Tag Archives: grocery store wine

barefoot wine

Barefoot wine review 2021: Merlot and Crisp White Spritzer

barefoot wine
The guy in the middle must have tasted the Crisp White Spritzer.

• Barefoot wine (again): Value or just cheap?
• Barefoot wine: Why it’s so popular

Barefoot wine review 2021: A merlot that mostly tastes like grape juice, and a spritzer that takes sugar water where it’s never been before

The blog’s 14th annual Barefoot review focuses on the traditional and the au courant — merlot, about as old-fashioned as it gets, and a Crisp White Spritzer, which (I assume) is supposed to compete with trendy hard seltzers. The former tastes like most Barefoot wine — soft, just enough sweet, and devoid of varietal character. The latter breaks new ground — a cross between a hard seltzer and the infamous wine coolers of the 1980s.

The non-vintage merlot ($6, purchased, 13.3%) has a California appellation, and I had high hopes for it. The merlot has often been the most wine-like of the Barefoots, and it almost made the $10 Hall of Fame in the blog’s early days. But no such luck. This was formula winemaking using poor quality grapes. Each component was exactly where it should be — the sweetness (not quite as sweet as the red Apothic or Menage a Trois); generic fruitiness (think grape juice that isn’t tart); a murky finish common in this kind of red wine; and no tannins or acidity. In other words, cheap, smooth wine for people who want that.

I also had hopes for the Crisp White Spritzer ($6, purchased, 5.5%). Maybe it would be something like a vinho verde? No such luck. This isn’t legally wine, so it has ingredient and nutritional labeling. Hence, everything you need to know about the product is on the label — made with carbonated water, something called “grape wine,” and cane sugar. Almost one-quarter of its calories come from “added sugars.” So sweet, sweet, sweet, and not crisp by any stretch of the imagination. It’s so sweet, in fact, that it’s almost impossible to drink on its own. Mix with vodka or cranberry juice (or both), and hope for the best.

Photo: Sylvane, using a Creative Commons license

Blog associate editor Churro contributed to this post

More Barefoot wine reviews:
• Barefoot wine review 2020
• Barefoot wine review 2019
• Barefoot wine review 2018

Buying supermarket wine during the pandemic

supermarket wine
Quick. … we need to buy more wine at the supermarket because it’s a pandemic.

Six tips to make sure you get your money’s worth at the supermarket Great Wall of Wine

Supermarket wine was one of the big winners during the pandemic, with more of us buying it from the supermarket Great Wall of Wine than ever before. As a high-ranking official at a top Italian producer told me: “Multiple shopping stops are not happening, so instead of going to the grocery store, then to the fine wine shop, butcher, cheese monger, and so forth, people are getting everything in grocery stores.”

And one leading wine trade magazine expects that to continue, with double-digit sales growth perhaps being part of the new normal.

Which leads to a particularly Wine Curmudgeonly dilemma: How does one buy cheap wine that offers both value and quality in the supermarket – and especially when so much supermarket wine seems to be more or less the same? As noted here many times, the biggest half dozen or so U.S. producers make most of the wine supermarkets sell.

So how do you avoid the stuff that looks and tastes the same as the other stuff? Consider these six tips:

• Check the website. It may not say the actual company’s name on the label, and most don’t. But the company’s website always does. No, I don’t know why this is, and neither did the researcher of a seminal Big Wine study.

• Alcohol percentage. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it’s true often enough to keep in mind. Many Big Wine products say 13.5 percent even if the alcohol isn’t 13.5 percent. The law allows this, and it’s easier for tax, regulatory, and production reasons to do it. Wines from smaller producers tend to be more precise.

• Look for something other than the usual grapes, so petite sirah instead of cabernet sauvignon and viognier instead of chardonnay.

• Imported roses. Yes, the tariff has hurt pricing, but they’re still mostly what they’re supposed to be. Some domestic roses, on the other hand, are creeping up the sweetness ladder – and no, I don’t know why that is, either.

• New Zealand sauvignon blanc. Some of the least expensive wines aren’t especially well made, but those in the $10 to $15 range are well-made, varietally correct,  and offer value.

barefoot wine

Barefoot wine review 2020: Rose and riesling

Barefoot wine review 2019

• Barefoot wine (again): Value or just cheap?
• Barefoot wine: Why it’s so popular

Barefoot wine review 2020: Get ready for a dose of sweetness with the rose and riesling — but at least the front labels let you know what’s coming

Call it knowing your audience: The Barefoot wine review 2020 bottles don’t pretend to be something they aren’t. Looking for a dry, tart, Provencal- style rose? Then don’t buy the Barefoot rose, which says “Delightfully sweet” on the front label. Want a nuanced, oily, off-dry riesling? Then don’t buy the Barefoot riesling, which says “Refreshingly sweet” on the front label.

Which, frankly, is a much welcome development in this, the blog’s 13th Barefoot review. Few things are more annoying than Big Wine — or smaller wine, for that matter — claiming a wine is dry when it tastes like sweet tea. Barefoot, the best-selling wine brand in the country (depending on whose statistics you believe) has the courage of its convictions. And good for it.

The Barefoot wine review 2020 features the non-vintage rose ($5, purchased, 10%) and the non-vintage riesling ($5, purchased, 8%). Both are California appellation. The sweetness is obvious, and especially in the riesling. In the rose, it tries to hide in the background — and then you swallow, and it hits you.

The rose tastes of strawberry fruit, and has lots of acidity in an attempt to balance the sweetness. Which doesn’t exactly work — just sort of offers a counterpoint. The riesling smells like oranges (perhaps some muscat in the blend?) and then the candied sweetness hits and covers up what little fruit flavor (apricot?) was there. A smidgen of acidity is around somewhere, sort of like the cool of a summer morning before it gets hot, and then the  like the coolishness, the wine gets sweet again.

In this, these wines deliver what the front labels promise, though the back labels are marketing hurly burly — “smooth, crisp finish” and “hint of jasmine and honey.” But if you want a $5 sweet wine that is cheap and sweet, then the rose and the riesling fill the bill.

Blog associate editor Churro contributed to this post

More Barefoot wine reviews:
• Barefoot wine review 2019
• Barefoot wine review 2018
• Barefoot wine review 2017

Winebits 648: Massachusetts three-tier, AI writing, Amazon grocery

Massachusetts three-tierThis week’s wine news: Massachusetts is one step closer to allowing food stores to sell beer and wine, plus Microsoft axes people for AI writing and Amazon will open a traditional supermarket

• Massachusetts three-tier: Supporters of a ballot question that would let Massachusetts convenience and food stores sell beer are step closer to voting on the issue. The state’s highest court rule that an election to allow the sales was constitutional. However, supporters must still gather enough petition signatures to ensure an election. The Massachusetts three-tier system is complicated, even for for the U.S., with state and local governments each issuing liquor licences based on a variety of criteria. The ballot measure would let local authorities issue licenses allowing food stores to sell beer and wine over and above the current system.

• Thank you, Microsoft: The Wine Curmudgeon’s disdain for Microsoft is well known, but its recent decision to fire people in favor of machines is a bit much even for the tech giant. It will replace 50 journalists with artificial intelligence machines to edit news stories for the company’s MSN website. As noted on the blog, AI is coming – but it’s not here yet with something as simple as tasting notes. And asking AI to select stories and photos for the website – deciding story importance, how the pictures look, story and photo placement on the page, and so forth – is much harder than writing toasty and oaky (which I know from having done both for my entire professional career). But what do you expect from the company that gave us Windows 8?

• Amazon not go? Amazon will open a traditional supermarket – and not an Amazon Go store – in suburban Chicago. This is huge news, and not just for Kroger and Safeway. If Amazon is serious about the grocery business, it will have to sell wine. So will it follow the others and throw up a Great Wall of Wine with fake priceing plonk or actually do something creative to benefit wine drinkers? The new store isn’t far from my mom; after Illinois lift its lockdown, I’ll ask her to investigate for the blog.

Barefoot wine review 2019

Barefoot wine review 2019: Cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay

Barefoot wine review 2019Barefoot wine review 2019: The cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay have a dollop or three of residual sugar, but otherwise taste like they should

This is the 12th Barefoot wine review I’ve written, and one thing is as aggravating today, for Barefoot wine review 2019, as it was 12 years ago: No screwcap. Why E&J Gallo, Barefoot’s owner, still uses a cork closure on most of its labels is beyond me. The only time these wines are “aged” is after they’re opened, when they sit in the refrigerator for another day. A screwcap would make that kind of aging so much easier.

The Barefoot wine review 2019 features the non-vintage cabernet sauvignon ($5, purchased, 12.5%) and the non-vintage chardonnay ($5, purchased, 13%). Both, save for a dollop or three of residual sugar, are among the best Barefoot efforts in years. Yes, that’s damning with faint praise, given the quality of the wines in many of the previous reviews. And their sweetness left that dried out feeling in my mouth for 20 or 30 minutes after tasting. But that Barefoot varietal wines taste like their varietal is worth noting.  Put a couple of ice cubes in the glass, and the wines are certainly drinkable, if too simple and not very subtle.

The cabernet tastes of dark berry fruit (boysenberry?), and there are soft tannins, a certain acidity, and restrained fake oak. No chocolate cherry foolishness here, though the sweetness gets more noticeable with each sip and may annoy wine drinkers who expect cabernet to be dry.

The chardonnay, ironically, is less sweet than the cabernet. Take away the sugar, and it’s a pleasant California-style chardonnay — almost crisp green apple fruit, that chardonnay style of mouth feel, and just enough fake oak to round out the wine. There’s even a sort of finish, which was about the last thing I expected. Once again, though, the sweetness gets in the way —  would that Barefoot had the courage of its convictions to make a dry wine dry.

More about Barefoot wine:
• Barefoot wine review 2018
• Barefoot wine review 2017
• Barefoot wine review 2016

Wine of the week: Marques de Caceras Verdejo 2018

Marques de Caceras verdejoThe Marques de Caceras verdejo is grocery store wine that does what grocery store wine should do — it’s cheap, drinkable, and available

Quality grocery store wine should do a couple of things. First, it should be fairly priced, and not include a premium for a cute label or the marketing budget. Second, it should taste like what it is, so no cabernet sauvignon that tastes like a sweet red blend and no sauvignon blanc that tastes like a sweet white blend. That both of those are increasingly rare these days speaks to the crisis in cheap wine.

Which is where the Marques de Caceras verdejo ($9, sample, 13.5%) comes in. It’s a Spanish white made with the verdejo grape, so it fills two of the requirements for quality cheap wine – less expensive region and less known grape. And it does what quality grocery wine should do, too.

That means the Marques de Caceras verdejo is fairly priced, and it more or less tastes like verdejo – lots of lemon fruit and a clean finish. It’s simple, and the fruit could be less New World in approach, but it’s not insulting. This is the kind of wine for Tuesday night when you have to stop at the supermarket on the way home to get something for dinner, and you want wine as well.

Follow-up: Two days judging European grocery store wine

grocery store wine
Yes, that’s E&J Gallo’s Apothic and Barefoot for sale in Amsterdam — and no bargains either, at €14.95 and €9.95 (about US$17 and US$12).

Cleaning out the notebook after tasting European grocery store wine

Two days judging European grocery store wine

A few more thoughts after judging the Private Label Manufacturer’s International Salute to Excellence wine competition at the beginning of April, where my panel tasted 112 wines made for and sold by grocery stores around the world. (Full disclosure: I’m consulting for the PLMA in its quest to convince U.S. retailers to step up their private label wine effort. Because, of course, Winking Owl.)

• One odd contradiction: The best cheap European wines in the states, including cava and cabernet sauvignon, weren’t that great in the competition. I was especially surprised at the poor quality of the cava, which usually costs $10 here and is almost always a value. But the other judges told me that there wasn’t a lot of well-made €5 and €6 sparkling in Europe.

• We tasted a lot of wine made from grapes we never see in the U.S. This makes sense – why try to sell something like a white wine from Lugana in Italy in a country devoted to chardonnay? But it’s also a shame. Lugana is made with the verdicchio grape, which may or may not be an Italian version of my beloved ugni blanc (there’s some DNA confusion). The best one we tasted was stunning – crisp, fresh, and sort of lemon-limey, and for about €5.

• There’s sweet, and then there’s sweet. The panel spent a fair amount of time talking about residual sugar, and how much of it makes a wine sweet. In the U.S. we consider a wine dry if it contains as much as .08 percent residual, and something like Apothic, at 1.2 percent or so, is considered sweet. In Europe, the others said, the Apothic is seen as very sweet, while dry ends around .05 percent..

• Europeans don’t get to taste much U.S. wine. This surprised me, since we drink so much European wine. But, as I was reminded, most U.S. wine is sold in the U.S., and save for some Big Wine brands like Barefoot, there is very little wine made in this country that makes it to Europe.

Finally, the competition was held at the Amsterdam Hilton, where John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their legendary 1969 bed-in for peace. Their suite is still there, and you can stay in it for €300 a night. The bed-in business impressed me no end, given I still own considerable Beatles vinyl. But not, however, the 30-something Czech judge sitting next to me. Yes, he said, he knew who John Lennon was, but can we get back to tasting wine?

Photo by Dave McIntyre