Tag Archives: Bolla

TV wine ads: Did Bolla get it right 41 years ago?

The Wine Curmudgeon’s decades-long survey of TV wine ads has found few worth watching; most are either sappy, miss the point, or rely on stupid humor. Or, since this is wine, all three.

So why does this 41-year old Bolla ad work? Because I know the uneven quality of Bolla wines (they were my dad’s favorite) and I know how difficult it is to make quality cheap wine from the trebbiano grape. And I still wanted a glass.

Why is that? Because, in less than 30 seconds, the ad shows wine as it should be shown — simple, enjoyable, and fun. There isn’t any fake appeal to being posh, there isn’t any talk about awards or medals, and there isn’t any winespeak. Frankly, I can’t remember the last time I saw an ad that did just this.

“Crisp.” “Dry.” “Delightful.”

Damn. Who knew it could that simple?

Video courtesy of ewjxn via YouTube

Mini-reviews 69: Marchesi di Barolo, Bibi Graetz, Clos du Val, Bolla

wine mini-reviewsReviews 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.

? Marchesi di Barolo Barbera Monferrato Mar ia 2012 ($10, purchased, 13%): Very nice price for a barbera that is mostly fun to drink. Look for dark berry fruit in this Italian red, plus a little earthiness. But there’s just enough oak to get in the way, and there’s hole in the middle that the oak doesn’t cover up.

? Bibi Graetz Casamatta NV ($13, purchased, 12.5%): Nothing really wrong with this Italian red, made with the solera method, in which grapes of different vintages are blended. Simple and well-made, with cherry fruit and some acid, but it needs more than just that at this price.

? Clos du Val Pinot Noir Carneros 2010 ($32, sample, 13.5%): Nothing at all wrong with this California red wine. It’s almost polite — with proper weight, fruit, tannins, and alcohol. But I want more than polite for $32.

? Bolla Soave Classico 2011 ($8, purchased, 12.5%): This Italian white, which is what we drank if we wanted Italian white wine in the 1970s and 1980s, was surprisingly Soave-like given its age. Thin, but varietally correct and still drinkable.

Mini-reviews 51: Bolla, Grechetto, Chinon, Vouvray

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; for August, some surprisingly disappointing wines.

? Bolla Soave Classico 2011 ($8, sample, 12%): Ordinarily, I don ?t review wines that are spoiled. But I mention it here, because the Soave had none of the flavors it should have had (white fruit, almonds) ? just a musty, booze-ish feel to it, probably from being shipped in the summer heat and is no reflection on the producer. So if you taste a wine that has a musty, booze-ish feel, throw it out. Unfortunately, since the wine business pays so little attention to educating consumers, hundreds of thousands of people will buy this and assume that ?s what Soave tastes like.

? Scacciadiavoli Grechetto 2012 ($11, purchased, 12.5%): Bland and boring, with almost no flavors of any kind, and apparently targeted at the pinot grigio crowd. Otherwise, very old-fashioned — the kind of wine people drink and say, “I don’t like wine.”

? Pierre Archambault Chinon 2011 ($13, purchased, 12.5%): Disappointing, but probably because I love cheap Chinon (cabernet franc from the Loire in France) and expect more. Lots of violet on the nose and subdued black fruit, which is a Chinon trademark, but the middle was a little empty, and $13 makes it a problematic value.

? Sauvion Vouvray 2011 ($10, purchased, 12%): White wine from the Loire in France made with chenin blanc that is sweet without any acid to balance it, though it does have a little flowery chenin character. Another disappointment; cheap chenin is usually much better than this.

Wine review: Bolla Valpolicella 2009

This is the first wine I ever drank. It is, in fact, the first wine I have any memory of. In the 1970s, if you were a “serious” wine drinker in the United States, you drank French Beaujolais, California burgundy or chablis (which were not necessarily pinot noir or chardonnay), German liebfraumilch, Lancers and Mateus rose, or the Italian Bolla. My father, an Italophile, drank the Bolla.

Which meant I did, too. I brought it with me with when I went to someone’s house for dinner. I bought it to impress girls (one of my first big dates, actually). I had no idea whether the wine was any good. I knew very little about wine 30 years ago; the Bolla was wine, and that was good enough.

Bolla, as a brand, mostly disappeared in the 1990s. It was bought and sold several times, and I had not seen it in years. And then, at the grocery store this week, there it was. I checked with my Italian wine expert, who told me, yes, the current owners dusted the brand off, changed the label, and are bringing it back.

Memory is part of wine, as much as the grapes or the soil. This is one of Alfonso Cevola’s favorite themes, that it’s not just what the wine tastes like now, but what we remember of the tasting — who we were with, where we were, what we were doing when we tasted it. So when I opened the Bolla ($6, purchased), I was thinking about my dad and Chicago in the 1970s and the girls I bought it for. The Wine Curmudgeon was sipping and analyzing, but Jeff Siegel was remembering.

So maybe this is memory talking. Maybe the Bolla isn’t what I tasted the other day — young and disjointed, yes, but fresh and clean, with a funky Italian nose and lots of sour cherry fruit. It’s an incredible value at this price, a wine for winter stews and red meat and tomato sauce. And, of course, for memory.