Tag Archives: $10 wine

Wine of the week: La Fiera Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2010

63100011110_labelHow does one improve on this wine, which was one of the best cheap wines I tasted lasted year? Do the same thing the same way, which is mostly what this vintage does.

The La Fiera ($8, purchased) is a red wine from the Abruzzo region east of Rome and made with the montepulciano grape (not be confused with the pricier wines from the Montepulciano region of Tuscany, which are made with sangiovese). In this, Abruzzo wines have always been poor relations to their more expensive cousines, but you can ?t tell that from the La Fiera anymore.

The 2010 almost smells of violets (really), and retains the wonderful sour cherry fruit and Italian earthiness of the 2009. It ?s a little heavier than the previous vintage (though the tannins are proper), but that ?s not a problem ? just pair it with red sauce and sausages. I ?d also chill it a touch. The bottle sat in my 78-degree house for eight hours after I bought it, and the wine was just too warm. I ?m pretty sure I didn ?t taste all of the of the fruit. Which was too bad, because this is a wine one should get every bit from.

Wine of the week: Yellow + Blue Torrontes 2011


Yellw + Blue TorrontesYellow + Blue makes some of the finest cheap wine in the world, and I ?ve waxed poetic about almost every one of the company ?s releases. The torrontes ($13 for a 1-liter box, purchased) is no exception.

So why does this review come with the availability caution? Because retailers still haven ?t figured out a way to successfully sell wine, like Yellow + Blue, that comes in a 1-liter box. Most store shelves and racks are made to take standard-sized wine bottles, so anything that isn ?t a standard-sized bottle gets stuffed in a corner. And if a product is stuffed in a corner, it won ?t sell as well as a product that ?s prominently displayed, regardless of quality. After all, when ?s the last time you got on your hands and knees to look for wine?

Hence retailers are wary of carrying something that they know they ?ll have trouble selling. Which means the Yellow + Blue wines are harder to find than they should be. Which is too bad, because they ?re well worth the effort ? hands and knees even, which is almost what I had to do for this one.

Torrontes is a white Argentine grape that has been made so badly for so long ? sweet and sticky ? that I ?m surprised there ?s still a market for it. The Yellow + Blue, though, shows just enough sweetness to be torrontes, but is in no way cloying. Look for peach fruit and even a tiny bit of lime zest as well as a very pleasant floral aroma and a peach pit finish.

Serve chilled as summer comes to an end, and pair it with the usual summer and spicy fare. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2013 $10 Hall of Fame (since 1 liter is about one-third more than a standard bottle, making the price about $10 a bottle).

Wine of the week: Rene Barbier Mediterranean Red NV

Yeah, yeah, I know. What is this wine ? perfectly acceptable as a $5 fill-in when there is not much else to drink ? doing as a wine of the week? All I can say is that the Wine Curmudgeon is as surprised as you are.

I bought this at the end of a long, tiring stretch that saw too much travel, too little time at home, and too much work. All I wanted was something to drink with dinner, and since dinner was hot dogs and beans, I didn ?t need much.

The Barbier ($5, purchased) delivered so much more than that. This used to be the red wine I recommended to people who didn ?t like red wine, since it was soft and cherry-ish and could be chilled. This “vintage,” though, is completely different.

The wine has more structure, including tannins, which I don’t remember it having. In addition, the fruit is darker and more Spanish in style (with more acidity), and certainly not soft cherry. I think there is more and better quality tempranillo in it than before, which would account for the difference.

Having said that, there is no guarantee that the wine will taste like this in six months, since it ?s non-vintage; the blend could change when the producer makes the next batch and it will go back to what it was. Until then, enjoy the improvement. At $5, this is a steal.

Mark West and the revolution in pinot noir

This is the wine that helped changed pinot noir in the U.S., both in how it tasted and how it was sold. As such, it probably deserves some sort of lengthy academic treatise and recognition for those accomplishments — good and bad. Instead, Constellation Brands, one of the world’s biggest wine companies, just bought it, and who knows what ?s going to happen next?

Before the current version of Mark West debuted in 2001, drinkable pinot noir cost at least $20 and came from Burgundy in France, Oregon, and parts of California no one knew much about. Most of the rest of the world ?s pinot wasn ?t very pleasant ? harsh and unripe, even on its best days. That’s because pinot is not only difficult to grow, but difficult to make. Those who grew it in un-pinot places or who made it without having Zen-like pinot skills almost always failed.

Mark West ?s great accomplishment had three parts: Making a quality wine, making it cheaply enough so it cost $10, and making so much of it that it could be sold in grocery stores. The irony is that, to do this, Mark West had to make pinot noir that didn’t taste like pinot noir had always tasted.

The entire region of Burgundy produced about 5.2 million cases of pinot noir in 2011, and about half of that stayed in France. Mark West, all by itself, made 600,000 cases. That’s an amazing statistic, and points to how important the brand is in the marketplace. You might not be able to find a bottle of red Burgundy in a U.S. supermarket, but you’re almost certainly going to be able to find a bottle of Mark West. And for just $10.

More importantly, its pinot noir, from the beginning, was not unpleasant. It was soft and fruity, but it wasn’t sweet and it tasted like wine. This helps explain its continuing success, given how many cheap wines make no effort to taste like wine but try to get as close to a soft drink as possible. Because, of course, American consumers are stupid and need to be treated like small children when it comes to wine.

The problem, though, was that Mark West didn’t really taste like traditional pinot noir. It didn’t have any real oak aging, since that costs so much that it’s almost impossible to do in a $10 wine. It also didn’t have pinot’s trademark earthiness and mushroom aroma or its unique tannins, which can’t be done with grapes grown in those parts of California where Mark West gets its grapes.

Turns out, though, that wasn’t a problem. The people buying Mark West probably didn ?t know pinot was supposed to have those things. They wanted a fruity and easy-drinking wine, and that’s what Mark West gave them. It certainly didn’t hurt, either, that the wine can be served chilled and pairs with just about everything. It turned out, truly, to be what its marketing materials proclaimed: “Pinot for the people.”

We can argue forever whether pinot should taste this way. I don ?t think so, but the marketplace, as well as the comments and emails I get, say otherwise. I’d also argue that the success of this style of wine made it possible for winemakers to produce the high-end versions of Mark West — the alcoholic, fruity and very non-traditional pinot noirs that have gained such notoriety and high scores over the past several years.

What’s more certain is that Mark West’s success (which coincided with the success of “Sideways,” the movie that made pinot noir a star) spawned about a gazillion similar wines. There was such demand for $10 pinot noir, in fact, that producers used as little pinot as legally possible to make them, filling the wine out with cheaper syrah and grenache. There was even a $10 pinot noir scandal, when a French exporter sold syrah to a U.S. producer and claimed it was pinot.

It speaks to Mark West’s success that many of those other $10 pinots are gone, and Mark West is still around (and worth $160 million to Constellation). I tasted the 2010 vintage the other day ($10, purchased), and it was the same as it has always been. The wine itself looked a little thin in the glass, but tasted more like pinot than I thought it would. There was blueberry cobbler fruit (one CellarTracker review noted cardamom), but no earthiness and certainly no complexity, even for a $10 wine. It was, to paraphrase Dan Berger, the kind of wine that’s fine to drink as long as you don’t get hung up on varietal character. And it went very nicely with Sunday night patty melts and corn on the cob.

Can Mark West survive as part of Constellation? The brand will certainly continue to exist, though I expect Constellation to dumb down the wine — replace some of the pinot with syrah or grenache, use less expensive grapes, and substitute wood chips for what little oak aging the wine does get. In this, it will taste even less like pinot that it does now, Which may not necessarily be a problem.

Bogle Vineyards: Combining value and quality

Bogle Vineyards: Combining value and qualityRyan Bogle started smiling almost as soon as I told him the story. A friend of mine, on business in rural West Virginia, despaired of finding a decent bottle of wine to drink. But, lo and behold, at a local retailer, was the Bogle petite sirah.

?We hear that a lot, ? says Bogle, the third generation of his family to run the 1-million case California winery that is perhaps the best grocery store producer in the country. ?It ?s the kind of thing that that keeps us going ? to make high quality wines that are a great value for the customer. We want to be accessible to the large majority of the population, and we ?re happy to able to accommodate them. ?

Yes, 1 million cases ? a number that makes the Bogle story that much more amazing. There are plenty of huge wineries in the U.S. churning out tanker trucks of cheap wine, but few of them do with it Bogle ?s consistency and quality. That the company is able to do this, despite its size, speaks about its commitment to the consumer, even when that might interfere with the bottom line.

Ryan Bogle was in Dallas for meetings with his distributor, and we talked for a few minutes about what the winery does, how it does it, and what the future holds for the winery. More, after the jump:

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Wine of the week: Vinho verde

A funny thing happened on the way to the annual vinho verde review. I tasted some poorly made wine, which has never happened before, and almost didn ?t do the review.

The thing about the Portuguese vinho verde, as regular visitors know, is that it ?s not complicated enough to screw up. It ?s an inexpensive, simple wine, slightly sweet with lime or green apple fruit, plus some fizz ? more like club soda than sparkling wine. It ?s low in alcohol and needs to be ice cold, which makes it the ideal wine for this time of year. It ?s not made to age, even for a couple of months, and usually wears out by the time cooler weather arrives.

A couple of producers make most of the vinho verde, which they sell under different labels.This year, though, much of the wine was underwhelming. The Gazela ($7, purchased) was sour, not especially fruity, and thin ? more like Alka-Seltzer than wine. The Famega ($7, purchased), usually the standard, was only a little more enjoyable than the Gazela. It had some sweetness and the traditional spritz, but also an unpleasant, almost quinine flavor.

Fortunately, the Casal Garcia ($6, purchased) was up to snuff, fresh and lively. It tasted of very tart green apples, with the right amount of fizz and sweetness. I drank it with linguine with grilled shrimp (lots of garlic and parsley, too), and it did exactly what it was supposed to do. What more can you ask of a $6 wine?

Wine of the week: Louis Tete Beaujolais-Villages 2010

Once, if you wanted an inexpensive quality bottle of wine, chances are you bought a Beaujolais. In fact, that was about the only decent cheap red wine ? imported or otherwise ? on most store shelves two decades ago.

Beaujolais, the French wine region just south of Burgundy, has fallen on hard times since then, something you ?ll read about it in the trade press every once in a while. Sales have declined significantly, mostly because Beaujolais drinkers are dying off. The 1990s were a long time ago in the wine business, and Beaujolais was a Baby Boomer wine. And quality, despite assertions from the region, is inconsistent. Some of it is so badly made that it ?s difficult to believe it ?s a 21st century product.

Fortunately, the producer Louis Tete has held up its end. I bought this wine, its basic Beaujolais ($10, purchased), mostly for nostalgia value, not expecting much. But it was Beaujolais the way it should be, with just enough grapey flavor (courtesy of the gamay grape) so that you could tell it was from Beaujolais, but also lots and lots of character. There was acid and freshness, rare for a Beaujolais these days, as well as an earthiness and even some dark fruit.

This is the quintessential porch red wine, perfect for hot summer days (just 12 1/2 percent alcohol), barbecues and Fourth of July picnics. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2013 Hall of Fame.