Tag Archives: rose wine

Winebits 485: Rose, Chinese wine, three-tier

chinese wine
Apparently, he’s the reason we’re drinking rose.

This week’s wine news: Who knew? Millennials are the reason we’re drinking rose, plus Chinese wine in the U.S. and a Pennsylvania convenience store chain adds wine

• So cheap and good doesn’t matter? One of the first things the Wine Curmudgeon learned as a young reporter was not to write something unless there were facts to support it. So this piece, called “It Turns Out Millennials Were Right About Rosé The Whole Time,” made me want to exhume all the cranky, Front Page newspapermen who taught me the business and let them chew out the the writer in their pre-modern, cigar-chomping style. Nothing in the post supports the headline, and most of it is about why we should be drinking rose. Which, of course, is what many of us have been writing for a decade, without the help of Millennials, the Winestream Media, or anyone else. Apparently, the post is on some sort of food blog, so I’m probably expecting too much that it should write intelligently about wine.

• Welcome the Chinese: Winemakers in the Chinese province of Ningxia want to sell their product in the U.S., which includes sparkling, riesling, syrah, merlot and cabernet sauvignon. The article, which appears in the U.S. version of the state-run China Daily, is not so much about wine as economic development. And, because it’s about wine, it compares the Chinese vineyards favorably to the best regions in France and California. I’ve yet to see a story about an emerging wine region, even in non-state-owned media, that doesn’t do that.

• Rutter’s adds wine: Ordinarily, convenience stores selling wine isn’t news. But when it’s in Pennsylvania, it’s worth noting because the state has ended its monopoly on wine sales. That means that privately-owned retailers like the 47-store Rutter’s chain can, so it will “carry a large selection, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling, Chardonnay, Merlot, Pinot Noir and other varietals.” One can only hope that the wine will be of sufficient quality and not suffer too badly from convenience store markups. Otherwise, what was the point?

Christmas wine 2016

Christmas wine 2016Four choices for Christmas wine 2016 to help you enjoy the holiday

Suggestions for Christmas wine 2016 – either for a last-minute gift for a wine person, or to drink with all those upcoming holiday dinners and leftovers. As always, keep our wine gift giving tips in mind:

• Farnese Fantini Rose 2015 ($10, purchased, 13%): An Italian pink wine that is fruity (very red cherry) and fresh. It’s not quite in the New World style, but it’s not quite Provencal, either. Very nicely done, and the sort of wine to enjoy at a holiday party and marvel at its cost and quality.

• Olivier Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc Les Sétilles 2013 ($22, purchased, 12.5%): Top-quality white Burgundy (made with chardonnay) at a remarkable price and that has all the things it should have — apple fruit, white pepper, that certain amount of oak. This wine is still young and a little tight, making it a fine value if you want to buy a couple of bottles to hold, either as a gift or for yourself.

• Campo Viejo Cava Gran Brut Rosé NV ($10, sample, 12%): This grocery store Spanish sparkler can be inconsistent, but this bottle was everything I hoped for – varietally correct, tight bubbles, and fresh, cherryish fruit. A nice value, whether you want an aperitif or something to toast with.

• Bonny Doon Le Cigare Volant 2012 ($45, purchased, 13.5%): This California Rhone-style blend from the irrepressible Randall Grahm shows why his wines are so interesting. It’s both earthy and refined, for one thing, with a wonderful foresty aroma and dark but not forbidding fruit. Plus, it will age for at least another decade, and get even more intriguing as it does. Highly recommended. If you know someone who wants to venture outside of their California cabernet sauvignon comfort zone, give them this.

More about Christmas wine:
• Christmas wine 2015
• Christmas wine 2014
• Christmas wine 2013
• Expensive wine 88: Penfolds Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon 2013
• Expensive wine 86: Louis Latour Corton Grand Cru 2004

Winebits 468: La Vielle Ferme rose, Utah laws, Kevin Zraly

La Vielle Ferme roseThis week’s wine news: Even La Vielle Ferme rose wants to be hip, plus Utah liquor laws and Kevin Zraly.

• Bring on the pink: How do we know that rose is hot, hip, and happening? Because the Wine Curmudgeon has received two news releases from the company that makes La Vieille Ferme rosé, the first I’ve ever gotten from La Vielle. The wine has been sold in the U.S. for so long that I wasn’t old enough to drink when it first appeared; until 10 or 12 years ago, the rooster rose was about the only dry pink wine that was widely available. That the producer needs to remind wine writers that it’s still on the market, and hasn’t done a Blue Nun, speaks to the idea that newer, more trendy roses are getting all the attention. I should try it again and see if the producer has stepped up its game given all the competition on the market.

• Even in Utah: The state, known for some of the most draconian three-tier laws in the country, sold a record five percent more booze on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This matters since the state makes it so difficult to buy spirits, wine, and beer. Nevertheless, there were so many customers at some of the 44 state-owned stores that officials had to limit the number of people in the store so it wouldn’t be overcrowded. If anything shows that the country’s attitude towards alcohol has changed, this is it. Utah is home to the Mormon church, whose members are supposed to abstain.

• 40 years on: Kevin Zraly, the man who wrote perhaps the best introductory book about wine, has taught his last Windows on the World wine class. I can’t say enough about Zraly’s book; I’ve used it in my El Centro class and always recommend it. Says Zraly: “If my course had just been about wine, it never would have lasted. It’s interactive. It’s entertaining, I want people to talk. I studied elementary education. After the third glass of wine, it’s not a class. It’s crowd control.”

Wine and food pairings: One Thanksgiving turkey, five dinners, five wines

five dinners, five wines
Who knew this turkey would lend itself to five dinners and five wines?

What do with a 20-pound turkey? Use it to for five dinners paired with five wines

This year, the Wine Curmudgeon’s Thanksgiving turkey weighed 20 pounds. My old pal Jim Serroka, who shares holiday cooking duties with me, wanted lots of turkey for leftovers. Needless to say, we got them – as well as another post in the blog’s wine and food pairings series: One entree that can be turned into five dinners with five wines.

The goal here was to pair quality cheap wine with the leftovers as simply as possible – no wine geek for advice, no examining the turkey’s entrails for wines to drink. My wine and food pairings:

• The Thanksgiving turkey. Roasted with lots of herbs and vegetables, and stuffed with the Kleinpeter family’s traditional chicken cornbread dressing. I picked three wines; two were disappointing, proving that even I can over-think wine and food pairings. But the third was an old pal, the $16 Clos de Gilroy grenache from Bonny Doon. How winemaker Randall Graham gets cherryish fruit, a little earthiness, some white pepper, and a delightful freshness from California grenache is beyond my understanding, but I’m glad he does.

• Turkey rice cake. One of my great cooking discoveries was that rice freezes. Make eight cups in the rice cooker, divide it into 2- or 3-cup packages, freeze, and thaw when necessary. This was chopped leftover turkey, some of the roasted vegetables, and an egg mixed with rice; basically the same thing I did with noodles for the roast chicken post. The wine was a sample, the $25 Markham merlot – dependable and high quality and what California merlot is supposed to taste like – lighter and more approachable than cabernet sauvignon, with dark fruit and subtler tannins. And it didn’t overwhelm the rice cakes.

• Turkey sausage okra gumbo. I’ve been making this with leftover Thanksgiving turkey since I moved to Dallas, so long ago the city had two newspapers. It’s more or less the classic recipe – make the roux, add chopped onions, celery, bell pepper, and garlic, stir, add the stock, stir, add the okra, let it simmer, and finish with the sausage and turkey. And no tomatoes – absolutely, positively no tomatoes. The wine was an $8 Rivarey Crianza, a tempranillo from the Rioja region of Spain. It was simple and fruity, but with enough structure and backbone for the dark, smoky gumbo.

• Baked turkey Reubens. This is a Siegel family tradition; my Dad made these when I was a kid using Pepperidge Farm brown and serve rolls and leftover Thanksgiving turkey. It’s sliced turkey breast, quality Swiss cheese, canned and drained sauerkraut, and my Dad’s thousand island dressing (his secret ingredient was lime juice). Make the sandwich, wrap in foil, and bake until crusty. And what better wine than rose? The Ned, a $12 New Zealand pink wine, did the trick, and it will be even better in six months. This was a 2016, and had only been in the bottle for six or eight weeks.

• Turkey torte. This sort of baked Spanish-style omelette is usually made with potatoes, but turkey (with sauteed onions and peppers) works well, too. I drank a bottle of cava, a $10 Spanish sparkler called – believe it or not – Lady of Spain. The wine has been inconsistent, but this bottle was very cava-like, with tight bubbles and lemon fruit. And, of course, Spanish wine with a Spanish dish, one of the ways to make pairings work with less trouble.

More on five dinners, five wines
• One chicken, five dinners, five wines
• One pork shoulder, five dinners, five wines

Wine of the week: Georges Vigouroux Pigmentum Rose 2015

Pigmentum roseThe Pigmentum rose is value-driven $10 wine for the fall

So what if it’s October? The other great thing about the rose revolution, besides that people are drinking it, is that it’s available all year long. Which means you can find cheap, value-oriented rose like the Pigmentum rose and drink it whenever you want.

This vintage of the Pigmentum rose ($10, purchased, 12%) isn’t quite as Provencal as the 2014 – not as bright and zippy. It has more and softer red fruit and less minerality, though the back is bracing enough to support the fruit. This is not to say the wine is in any way sweet; rather, it tastes more like it’s made with malbec than last year’s wine did. Call it a vintage difference and marvel you can find one in a $10 rose from an almost unknown region of France, the Cotes du Lot in the southwestern part of the country.

But you know what I liked best about the Pigmentum rose? It’s nothing special, no Hall of Fame wine, nothing to wax poetic about. Instead, it shows just how much quality that rose, even ordinary rose, delivers for $10. In a wine world where mediocre wines command $30 and $40 and no one seems to mind, that’s the thing to wax poetic about.

Cheap wine checklist: $82.67 for a case of wine

cheap winePutting my money where my crankiness is: A case of quality cheap wine for about $80.

This is the second of two parts about buying cheap wine in the age of premiumization. Part I on Sept. 22: The cheap wine checklist.

Why do so many people pay so much money for so much lousy wine? Because, as I discussed with Laura Lawson on her Wine Crush radio show last week, we’re afraid to try something different. If it’s not what we always drink, and that’s almost always overpriced cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, and merlot, then we’re stuck paying too much.

Hence the cheap wine checklist, and its five guidelines to help us find quality cheap wine. How well does it work? Quite well; I used the checklist to buy a case of wine at the main Dallas Spec’s for $82.67 last week. The wines were from Spain, France, and South Africa, there was nary a cabernet or chardonnay among them, and four were roses.

I’ve bought some of the wines before, but almost half were first-time purchases:

• The repeats – four bottles of the Rene Barbier white Spanish blend, the Chateau Bonnet white Bordeaux, the Bieler et Fils rose from Provence, and the South African Goats do Roam rose. Total: $46.29

• I splurged on the Château La Tour Beraud Blanc, made with grenache blanc from the southern Rhone in France. Total: $12.62

• The Brumont tannat-merlot blend from Gascony in France, made by the same producer who does a nice Gascon white blend. Total: $10.52.

• Two Spanish wines from Frederico Paternina, a tempranillo and rose, because almost all Spanish wine is worth buying. Total: $16.82.

• The 2015 vintage of the Marques Caceras rose, which I hadn’t tasted in a couple of years. Total: $8.09.

Grand total, minus $11.67 in cash and case discounts and not including sales tax, was $82.67.

So no bellyaching when you say you can’t find anything cheap and good to buy. Yes, I benefited because Spec’s is the biggest retailer in Texas and because it’s locked in a death struggle with Total Wine for control of the Dallas market – both of which account for some ferocious price cutting.

But the point is not where you buy your wine, but that you understand how wine pricing works and that trying wine that you’re not supposed to like will save money. It’s one of the first lessons I learned in wine: if I don’t like chocolate ice cream, why would I buy it because someone told me I was supposed to? So why do we do that with wine?

Labor Day wine 2016

Labor Day wine 2016Four refreshing wines to enjoy for Labor Day

Labor Day means three things: The beginning of the end of the Texas summer (which wasn’t too bad this year, save for one week); the annual the Kerrville Fall Music Festival; and a chance to remind wine drinkers that warmer weather means lighter wines. Hence Labor Day wine 2016.

This is a notion that wine drinkers are happily embracing, if my email is any indication – the idea that heavy, alcoholic, and tannic wines don’t go with 90 degree temperatures. Rather, the goal is wine that is refreshing, since you’re likely to drink it outdoors at a picnic or barbecue. Plus, these wines should be food friendly, because you’re probably going to drink them with a holiday dinner or lunch.

These four bottles of Labor Day wine 2016 (Google overlord alert) should help you find something lighter and fresher for the holiday:

• Domaine Guillaman 2015 ($9, purchased, 11.5%): This white Gascon blend (including, oddly enough, chardonnay) is remarkably consistent from year to year. More toward the sauvignon blanc style of white Gascon blends, it’s ideal for chilling and porch drinking.

• Moulin de Gassac rose 2015 ($10, purchased, 12%): This French pink wine shows why rose is such a terrific value – not too much red fruit, crisp, fresh, and lively. And it will pair with almost anything at a Labor Day barbecue.

• Gran Baron Cava Brut NV ($10, purchased, 11.5%): Simple but value-oriented Spanish sparkling wine with lots of tight bubbles and apple and citrus fruit. Probably somewhere between Cristalino and Segura Viudas in quality, and its probably a little softer than I like.

• Catena Malbec 2013 ($24, sample, 13.5%): One of the best Argentine malbecs I’ve ever had. The black fruit (blueberries?) doesn’t overwhelm the wine, and it remains balanced, not too heavy or cloying, and surprisingly enjoyable. Red meat wine, and especially pork barbecue. The price may be problematic, though it’s probably worth this much.

For more on Labor Day wine:
• Labor Day wine 2015
• Labor Day wine 2014
• Labor Day wine 2013
• Porch wine for the long, hot summer