Tag Archives: Sangre de Toro

How did a once enjoyable cheap Spanish red turn into a wine Popsicle?

Plastic toy bulls
“Don’t blame us. We’re just a marketing gimmick, too.”

Blame it on wine filtered through focus groups, because wine drinkers are idiots and we need to be told what to like

One of the Wine Curmudgeon’s regular rants is about focus group wine; that is, wine tested with consumers to make sure it is as inoffensive as possible. Because, of course, wine drinkers are idiots and we need to be told what to like.

The latest example of this kind of wine? Sangre de Toro, from Spain’s Miguel Torres.

Once, this was a terrific $7 supermarket red wine, and it even came with a little plastic bull attached to the neck of the bottle. It tasted Spanish – some cherry fruit, a little rough but not unpleasantly so, and just the thing for a weeknight dinner. It was, in those long ago days before premiumization and consolidation, quite common – simple but drinkable, the kind of wine that offered beginning wine drinkers a chance to see what Spanish red wine was like.

I drank hundreds of bottles over the years, and even had a pile of the bulls stuffed in a drawer somewhere.

And then the wise guys got hold of the wine. I bought a bottle the other day and was stunned. It tasted like a wine Popsicle – sweet, high in alcohol, smoooooth, and bereft of any Spanish character or varietal quality. It could have come from anywhere wine is made, and I have no doubt that the producer intended just that. I was actually angry — not so much because it was wretched, which it was, but because I had been naive enough to think that it would still taste like Spanish wine after all these years.

Why would anyone do this? Because, of course, wine drinkers are idiots and we need to be told what to like.

But there are several other reasons, none of which bode well for the future of wine:

• Copying success. The popularity of sweet red blends like Apothic and Menage a Trois means everyone figures they need to knock off those styles to sell wine. Which may work in the short term, but rarely does for any longer than that. When’s the last time anyone bought a bottle of Blue Nun?

• The almost god-like power of wholesalers in the three-tier system (and which, thanks to consolidation, is becoming even more god-like). The wholesaler tells the producer: “We need an Apothic knockoff to sell to supermarkets,” and even big producers like Torres have to do what they’re told.

• Wine’s continuing evolution into something no different from ketchup or laundry detergent — just another item on a grocery shelf. This is not about making money; everyone is entitled to do that. Rather, it’s the idea that wine is made to be something other than what it should be. If that’s the case, no wonder people buy hard kombucha. At least that tastes like what it is.

All those bulls stuffed in a drawer disappeared years ago, and I was always upset that I had lost them. Until now – good riddance. Who needs to be reminded of plonk like this?

Wine of the week: Sangre de Toro Garnacha 2015

Sangre de Toro GarnachaThe Sangre de Toro garnacha is a red wine for hot weather, and delivers more than $7 worth of value

One of the cheap wines everyone drank in those long ago days before the blog was the Sangre de Toro Spanish red blend, which came with a little plastic bull. I must have had hundreds of the bulls.

I haven’t seen the red blend in years, though the producer’s website says it’s still around. Instead, what’s showing up on store shelves near me is the Sangre de Toro garnacha ($7, purchased, 13.5%), a red wine made with the garnacha grape. And I was pleasantly surprised by what I tasted:

• Varietally correct, which means soft berry fruit, but not too ripe or jelly-like, a common garnacha problem. There was even a bit of spice and enough freshness to balance the fruit.

• Regionally correct. It tasted like a Spanish wine, and not a wine made in Spain to please the infamous U.S. wine palate. This may have been the most pleasantly surprising part.

• A minimum of post-modern winemaking. Other than a bit of fake oak on the back (the tasting notes call it “licorice”), the wine didn’t taste manipulated or worked over to make it something it wasn’t.

Frankly, I didn’t expect to enjoy the Sangre de Toro garnacha as much as I did. But it was $7 worth of wine, if not more, as well as the the kind of red wine that works perfectly in Dallas when it’s 100 degrees in the middle of July. I chilled it for about 20 minutes in the fridge, and drank it with sloppy Joes and cole slaw. What more could I ask for in the middle of the week?

The only bad news? No plastic bull.

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.