Tag Archives: summer wine

Porch wine 2023: Red and white

woman relaxing in chair
“The only thing missing is a WC wine suggestion.”

A red and three whites for summer porch sipping

This is the second of two parts focusing on porch wine — lighter wines, red and white (and of course, rose), that are lower in alcohol and that offer relief from the heat. Today, Part II: reds and whites. Part I: Roses.

This is the second installment of this year’s porch wine post; I needed two parts because there is a surprising amount of quality cheap wine for porch sitting and drinking (wine glut!). Porch wine, as we have discussed before, is about lighter wines, red, white, and pink, that are lower in alcohol and that offer relief from the heat. The idea with a porch wine is to drink something that won’t make the sweat bead on your forehead.

This red and thee whites are well worth trying:

• Frico Bianco 2020 ($12, purchased, 12.5%): More wine glut evidence, given that this vintage of the Italian white blend – so well-priced and so enjoyable – is still on store shelves. Some citrus, some spice, almost some almond. Imported by USA Wine West

• Boekenhoutskloof The Wolftrap Red 2021 ($10, purchased, 14%): South African red blend is spot on yet again, though richer and with more syrah character. Yes, it means it has that Rhone-ish bacon fat thing. But not heavy, not cloying, and not hot. Highly recommended. Imported by Vineyard Brands

• Chereau-Carre Muscadet 2021 ($12, purchased, 12%): A delightful French white from the Muscadet region — almost creamy, with fresh red apple and even a bit of spice. Imported by Monsieur Touton Selection

• Broadbent Dão 2020 ($13, sample, 13%): Pleasant and enjoyable Portuguese white blend (if a bit more rich in the mouth than many would expect). Stone fruit, maybe some tropical and a little spice. Imported by Broadbent Selections

Photo: “Laid Back” by downing.amanda is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Porch wine 2023: Roses

Two women sitting on chairs on a prch
“You know the only thing we’re missing?” “I know — the WC’s porch wine suggestions.”

Four roses for summer porch sipping

This is the first of two parts focusing on porch wine — lighter wines, red and white (and of course, rose), that are lower in alcohol and that offer relief from the heat. Today, part I: Roses, and Monday, Part II: reds and whites.

This year’s porch wine installment comes in two parts, since I’ve found – and I know this is difficult to believe – lots of quality cheap wine for porch sitting and drinking. Porch wine, as we have discussed before, is about lighter wines, red, white, and pink, that are lower in alcohol and that offer relief from the heat. The idea with a porch wine is to drink something that won’t make the sweat bead on your forehead.

These four roses are well worth trying:

• Val de Loire Touraine Vive La Liore! Rose NV ($12/1-liter, purchased, 12%): I wanted to dislike this wine for a couple of reasons – it’s a Whole Foods private label and it’s non-vintage, which is not the best way to do rose. So what do I know? It’s nicely done – gamay grape in the blend, so some barely ripe raspberries and a long, biggish sort of finish. Imported by Dropping Wines

• M. Chapoutier Rose Belleruche 2021 ($10, purchased, 13%): This rose from this producer is almost always well-made; the 2021 has held up well — dry, stony, and barely ripe red berries. Imported by Folio Fine Wine Partners

• Moulin de Gassac Guilhem Rose 2021 ($10, purchased, 12.5%): The Guilhem wines, as a reader reminded me recently, are top-notch values. This pink has strawberry and red fruit, is full in the mouth, and quite refreshing. Imported by Polaner Selections

• Calcu Gran Reserva Rose 2022 ($15, sample, 12.5%): Professional pink blend (65 percent malbec, 35 percent petit verdot) from Chile that offers something between Provencal and California. So some berry fruit, but not too much, and a very nice stony finish. Imported by Global Vineyard Importers

More about porch wine:
• Memorial Day and rose 2023
• Update: Porch wine for the long, hot summer
• Wine of the week: Vinho verde 2023

Photo: “Lake Lodge, visitors sitting in rocking chairs on the porch” by YellowstoneNPS is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Wine and food pairings 17: Pan Bagna

pan bagna sandwich
Yes, I remembered to take a picture — how is that for food styling?

The Wine Curmudgeon pairs wine with some of his favorite recipes in this occasional feature. This edition: three wines with a the legendary pan bagna — or pan bagnat, if you prefer

The best part about pan bagna? You don’t need a recipe to make this legendary sandwich from southern France. Literally. Check the cyber-ether or any vaguely French cookbook, and almost every recipe is different (just like its spelling). Like anchovies? Use them. Don’t like them? Who cares?

The only things that really matter are the quality of the bread (crusty, either a roll or loaf) and the vinaigrette, since this is a sandwich that needs to soak. And soggy bread and crummy vinaigrette just won’t work.

Pan bagna is so free form, in fact, that I’m not including a linked recipe with this post.

It’s mostly salad ingredients; go to the refrigerator and use what’s there. So sliced cucumbers, sliced or chopped tomatoes, lettuce leaves, sliced onion, fresh herbs, and almost anything else. I’ve seen recipes with green beans, hard-boiled eggs, pitted olives, capers, leftover roast chicken, and even smelly cheeses as well as those anchovies. I like best-quality imported tuna, packed in olive oil.

Cut the bread you’re using in half, layer each half with some vinaigrette and maybe Dijon mustard, and then add an ingredient. Put some vinaigrette on that ingredient, add another and repeat. Just don’t add too many layers so that you won’t be able bite into the sandwich.

When the sandwich is built, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and then wrap that in a Ziploc-style bag. Place it on a sheet pan or plate, with another plate on top, put it in the fridge, and weigh it down with some cans. That way, the sandwich will soak more effectively. Let it rest for at least eight hours. Take it out an or so hour before eating. Unwrap carefully, because it will be messy, and enjoy.

And the wines to go with a pan bagna? Summer wines, of course:

• Garofoli Macrina 2020 ($13, purchased, 13%): The Italian Wine Guy told me about this wine several vintages ago, and it has never disappointed. The 2020 isn’t as well rounded as the 2019, but there is still plenty of almonds, plus light citrus and minerality. Imported by Garofoli USA

• MAN Sauvignon Blanc 2021 ($10, purchased, 13%): Not as amazing as the South African winery’s chenin blanc, but still worth drinking. It sits somewhere between New Zealand and more traditional styles, so not too much citrus (lemon, not grapefruit), but that wonderfully clean and refreshing finish. Imported by Vineyard Brands

• Jolie Folle Rose 2021 ($14/1-liter), purchased, 12.5%): French pink remains a fine value. Barely ripe wild strawberry fruit and almost savory, and even has some garrigue. Highly recommended. Imported by T. Elenteny Imports

Blog associate editor Churro contributed to this post.

More about wine and food pairings:
• Wine and food pairings 15: Southwestern-style stew with guacamole and pico de gallo
• Wine and food pairings 15: Southwestern-style stew with guacamole and pico de gallo
• Wine and food pairings 14: Mom’s chicken parmigiana

Slider photo: “Rome Elite Event: wine, food and nice people” by Yelp.com is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Memorial Day and rose 2014

Memorial Day and rose
One can never have too many roses.

The annual Memorial Day and rose post is one of the Wine Curmudgeon’s favorites, a post that has appeared every year since I started writing the blog. And why not? Rose is more popular than ever before (for which I will take some small credit), and it’s the quintessential great cheap wine: tasty and food friendly. It’s almost impossible to find a badly made $10 rose.

The blog ?s rose primer discusses styles, why rose is dry, and how it gets its pink color. The blog ?s rose category offers more suggestions, and the following will get you started for this year’s Memorial Day and rose extravaganza:

? Bodegas Palacio Rioja Milflores 2013 ($11, purchased, 13.5%): Quality Spanish rose that overcomes goofy bottle hype — extolling the “fruit and flower-filled fields of Rioja” — to offer excellent value. Crisp and aromatic, with some cranberry fruit and even a little orange on the finish.

? Penya C tes Catalanes Rose 2012 ($9, purchased, 13.5%): One more in a long succession of solid, winning roses from the south of France, this from the Roussillion and made with mostly grenache. Look for some strawberry fruit, but also a stony finish.

? Pedroncelli Dry Ros of Zinfandel 2013 ($12, sample,13.2%): Another quality effort from Pedroncelli, with lots of juicy red fruit. Not as crisp as other roses or as it has been in the past, and made more in the style of the old Toad Hollow. Which is quite a compliment, actually.

? Mulderbosch Cabernet Sauvignon Ros 2013 ($10, sample, 12.8%): This South African rose is another example of terrific $10 rose. It seems to have lots more strawberry fruit this year, though it’s still dry. But I’m guessing that much of that fruit will become more integrated in the wine as it ages in the bottle.

More about Memorial Day and rose:
? Memorial Day and rose 2013
? Memorial Day and rose 2012
? Wine of the week: Alliance Loire La Clotiere Rose 2012
? Wine of the week: Chateau de Campuget Rose 2012

Wine to drink when your tree falls down

2013-08-06 07.10.27The picture pretty much tells the story. The biggest tree in my front yard finally succumbed to old age and the Texas heat last week, leaving a gaping spot on my lawn.

So what does one drink while commemorating the yeoman job the tree, a Bradford pear, did over seven years of blocking the sun and doing what it could to keep the house cooler? Obviously, nothing with oak:

? Dr. Pauly-Bergweiler Bernkastleler Riesling Kabinett 2010 ($21, sample, 7.5%). The high temperature was 104 the day the tree fell, so it was a trifle warm when my neighbor, Dave Hangar (perhaps the best plumber in Dallas) sawed while I gathered most of the branches out of the street. The Dr. Pauly was everything German riesling should be — lovely and balanced and off-dry, with low alcohol, candied lemon fruit, and a little petrol. A beautiful wine.

? Bodegas Valdesil MonteNovo 2010 ($18, purchased, 12.5%). I bought six bottles of this Spanish white (made with the godello grape) for $4 each at a sale, little knowing how handy it would come in over the past couple of weeks of 100-degree weather. It ?s still fresh and lively, with enough lemon and citrus to be noticeable and refreshing. More sophisticated than less expensive Spanish wine, and more of a food wine — seafood paella, perhaps?

? La Fiera Pinot Grigio 2012 ($8, purchased, 12%). The Wine Curmudgeon ?s antipathy to pinot grigio is well known, but I also have tremendous respect for La Fiera, which makes some of the best $10 wine in the world. In this case, the producer won out: This is quite possibly the perfect pinot grigio — a little lemon fruit and a restrained, quinine-like finish, three flavors, and not overdone in any way, Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2014 $10 Hall of Fame.

Wine when the air conditioning is broken

What do you drink when the air conditioning goes out and it isn’t fixed for 12 days at the beginning of a Texas summer? Cheap, lighter white wine, of course.

The actual air conditioning details — three repair companies and a home warranty company that did nothing illegal but acted with such bad faith that even I was surprised — are entirely too predictable in the post-modern, “the customer is our pigeon” world we live in. So I won’t bore you with them.

What matters here is my wine drinking dilemma. Because it was a dilemma. I review 150 wines a year on the blog, so I have to drink wine every day to make sure there is enough grist for the mill. But how does one taste heavy, tannic, alcoholic red wines when it’s as hot and sticky in the house as it is outside?

With great difficulty. The only reds I drank during that period at the end of May were lower alcohol pinot noirs from Don and Sons that I got for a Twitter Tasting a couple of days after the AC went out (and more on the wines in another post). There was plenty of red wine in the house, including three or four dozen recently-arrived samples (and, because that’s how these things work, almost all of the samples that came in May were red). But most of it was from the “Let’s make this wine with high alcohol because it’s more fun that way” school of California winemaking, and I was miserable enough without drinking that kind of wine.

So what’s a wine writer to do? These wines not only fit my situation, but should help anyone who needs hot weather wine advice or some porch-sipping suggestions:

• Rene Barbier Mediterranean White NV ($5, purchased, 11.5%): Regular visitors here know how much I like this Spanish blend, and it didn ?t let me down. The low alcohol really made a difference. I could drink three or four glasses without schvitzing even more than I already was.

• Giesen Sauvignon Blanc 2012 ($10, purchased, 13%): Solid if unspectacular New Zealand grocery store-style white with lots of grapefruit and not much else. But I wasn ?t looking for much else, just something to get me through the evening.

• Tavernello Vino Bianco D’Italia ($8, purchased 11.5%): An Italian white blend that wasn’t quite as well done as the Barbier, which it tasted like ? a little lemon fruit, but sweeter — despite being made with different grapes. Overpriced, though, by about one-half.

• St. James Pioneer White ($10, sample, 12.5%): Summer wine doesn’t get much better than this blend from Missouri, full of citrus and an almost oily richness. Serve this blind, and even the worst wine snob would enjoy it despite is regional pedigree.

• Da Vinci Pinot Grigio 2012 ($15, sample, 12.5%): You get what you pay for with this white from E&J Gallo — a varietally correct, if a bit fruitless and high on the mineral side, pinot grigio in the style that sells millions and millions of cases each year.

Wine of the week: Massamier La Mignarde Cuvee des Oliviers 2010

fiche-oliviers-roseThe name of this wine is a very long and very French way of saying that this is exactly the kind of rose that makes the Wine Curmudgeon smile. It ?s cheap and it ?s dry, but more importantly, it ?s full of summer and backyards and porches and barbecues.

The des Oliviers ($10, purchased) is from southern France and is mostly made with cinsault. In this, it ?s firmly in the French style ? some fruit (in this case, cranberry), but not the big dollops that give the impression of sweetness and so confuse so many wine drinkers into thinking pink wine means white zinfandel. This wine is about as far from white zinfandel as possible.

Also impressive: The des Oliviers is a bit floral on the nose, and its clean, crisp finish leaves you ready to take another sip.

Serve this chilled on its own, or with any summer activity. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2013 $10 Hall of Fame.