The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine of the week: Cune Rioja Blanco 2010

How much did I like this wine? I bought another white from the same producer that cost a couple of bucks more, and I didn’t even have to think twice about it. Just picked it up and put it in the cart. That doesn’t happen very often; if a wine costs more than $10, I’m often seen mumbling to myself in front of the shelf.

Even more impressive is that white wines from the Rioja region of Spain have traditionally been pretty awful – badly made and even oxidized.

None of that is the case here. The Cune ($10, purchased, 12.8%), made with viura, has enough white fruit to be noticeable, maybe some lemon peel, and is amazingly fresh and clean – very impressive given the track record for white Rioja. Chill this, drink it in the summer on its own or with salads or seafood. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2014 $10 Hall of Fame.

And yes, even though the company name is CVNE, the wine is called Cune. 

Wine review: Charles & Charles Rose 2011

The blog has made substantial progress in its five-plus years of existence – helping wine drinkers appreciate cheap wine and local wine in particular, and adding to the limited number of resources written in English for beginning wine drinkers.

Its great failing, though, has been in rose. No matter what I do, I can’t find a way to interest you in dry pink wine. The rose reviews are rarely well read, and at a time when thousands and thousands of people visit the blog, their poor showing seriously hurts my numbers.

Someone more business savvy or better attuned to the ways of the cyber-ether would get the message and cut back – or even eliminate -- the rose reviews. Needless to say, the Wine Curmudgeon is neither of those.

Because roses are worth drinking, even when it’s not summer. The Charles & Charles ($10, purchased, 13%) is bone dry, food friendly, balanced and fruity – the sort of wine that would go with any informal dinner, afternoon wine sipping, or friends in the living room. It has lots of strawberry and watermelon, which is balanced with pleasant acidity and a touch of minerality.

This is what U.S. rose should aspire to -- enough fruit to please Americans, but not so much as to confuse it with sweet, blush wine.

Wine of the week: A to Z Chardonnay 2011

From the scores are stupid department: Someone on CellarTracker, the blog’s unofficial wine inventory web app, gave the A to Z chardonnay an 85. If this wine is only an 85, I’m going to start writing rave reviews of over-oaked, too alcoholic California chardonnay.

To be fair, I can can understand why someone would not treat Oregon's A to Z ($10, purchased, 13.5%) with the respect it deserves. It doesn’t have any oak, and if you expect chardonnay to taste like a vanilla milkshake, then this wine will confuse you and you’ll score it lower. Which is just one of the many reasons why scores are stupid, since they don’t account for individual likes and dislikes. In wine, one size does not fit all.

What the A to Z does have: Crisp, juicy green apple fruit, classic for this style of chardonnay; a little richness at the back, which makes up for the lack of oak; and an intensity that is quite refreshing. Serve this chilled on its own, or with any white wine dish that isn’t too rich, and especially grilled seafood. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2014 $10 Hall of Fame – unless, of course, you like a lot of oak with your chardonnay.

Wine of the week: La Fiera Primitivo 2011

One of the questions we got during our Savor Dallas wine event last week was about price: Is there really all that much good $10 wine?

Several people, knowing the Wine Curmudgeon’s reason for being, chuckled. I was actually quite restrained, since I was in public and did not not want to embarrass myself or the other people on the panel. Throwing things and jumping up and down tends to do that.

In fact, I spoke barely at all, and when I did it was to recommend the La Fiera ($8, purchased, 13%), an Italian red that is everything a cheap wine should be – varietally correct and indicative of its place, all the while treating the consumer with respect.

Primitivo may or may not be zinfandel; I’ve tasted some that had nothing in common, and some, like this, that show that the grapes are related. Look for some black pepper on the nose and more dark red fruit than I expected (zinfandel characteristics). This is not a perfect wine – the vanilla on the back was annoying and the wine would have benefitted from less oak or chips or whatever. But it cost $8 – how much more could I want?

Drink this with takeout pizza, any Italian-American dinner, or even hamburgers on the grill. I just hope the people at the panel take my advice.

Wine of the week: Barahonda Monastrell Sin-Madera 2010

The joy of wine – the absolute, most wonderful thing – is tasting something you’ve never had before and knowing that it’s something you want to drink again and again.

Such was the case with the Barahonda ($9, purchased, 14%), a red wine from Spain made with monastrell and from another regions that only Patrick Mata at Ole Imports seems to have hard of.

How impressive was this wine? It’s a previous vintage, and whenever an $10 wine still tastes like this, imagine how wonderful it will be when it’s the current vintage. Look for a funky Spanish aroma -- the wine geeks call it barnyard, but that doesn’t do it justice. It’s an earthy, intriguing smell that always makes me think of Spain. There is also some dark fruit, lots of spiciness and not a bit of oak.

It’s a food wine, as many Spanish wines are, and really needs something like grilled meat to show it at its best. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2014 $10 Hall of Fame.

Wine of the week: Dry Creek Dry Chenin Blanc 2011

I’m doing research for an upcoming blog post about U.S. wine sales – what varietals we’re drinking, the brands we’re buying, and so forth. Chardonnay, not surprisingly, is still the white wine of choice for most of us.

This wine and grape are not high on those lists. Which, frankly, is a shame. The Wine Curmudgeon has long been an advocate of chenin blanc, a white wine grape that is fairly well known in France but is known in the U.S., if at all, for indifferently made sweet wine. Chenin blanc is much better than that.

The Dry Creek ($10, purchased) is not indifferently made and is not sweet. In fact, It's one of the few wines in the world that isn’t reisling that lists the residual sugar on the label -- 0.6 percent, which makes it as dry as many red wines. (Though, given that hardly any consumers know what residual sugar is, it’s more a good idea in effort than execution).

Look for lots of white fruit aromas, a little lemon peel fruit, and a sort of slate-like, fruit pit finish. This is a wonderful alternative to chardonnay, especially for salads, grilled vegetables, and cheese courses.

Wine of the week: Cusumano Nero d'Avola 2011

One day, perhaps, Sicily will take its place as one of the world’s great wine regions. The Winestream Media will flock there, and its members will write glowing 94-point reviews about wines made with grapes most people have never heard of. The region’s winemakers will become celebrities, starring in glossy cover photos and showing up in wine gossip columns.

Until then, let’s drink the wine and not let anyone else know how well done it is.

Case in point is the Cusumano ($10, purchased), yet another Sicilian wine that is stunning in its combination of value and quality. It’s made with the nero d‘avola grape, common on the island, and one that gives the wine a dark, plummy and almost earthy character. Which, of course, is not what most of us expect from a $10 red wine. There is no sweet fruit, no winemaking alchemy to take out the tannins and smooth out the acid. You get what the terroir and the grapes offer, and that’s a drinkable, impressive hearty red wine of the kind not found often enough in California.

Pair this with a red sauce, roast chicken, hamburgers or sausage. And if someone asks you where you got it or how much it cost, mumble your answer so it stays our secret.