Tag Archives: Marques de Caceras

Wine of the week: Marques de Caceres Verdejo 2020

Marqués de Cáceres Verdejo
Marques de Caceres Verdejo 2020/$7-$13

This Spanish white offers value and availability for just $8

In the WC’s eternal quest for widely available wines that don’t taste fakely sweet or designed to be focus-group “smoooth,” supermarket Spanish wines often turn up.

In this case, the Marques de Caceres Verdejo 2020 ($8, purchased, 13.5%).

The Caceres is made by a large Spanish producer that sells its wines in 120 countries, so it won’t be confused with a boutique producer. But this white, made with the verdejo grape (a long-time Wine Curmudgeon favorite), is remarkably consistent – something that multi-national producers should excel at but don’t always manage to do.

The 2019 vintage was exceptional, and if the 2020 isn’t quite as amazing, it’s still a fine wine – and especially for $8. This is not a delicate wine, full of finesse; instead, look for fresh, tart lemon fruit, a touch of softness in the middle to balance the lemon, and a not quite stony finish.

In other words, the kind of wine to buy – a couple of bottles, perhaps – the next time you’re at the supermarket to keep on hand when you feel like a glass of white wine.

Imported by Vineyard Brands

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.