Tag Archives: inexpensive wine

Wine review: Sangre de Toro 2008

As much as the Wine Curmudgeon appreciates this wine, both for how little it costs and its sentimental value, I don't do much with it on the blog. It's one of those wines that I seem to get around to only once in a couple of years.

However, people who visit the blog apparently want more. There was the request six weeks ago from a reader looking for the plastic bulls that come with the wine, and there has been a pretty significant increase in search requests from the cyber-ether this spring. So, the Wine Curmudgeon, vigilant as ever to the needs of his visitors, decided to review a bottle.

Which turned out to be a good idea. Save for a screwcap, the Sangre de Toro ($8, purchased) is much as it always has been, a rough and peasant-style red wine blend (garnacha and carinena — the Spanish versions of grenache and carignane).

Do not be put off by that description; it's a welcome development in a world where too much wine is bland and glossy and without character. There's some red fruit and lots of acid, which means this wine needs food — meat sauces, stews and similar dishes. I drank it with sausage gravy over rice, and I was surprised at how well it worked.

Judgment of Paris author: Cheap wine matters

George Taber chronicled the most important wine event in modern times, when California wines beat French wines in a blind tasting. Now he has turned his authorial sights on cheap wine — and he likes it.

"For years friends and passing strangers have been asking me to recommend 'a good bottle of wine for under $10 (sometimes $5),' " says Taber. "I could usually come up with something, but that experience got me to thinking that there must be a lot of people out there with that same question."

The result is his forthcoming book: "A Toast to Bargain Wines: How Innovators, Iconoclasts, and Winemaking Revolutionaries Are Changing the Way the World Drinks". It won't be out until November, but I thought it worth mentioning for a couple of reasons — not the least of which is that you can pre-order it. More, after the jump.

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$200 worth of wine

$200 worth of wineDon’t fear, regular visitors. That’s not one bottle of wine, but the result of a recent Wine Curmudgeon shopping expedition — 13 bottles, only two of which cost more than $16. And there wasn’t a stinker in the bunch.

The occasion for this spree? A chance to shop at Spec’s, probably the best liquor retailer in Texas. Spec’s doesn’t have any stores in Dallas, but I was in Austin for a wedding and Spec’s has several stores there. So that gave me a chance to check out Spec’s vast inventory (at 80,000 square feet, it’s bigger than most grocery stores) and its very competitive pricing. I was not disappointed.

More, after the jump:

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Shocking news: We’re buying less expensive wine

This just in from the Los Angeles Times: People are spending less money on a bottle of wine!

Patrick J. Comiskey, a big deal in the Winestream Media (he’s a former sommelier and writes for Wine & Spirits magazine) reports in the Times that consumers aren’t spending $40 for a bottle of wine anymore. They aren’t even spending $25. They’re — wait for it — spending $15.

Writes Comiskey: “For many, $15 to $20 might be the new $25.”

Sigh. More, after the jump.

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Wine and Tax Day

image from t1.gstatic.com Monday is April 18, the deadline this year for Americans to pay their state and federal income taxes. Which we are famous for whining about (pun fully intended). So, as a public service, here are a few thoughts about wine and how it can improve tax day.

? Drink a bottle of regional wine. Most U.S. states are suffering horrendous budget crises — New York had to close a $10 billion gap. Illinois' was $4.9 billion. Texas' is $27 billion. So if you buy a bottle of local wine, you're supporting local jobs. Each of us can help reduce those deficits, one bottle at time, and it's a lot more pleasant than listening to the complaining and bellyaching that goes on this time of year.

? Visit Michael Franz's annual Tax Day wine column at Wine Reports Online, which he has done for almost 20 years. As someone who specializes in cheap wine, the Wine Curmudgeon applauds Franz's perseverance. Plus, he and colleague Paul Lukacs wade through more than 1,000 wines to make their recommendations.

? Try a cheap wine you've never tried before. Don't worry about reviews or scores or what other people will think. Go to the store, buy it, and taste it. If you like it, you've found a new wine. If you don't, throw it out. I promise not to tell anyone.

? My wine recommendation? Anything from the $10 Hall of Fame would do nicely, but I'd also suggest Cuvee Cep d'Or 2010 ($10, purchased), a rose from Provence. Availability may be limited, but it's a beautiful wine that is well worth looking for. There is just a touch of fruit (watermelon?), and it's bone dry with a long mineral finish. This is everything a Provencal rose should be, and is one of the best-made $10 wines I've had in a long while.

Wine of the week: Ipsum 2010

image from ei.isnooth.com Sometimes, wine doesn't taste the way we want it to taste. When the Wine Curmudgeon first tried the Ipsum, a Spanish white blend, two years ago, it was a revelation — fruit forward in a New World style, but crisp and with lots of minerality. It was a sure thing Hall of Fame selection.

The 2010 vintage, sadly, is not up to that standard. The Ipsum ($10, purchased) is still a more than adequate wine, and there is still lots of tropical fruit. You could do a whole lot worse, and the Wine Curmudgeon has. But the extra something that pushed previous vintages over the top is gone. The minerality isn't there, and this year's wine doesn't have the freshness and clarity that the others did.

How does this happen? Who knows? The winemaker had an off day, the weather didn't cooperate, the grapes weren't up to snuff. So drink this, well chilled, with seafood or grilled chicken, and hope that the 2011 Ipsum returns to its previous standard.

? Ipsum 2008 review: "… much better than I expected it to be."

Wine review: Dancing Bull Zinfandel 2009

Want to see how wine changes over time, taking into account things like vintage difference and consumer preferences, and especially how the big wine companies see consumer preference?

Then taste the Dancing Bull ($9, purchased), which is one of the most popular wines among visitors to the blog. In my review of the 2007 vintage, I wrote that it wasn’t “quite as spicy or brambly” as it was when the wine debuted a decade ago, but that it was still more or less a traditional zinfandel. The current vintage has changed even more. It still has some zinfandel character, with pepper on the nose and spice at the back, but there is a huge dollop of sweet red fruit in the middle that wasn’t there in the 2007 or when I first tasted it.

Which is where consumer preference — or what companies like E&J Gallo, which makes Dancing Bull, see as consumer preference — comes in. One of the big changes in U.S. grocery store wine over the past several years is, for lack of a better term, the addition of sweet fruit. It’s not that the wines are sweet, and the Dancing Bull is bone dry. Rather, it’s what Eric Asimov of the New York Times describes as not the “actual sugar in the wine, but also (more often) of the impression of sweetness. This impression can be provided by dominant fruit flavors and high concentrations of glycerol, a product of fermentation that is heavy, oily and slightly sweet.” And, he writes, California zinfandel exactly fits that description.

Gallo’s market research, apparently, has determined that consumers want that sweet fruit in their wine. So the company makes the wine that way, and the Dancing Bull is the result. Is this good or bad? Neither. As the Wine Curmudgeon has said many times, good and bad doesn’t apply to wine. It’s what each person wants to drink.