakers, the most money to spend. Rather, it ?s that it has spent so much effort training consumers to buy wine with the name of the grape and a vintage on the label that it can ?t conceive of anything else. If it doesn ?t say Merlot 2012, no one knows what to do.

But they should. The Little James comes from a top-notch Rhone producer that mixes wine made with old grapes and wine made from current vintage fruit. The result is a $10 Hall of Fame wine: Classic Rhone barnyard aromas, red grenache fruit, some spiciness, and more tannin and acid than I expected — a rough, though not unpleasant, peasant finish that speaks to a more traditional style of winemaking. A food wine for barbecue and burgers; highly recommended.

Wine of the week: Domaine du Tariquet Classic 2011

My mom enjoys a glass of wine now and then, and I ?d like to think that I ?ve helped her with that. She reads the blog, and is better informed when she walks into a liquor store to buy a bottle.

Which is one of the reasons why the Tariquet ($10, purchased, 11.5%) is the wine of the week with Mother ?s Day coming up. Yes, I ?ve praised this wine many times before, and it has been in the $10 Hall of Fame since 2009. But its great strength ? and I don ?t know that I ?ve emphasized this enough ? is that it ?s table wine the way it should be but isn ?t often enough in this country. You don ?t need to be a wine geek to enjoy it. You don ?t need to have piles of money. You don ?t need to read the Wine Magazines or to parse scores.

All you need is $10. Good wine shouldn ?t be more difficult than that, should it?

This vintage of the Tariquet isn ?t as grapey, which is one of the things I always enjoyed about it. Look for more citrus, probably because this year ?s blend has sauvignon blanc in addition to ugni blanc and colombard, the classic grapes of Gascony. But the wine is still balanced, clean and fresh — very well made and not only among the best cheap wines in France, but in the world. Highly recommended. Drink a toast to mom with it on Sunday; I know I will.

On the road with Bieler, Smith and Gott

The wine world has changed, and for the better. How does the Wine Curmudgeon know this? Three of the best winemakers in the U.S. — all youngish, all talented, and all with top-notch cheap wine — did a media extravaganza in Dallas. That’s not an everyday ocurrence for people who make inexpensive wine, and especially where I am.

Even more impressive? Each, in separate interviews, said that quality cheap wine was the future of the wine business. Talk like that is going to put me out of business. More, after the jump:

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Wine of the week: Domaine de Cabasse Les Deux Anges 2009

cabasse-deux-angesRhone wines remain a mystery to most American wine drinkers, and not just because they have very French names and are often difficult to find on store shelves. It ?s also because they ?re made with grapes that aren ?t cabernet sauvignon and merlot; for most of us, that difference is enough so we ?ll buy something else.

Case in point is the Deux Anges ($10, purchased, 13.5%). It ?s made with grenache, syrah, and carignan, and the name ? along with the almost Baroque-like angels on the label ? is enough to turn off any U.S. consumer who expects to see a cute animal or marketing-driven name.

The wine itself, like so much cheap wine from the Rhone, is a revelation. It ?s accessible, yet still tastes like the Rhone — juicy red fruit from the grenache, lots of peppery spiciness, noticeable tannins, and a bit of a finish. But it isn't too rough, which is often the case with this style of wine ? call it rustic, the kind of wine someone in a Van Gogh painting would drink. How often can you say that about California merlot?

It ?s a grilled meat or cheese kind of wine; highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2014 $10 Hall of Fame.

Kickstarter, wine writing, and a Cheap Wine Book update

The Wine Curmudgeon has been remiss in updating the cyber-ether on the progress of the Cheap Wine book, which was scheduled to appear sometime in the next six or eight weeks. That’s not going to happen; call it the vicissitudes of book writing in the 21st century. How was I to know the city of Dallas was going to jackhammer my street while I was working on the second chapter?

The good news is that the book might still make the July 1 Kickstarter deadline, and will certainly be out this summer. Oddly enough, I did some quality work on the airplane when I was travelling to and from Denver over the weekend, which I take as a good sign. Who can write on an airplane? I’m about a quarter of the way through the manuscript, and it’s very nicely done. No point in false modesty here, is there? A sample:

We assume our betters know better. Ask an American about football, and they’ll have an opinion, and it doesn’t matter if the only thing they know about the game is that each team has 11 players. Ask them about politics, and they’ll have an opinion, and it doesn’t matter whether they vote or aren’t sure who the vice president is. Ask them about wine, on the other hand, and you’ll get a blank stare. ?It’s too complicated, ? they’ll say. Or, ?That’s too fancy for me. I drink beer. ? Or, my favorite, ?I don’t know wine. What do you think I should drink

As part of this, I wrote a story for Palate Press, the on-line wine magazine, about funding wine writing projects tthrough Kickstarter. In the article, I talked a little about my experience, but focused on two of the most successful efforts, Alice Feiring’s natural wine newsletter and a series of on-line wine guides written by Lisa Talarico.

The Kickstarter model, transformed into some sort of author’s co-op, might well be the future of book publishing, given that there doesn’t seem to be much of a future for book publishing. Like-minded writers get together to finance each other’s efforts, much the way farming co-ops work. Interestingly, a Kickstarter spokesman declined to be interviewed for the article; I think alcohol-related projects are a touchy subject for them.

Mini-reviews 47: Rene Barbier, Geyser Peak, Esperto, Dashwood

Reviews of wines that don ?t need their own post, but are worth noting for one reason or another. Look for it on the final Friday of each month:

? Rene Barbier Rose NV ($6, purchased, 12.5%): Not quite $10 Hall of Fame quality, but consistent, varietally correct and a steal at this price. A little more fruity (strawberry) this time around

? Geyser Peak Pinot Grigio 2012 ($10, sample, 13%): Flabby, with banana fruit and not very pinot grigio in taste or style. You can get the same thing with $6 grocery store wine.

? Esperto Pinot Grigio 2011 ($10, sample, 12.5%): Inoffensive, clean, subtly flavored Italian white without the turpentine of so many other cheap pinot grigios. Much better than I thought it would be.

? Dashwood Sauvignon Blanc 2012 ($9, purchased, 12.5%): Perfectly acceptable cheap New Zealand white; lots of grapefruit up front and not much else. But fresh and clean and not flawed.

Wine of the week: Cune Rioja Blanco 2010

Cune Rioja BlancoHow much did I like this wine? I bought another white from the same producer that cost a couple of bucks more, and I didn ?t even have to think twice about it. Just picked it up and put it in the cart. That doesn ?t happen very often; if a wine costs more than $10, I ?m often seen mumbling to myself in front of the shelf.

Even more impressive is that white wines from the Rioja region of Spain have traditionally been pretty awful ? badly made and even oxidized.

None of that is the case here. The Cune ($10, purchased, 12.8%), made with viura, has enough white fruit to be noticeable, maybe some lemon peel, and is amazingly fresh and clean ? very impressive given the track record for white Rioja. Chill this, drink it in the summer on its own or with salads or seafood. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2014 $10 Hall of Fame.

And yes, even though the company name is CVNE, the wine is called Cune.