Tag Archives: Bogle

Big Wine 2019

The $15 wine dinner challenge

$15 wine dinnerNuts to restaurant wine prices – a $15 wine dinner you can make at home, even if you don’t do much cooking.

The Wine Curmudgeon doesn’t eat out much anymore, given the silly prices of Dallas restaurant meals, the uneven quality of the food and service, and, of course, the stupid markups for their mediocre wine.

This approach has annoyed more than a few of my friends, who like to eat out and aren’t as fussy (or as stubborn or cranky) as I am. “Come on, Jeff, it can’t be that bad,” they say. And them I invite them to the house for the $15 wine dinner challenge.

The challenge: I’ll make them my legendary arroz con pollo (the secret of which is leftover Chinese takeout rice) and an appetizer, plus two cheap wines of my choosing. If they don’t think that my dinner is a better value – a much better value – than the $100 a person budget busters that the foodies wax poetic about, then I’ll buy them one of those dinners.

So far, so good. Most recently, it was socca, the French chickpea flour pancake garnished with yogurt and tomatillo salsa and served with Bogle’s sauvignon blanc, followed by the arroz con pollo plus home-made guacamole, paired with Aldi’s $5 Vina Fuerte. Everyone was happy, and of course they were all surprised that they liked the wine as much as they did since it was so cheap.

My success with the $15 wine dinner challenge is not as much a testament to my cooking skill as it is to the foolishness of Dallas restaurants, who consider hip more important than quality and value. Consider this, from a news release for a high-end restaurant set to open here: It “will offer breakfast, lunch and dinner items like seasonal salads, rice bowls and homemade soups made with locally-sourced proteins and produce, and a curated bar will serve craft beer, cocktails and wine.” Talk about restaurant-speak; a curated bar, indeed. Somewhere, Richard Hainey is spitting fire.

Or as a friend of mine who is in the wine business said the last time we talked about this: “I go out to dinner to have a good time, not to spend a lot of money for food that isn’t as good as what I can make at home.”

Which is something that I wish more people understood. The food and wine – and the prices – would get a lot better.

 

Bogle wins 2015 cheap wine poll

cheap wine poll 2015
Bogle wins the cheap wine poll for the second time in three years.

And it wasn’t even close, with Bogle more than doubling second place Falesco Vitiano to win the 2015 cheap wine poll. This is Bogle’s second consecutive victory, and its second in the poll’s three-year history.

That Bogle did so well again speaks to not only the company’s commitment to quality, but to its availability. Bogle combines value with a huge retail presence — as one commenter wrote, “it may be the best wine one can buy in gas stations in Mineola, Texas, as well as Princeton, Maine.” Most cheap wines do only one or the other, and some don’t even do that.

Which, apparently, is the case with Two-buck Chuck. The Trader Joe’s brand has finished last every year, but I guess that it has sold more 600 million cases over the past decade is some consolation to the retailer.

The biggest surprise? That Barefoot did so poorly, finishing seventh after coming in second last year. In addition, given how many people Google sends to the blog to read about Barefoot, that the brand didn’t pick up any of those votes this year makes its performance even more shocking. Barefoot overload, perhaps?

Not surprising? That Yellow Tail and Cupcake finished eighth and ninth. I added them this year not because I thought they would do well, but to include more well-known brands. That they did so poorly speaks to why they sell — the former is cheap, and the latter is cute. Quality doesn’t have much to do with it.

This year’s results are below, and you can find the 2014 and 2013 polls here and here. The 2016 poll will return next year at this time, and I’ll include a couple of suggestions from the comments. And is it time to retire Bogle and let someone else win?
Business Lists on Ranker

Winebits 402: Bogle, Ben Kingsley, marijuana

ben kingsley ? The best get bigger: Bogle’s $10 wines have been in the Hall of Fame since I started doing it, and it’s a pleasure to see that the Wine Curmudgeon isn’t the only one who appreciates the brand’s efforts to maintain quality and value. Bogle expects to sell some 2.5 million cases of wine this year, which could push it into ranks of the 10 biggest U.S. producers. The best news about all this? “Regardless of what ?s going on with the economy, people are always looking for strong value, and that ?s at the core of what we ?ve done, ? says the company’s national sales manager, Sam Bon. ?For the price category below us, things are difficult, and for the price point just above us, things are going very well. We plan to maintain our price points.” Take that, premiumization.

? Money doesn’t help: Wine-Searcher.com interviewed Oscar-winning actor Ben Kingsley (“Gandhi”), who can afford to drink wine that that rest of us can only dream about. So what did he tell the interviewer? “The first thing your readers must understand is that I’m not a wine expert. I’m fascinated by wine but it always struck me as a very complex subject. Any tips you can share would be gratefully received.” Congratulations, wine business. You not only confuse those of us who spend $10 a bottle, but those who drop thousands on a bottle, like Kingsley. I wonder: Should I send him a copy of the cheap wine book?.

? Weed with that wine? What happens when you add marijuana to wine, infusing the latter with the former? That’s the question Vinepair attempts to answer, and if you don’t mind more than a few Cheech and Chong jokes, it’s a reasonably interesting piece. We learn, for example, that grass probably isn’t the worst additive for wine, though there isn’t a comparison made with polyvinyl-polypyrrolidone, which is currently legal to add and has something to do with adhesives.

Wine of the week: Bogle Pinot Noir 2013

bogle pinot noirThe Wine Curmudgeon has probably tasted more poorly-made pinot noir than anyone in the wine business. I mention this not to elicit sympathy (tasting badly made pinot noir still beats working for a living), but to reinforce just how well made the Bogle pinot noir is, and especially for the price. It mostly tastes like pinot noir, and there aren’t many $10 pinots you can say that about.

That’s because most pinot noir that costs less than $20 bares as much resemblance to traditional pinot noir as I do to an editor at the Wine Spectator. It’s too ripe, it’s too fruity, it’s blended with too many other grapes, it’s too tannic, and it’s too alcoholic, and tastes nothing like the traditional description of pinot — elegant and refined. This doesn’t mean many of those aren’t enjoyable; they just don’t taste like pinot noir.

Which the Bogle ($10, purchased, 13.5%) does. It’s not a $100 red Burgundy or $50 Oregon pinot noir, but most of what needs to be there is there: Enough fruit (mostly black), a fresh mouthfeel, and real pinot tannins, which invigorate the wine. It’s not full of the jammy sweet fruit that most pinots at this price opt for, and it’s smooth in the way many consumers like without insulting those of us who want more than smoothness.

The oak — too obviously trying to be chocolate — could be better done, but this is another example of how much Bogle cares about cheap wine and gives those of us who want to drink it value for our money. Highly recommended, and why Bogle has been in the $10 Hall of Fame since I started it.

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$10 Hall of Fame 2019

Bogle edges Barefoot to win 2014 cheap wine poll

? Order by noon Monday for holiday delivery for the cheap wine book

2014 cheap wine pollTalk about a hanging chad. Bogle won the 2014 cheap wine poll by a margin so thin that the outcome was in doubt until the voting ended on Tuesday night. It recorded just four more thumbs up votes than runner-up Barefoot; the latter’s thumbs down votes were more harmful, with three times as many as Bogle.

This is shocking, given that Barefoot finished sixth last year after spending most of the poll in ninth place. Plus, it’s not like I’ve been enthusiastic about Barefoot over the years, and the brands that it beat are some of the best cheap wines in the world. Barefoot second ahead of last year’s winner, Falesco Vitiano, which dropped to seventh? Unbelievable.

The explanation? Availability, I think. The top three wines, which included McManis at No. 3, are sold in grocery stores and are easier to find than most of the rest. You can only vote on what you’ve tasted, and a lot of people have tasted Barefoot. On the other hand, Two-buck Chuck was a badly beaten 10th for the second year in a row, and a lot of people have tasted it.

Other surprises? Chateau Bonnet, which is one of the last cheap French wines that tastes French and not like it was made by a committee obsessed with the so-called American palate, was ninth, with more negative votes than positive after finishing fifth in 2013. I can’t think of a reason for this, unless the voters don’t like French wines that taste French or are still hung up on freedom fries. On the other hand, Domain du Tariquet finished fourth, and that’s also a French wine that remains completely French.

Complete results are here, or you can click on the graphic at the top of the post. You can see last year’s poll here. Thanks to everyone for voting. We mostly equaled last year’s vote tally, and given the site’s Google woes over the past 12 months, that’s not too bad.

Wine of the week: Bogle Sauvignon Blanc 2012

Bogle Sauvignon BlancThe Wine Curmudgeon has finally found something wrong with the Bogle sauvignon blanc ($10, purchased, 13.5%). It doesn’t have a screwcap, and it comes in an old-fashioned, heavy bottle. Otherwise, it’s pretty much what a great $10 wine should be:

? More quality than its $10 price. Classic California sauvignon blanc — grassiness, crisp, and with an almost tropical finish.

? Widely available. My biggest frustration, when I find great cheap wine, is that it’s not for sale in enough places so I can write about it. That’s rarely the case with Bogle, which makes more than 1 million cases annually. It’s in grocery stores (I bought this at Whole Foods, believe it or not), independents, and chain retailers.

? It doesn’t try to be something that it isn’t. This is a problem with wine regardless of price, in which consumers think they’re buying one thing and often get something else, fooled by back label nonsense or a too-cute front label. It’s telling that the three comments I found on CellarTracker (the blog’s unofficial wine inventory web app) for this vintage all said the same thing, even though each comment had a different score with it. Which, again, tells us what we need to know about scores.

Serve this chilled, with or without food, and know that wherever you are in the U.S., you’ll be able to buy a bottle of wine that won’t make you wish you had bought something else.

Winebits 306: Grape shortage, Bogle, wine labels

? So much for the experts: Last week’s report that the world was facing an imminent grape shortage and a corresponding leap in prices sent the wine world into a minor fluff. Eventually, common sense prevailed and the news was discounted for what it was — at the very least odd and at the very most suspicious. There is no grape shortage, and the best reporting on the subject was done, as usual, by Lew Perdue at Wine Industry Insight. Stacy Finz at the Chronicle in San Francisco contributed a very sensible piece as well. Most telling was this bit in Finz’s article: “The report’s authors, Tom Kierath and Crystal Wang of Morgan Stanley’s Australian consumer and beverage branch, declined to be interviewed.” My experience, after some 30 years as a reporter, is that when someone doesn’t want to defend what they wrote or said, then there isn’t much reason to pay attention to it.

? Wine drinkers know a good thing: Bogle, the $10 wine that has been in the cheap wine Hall of Fame as long as there has been a Hall of Fame, continues to sell lots and lots and lots of wine. Shanken News Daily, the web news service (and part of the Wine Specator empire — oh delicious irony), reports that the company’s sales rose nearly 16 percent in 2012 to 1.75 million cases. That makes Bogle one of the biggest dozen or so producers in the country, and it has almost doubled its sales in the past 18 months since I interviewed Ryan Bogle. The Shanken article credits the quality of the Bogle wines for the label’s success, though in a very Winestream Media way, citing points — “more than 30 scores of 87 points or higher from Wine Spectator” — as proof of quality. Though, to be honest, as annoying as that is, I don’t know why I would expect anything different.

? An easier to read wine label, please: Lou Marmon, one of the best wine writers that not enough people know about, has a fine take on the foolishness that passes for wine labels these days. “Clearly front labels are critical to wine marketing,” he writes, “but is there any reason why they cannot be more accurate and informative?” Marmon details all the agonies involved in reading a wine label, whether misleading terms like “old vines,” cute labels, and variation in alcohol content. And, he points out, that doesn’t include the difference between European and U.S. labels, which take the subject in another, albeit equally confusing, direction.