Tag Archives: $10 wine

Mini-reviews 43: Cheap wine edition

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. This edition, in honor of the upcoming 2013 $10 Hall of Fame, features cheap wine.

? Pennywise Pinot Noir 2010 ($12, sample): Stunningly well done, considering how I usually don't like California grocery store pinot noir. Bright cherry fruit, and though not much of a middle, an almost earthy, pinot-like finish. A fine value.

? Domaine Cazes Canon du Mar chal 2010 ($10, purchased): This muscat-viognier blend from southern France has white fruit that gives a hint of sweetness and an almost white peppery spiciness. Different, but intriguing.

? Ch teau La Maroutine 2010 ($10, purchased): Post-modern white Bordeaux blend with more citrus than minerality. Does its job for $10, but don't expect anything especially classic. 

? Colosi Cantine Bianco 2010 ($10, purchased): This Sicilian white blend isn ?t as fresh and lively as others I ?ve tasted (and a little thin in comparison). This doesn ?t make it a bad wine, rather, other Sicilian wines offer more for the same price.

Wine of the week: Castello Montauto Vernaccia di San Gimignano 2010

0zTUwr8gUO0G9OvJNmqC80535_GWe ?ve had more than 250 wines of the week on the blog since we started, and this may be the most unique.

For one thing, the Montauto ($10, purchased) is a white wine from Tuscany, best known as a red wine region. For another, it ?s made with vernaccia, a minor grape even by Italian standards, given that there are more little-known grapes in Italy than almost anywhere else in the world.

And it doesn ?t taste like you ?d expect an Italian wine to taste, which means it ?s not for everyone — especially for people who prefer anything but subtlety in their glass. Look for some white pepper and lots of minerality to go with a little lemon peel, and not much else. In this, it ?s almost like an aperitif made with tonic water and vermouth. But it ?s fresh and clean and very well done.

In fact, it was far from a wine of the week when I first tasted it, but the more I thought about it, that difference was part of the Montauto ?s charm. It ?s the sort of wine that fits the holidays — light and refreshing, whether for drinking on its own or with Christmas oysters.

Wine of the week: Ravenswood Old Vine Vintners Zinfandel 2009

image from 3.bp.blogspot.comOne of the things that the Wine Curmudgeon doesn ?t like about this job is how cynical it has made me about grocery store wine. So many of them have been so disappointing that I ?m at the point that if the front or back label uses adjectives or descriptions like reserve, old vine, or artisan, I figure the marketing department is compensating for quality (given that federal regulations for using terms like these is vague, at best).

So I expected absolutely nothing from the Ravenswood ($10, sample); that ?s why it sat in the wine closet for 13 months. Shows how much I know, other than to reiterate the No. 1 rule of wine reviewing: Don ?t judge the wine until you taste it.

This red is surprising in many ways, not the least of which is that it held up for a year. There is lots of sweet berry fruit in the modern zinfandel style, but it ?s not unpleasant and it ?s balanced by some some traditional zinfandel character (particularly pepper). It ?s a nice value for $10.

Don ?t worry too much if the wine you find is the current vintage and not this one. One of the good things about grocery store wines is that they are consistent in taste and style from year to year.

Wine of the week: Alois Lageder Pinot Bianco 2010

Alois Lageder Pinot BiancoOne of the great joys of Italian wine is also why Italian wine is so frustrating. There are too many wines and too many regions and too much to understand, but the thrill of finding a wine completely by accident makes up for all of the aggravation.

That ?s what happened with the Lageder ($10, purchased). It ?s an Italian white wine made with a German grape, pinot blanc, that is more popular in France than it is in Germany ? but in Alsace, a region of France that used to be part of Germany. And if that wasn ?t complicated enough, this wine is made by a fifth-generation Italian producer that comes the country ?s far northeast, which is almost in Austria (as you can tell by Lageder, which sounds more German than Italian).

With a story like that, how could I not buy the wine? Best yet, the Lageder rewarded me for the decision. It didn ?t taste like I expected it to ? none of that Italian minerality or bracing acidity. It was a more subtle wine, fresh and clean but with a bit of richness to go with some apple fruit. In this, it was more Alsatian than Italian, though I paired it with my annual spaghetti carbonara dinner and it was exactly what the spaghetti needed.

Wine of the week: Yalumba Y Series Shiraz/Viognier 2010

yseries_yalshv_main_1The epic decline in the Australian wine industry has been well documented; the wineries that have survived have done so because they have been that much better than the rest of the business

Case in point is Yalumba, which managed to avoid the excesses on both the high and low ends over the past two decades and has emerged as an example of what a post-modern Aussie winery can be. Jane Ferrari, who tours the world for Yalumba, told me the effort wasn ?t always a lot of fun, but that the fifth-generation family business was the better for it.

One improvement is better distribution, so that we can buy the wines in more places in the U.S. The shiraz ($10, purchased), a red blend with a bit of viognier to add interest, has been difficult to find in Dallas. That always annoyed me because Yalumba ?s Y series has terrific cheap wine.

The shiraz is an Australian wine that one can actually drink without taking a nap between glasses. It's still big and juicy (lots of black fruit and 14 1/2 percent alcohol), but both are well under control. Missing is the ashy aftertaste that so many of these wines have, and that makes them so difficult to like. It ?s a red meat wine, but you can enjoy it without food. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2013 Hall of Fame.

Wine of the week: Domaine D’Arton Les Hauts 2011

Domaine D ?Arton, a white blend from the Gascony region of France, is great cheap wine, even by the Wine Curmudgeon ?s exacting standards. It ?s not only on a level with the Gascon wines in the $10 Hall of Fame, but it also demonstrates that wine doesn ?t have to come from the same old places and be made with the same old grapes.

The D ?Arton ($9, purchased) is an odd blend, even for Gascony, made with mostly colombard and fleshed out with sauvignon blanc (not the region ?s best grape) and gros manseng. The result is a dry white with some lemon peel in the front, yet underneath is that wonderful white grapiness that makes Gascon wines so distinctive and so much fun to drink. It's the kind of wine that doesn't require a critic or a sommelier; just a simple dinner or an evening on the porch, friends and conversation.

And I ?m not the only one who feels this way, for all the doubters and chardonnay drinkers out there.

Is this a Thanksgiving wine? Is the Wine Curmudgeon a crank about cheap wine?

Wine of the week: Cristalino Brut NV

Wine of the week: Cristalino Brut NVSometimes, one forgets old friends. Not intentionally, of course, but because of the press of business and the rush of life. There are new wines to try and more posts to write, and one sometimes takes things like the Cristalino for granted.

For which I ?m sorry. It has been two years since I reviewed Cristalino, the Spanish sparking wine known as cava, and that post was more a back-handed slap at the lawsuit that made it change its name because a federal judge ruled that consumers might confuse it with the $150 Cristal, which was French and Champagne. (Its new legal name is Jaume Serra Cristalino, which I refuse to use.)

This was one of the first wines I ever reviewed professionally, back in my newspaper days, and it has never ? and I mean never ? let me down. The first bottle I opened for this review was flat (no doubt sitting on a shelf in a hot warehouse too long), but was still quite drinkable.

Cristalino ($7, purchased) is everything a cheap wine should be and too often isn ?t ? varietally correct and well made, with distinct flavors and character. Look for terrific bubbles, a little bit of green apple fruit, and even a sort of mineral finish. Yes, it ?s simple, but it ?s also not too much of one thing or not enough of another, an incredible achievement for a $7 wine.

It will take its rightful place in the 2013 $10 Hall of Fame in January, and I will drink more of it this holiday season and recommend it for Thanksgiving. Because it ?s always good to say hello to an old pal.