The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine of the week: Thorny Rose Sauvignon Blanc 2011

New Zealand sauvignon blancs were all the rage in the couple of years before I started the blog. One of them, Cloudy Bay, even got big scores from the Winestream Media, something that almost never happens to sauvignon blancs.

Since then, they’ve mostly faded into the store shelf and have become just another wine to buy. I’m not quite sure why; the fickle consumer, perhaps, who moved on to something else?

So I was surprised to see the Thorny Rose ($9, purchased, 13.5%), apparently a new label from Big Wine’s Constellation Brands. Who is doing new sauvignon blancs these days?

Be glad they’re doing this one. I expected another tepid grocery store New Zealand sauvignon blanc, with lots of sort of grapefruity fruit and not much else. Instead, I tasted lots of real grapefruit, as well as a tiny bit of tropical fruit in the middle and even an attempt at a finish. This is not a one-flavor wine by any means. (Though, if you click on the link to the wine, be warned: The copy reads as if it was written by someone my age trying to appeal to someone in their 20s.)

Serve it chilled with roast or grilled chicken or boiled or grilled seafood, and don’t forget how much sauvignon blanc likes garlic and parsley.

Wine of the week: Faustino 2010

Rioja – red wine made with the tempranillo grape from the Rioja region of Spain – has long been one of the world’s great wine values. The simplest Riojas, called crianza, are everyday wines that usually deliver tremendous quality for $10. That more of us don’t know about them is one of the many things that make the Wine Curmudgeon so cranky.

Bodegas Faustino, which has been making wine in Spain for 150 years, has long been known for its wines with Roman numerals – Faustino I, Faustino V, and Faustino VII. This Faustino ($10, purchased, 13%) is part of its “modern reds” line – a term that usually makes me run screaming into the night, hinting as it does of merlot blended into the mix, winemaking alchemy to produce sweet fruit, and lots of fake oak.

Happily, this “modern red” is terrific basic Rioja, with everything as it should be. Look for cherry fruit, bright acidity, earthiness and that wonderfully funky Rioja aroma. The only thing that seemed modern about it was better winemaking – no off flavors or smells, which can sometimes happen with old-style Rioja.

You can serve this with almost anything except a white cream sauce, which is one of the great strengths of Rioja. It’s especially fine with bean dishes.

Wine of the week: Line 39 Sauvignon Blanc 2010

Here’s today’s metaphysical question: Is Cecchetti Wine Company, which makes Line 39, an artisan producer because it’s family-owned, or part of evil Big Wine because its owners once worked for the company that makes Pepperwood Grove, about as $7 a grocery store wine as it gets?

Sometimes, we make wine harder than it needs to be.

The question we should be asking “What does the wine taste like?” And. as I noted for the 2009, the 2010 Line 39 ($10, purchased, 13.5%) is “more than I expected.”

It’s also interestingly different from the ‘09, with less fruit and more California grassy-ness (the smell of a freshly mowed lawn that is a hallmark of a certain kind of California sauvignon blanc). Look for some lime zest and a sort of slate finish – all clean and crisp. This is nicely done wine that, if it not quite $10 Hall of Fame quality, is the sort of thing to keep chilled around the house so it’s handy when you feel like a glass.

The Wine Curmudgeon's Guide to Cheap Wine

The Wine Curmudgeon has vowed, more than once, to never write another book. Let it be said that the horror stories you hear about publishers are true and leave it at that. And agents aren’t much better – see Raymond Chandler’s essay, “Ten Percent of Your Life.”

However, in today’s publishing world, you don’t need a publisher or an agent, so I don’t have any excuses. Hence the forthcoming publication of “The Wine Curmudgeon’s Guide to Cheap Wine,” which should be available in time for Mother’s and Father’s Day.

Look for the ebook at $9.95 and the paperback at $14.95. It will be for sale on the blog, as well as the usual Internet and digital retailers.

More, after the jump, including the video I made to promote the book on Kickstarter:

Wine of the week: Alaya 2009

There’s a certain style of Spanish wine that is decidedly un-Spanish but has become a particular favorite of the Winestream media. These wines are red, often made with garnacha, and are fruitier and higher in alcohol than most Spanish wines.

Having said that, some of them are actually worth drinking. We’ve covered Evodia on the blog (and I’ll be reviewing the new vintage later this year), and the Laya ($9, purchased, 14.5% alcohol) fits into that category as well.

It’s not quite a $10 Hall of Fame wine – the oak that’s there gives it an almost Adams Extract vanilla flavor. But everything else is present for great cheap wine, including lots and lots of black fruit that is neither sweet nor extracted – just intense. Yes, the alcohol is high, but the wine handles it well and you won’t flinch when you taste it.

It’s probably a bit much to drink on its own, but it would pair with most winter dinners, including beef stew and maybe even macaroni and cheese.

The original $10 Hall of Fame

The PDF at this link is a story called "Uncork It" that I wrote for the Southwest Spirit inflight magazine in 1999. It was the first appearance of what, today, is the $10 Hall of Fame.

How long ago was that? Randall Grahm still owned Big House wines (and I will no doubt get an email from him for bringing that up); I used the word checkbook, because we wrote checks in the 20th century; and I quoted Peter Granoff of a company called Virtual Vineyard, a predecessor to Wine.com that disappeared when the tech bubble burst.

No surprise to see Bogle on the list, of course, though I haven't seen the McGuigan in a store in years, and the Belvedere no longer exists. And how far ahead of my time was I with a regional wine and moscato?

As for the the Hogue fume and Jaja red blend: "Let us not burden our remembrances with a heaviness that's gone but distant memories," wrote Shakespeare, because those were two of the finest cheap wines ever. Versions are still around, but they're made by different companies and bear little resemblance to what they were. In fact, they gave me the idea for this story because I got tired of hearing people tell me you couldn't buy great wine for $10 when you could buy Hogue and Jaja.

The advice? As current as ever, and it's nice to be able to give credit to the people who first told me those things. And my editors at the time, Tracy Staton and Lori Stacy, deserve several waves o' the Curmudgeon's fedora. If they hadn't bought this story, who knows what I'd be doing now?

And is anyone surprised to see I was cranky about scores even then?

Winebits 263: Cheap wine edition

News about cheap wine from the cyber-ether, as part of 2013 $10 Hall of Fame celebration:

• How to buy cheap wine: This older post from the Brooklyn Guy Loves Wine blog offers some outstanding advice, including this: “Its excellence must derive from the smell and taste of the wine, and from its expression of place, not from the mere fact that it is palatable and costs $10.” Couldn’t have said it better myself. The only drawback? He recommends Chambers, one of the great wine retailers in the world, for its cheap wine selection, and 99 percent of us will never get a chance to shop there.

• These people make cheap wine: The Wine Spectator, of all places, has a two-parter about four winemakers who make wine that I write about. It’s a bit sloggy to get through, but worth the effort if only for the technical information one doesn’t see much elsewhere. At Chateau Ste. Michelle, for example, wine is produced in two facilities, using 82,574 barrels and 475 stainless-steel tanks. Some of the tanks hold as much as 380,000 bottles of wine.

• Seal of approval: Eater, a very au courant website for people who call themselves foodies, has decided that cheap wine is in. Jordan Mackay, who writes for San Francisco magazine, reports that "it's never been a better time to be a cheap wine drinker. Maybe I've just been bludgeoned for too long into thinking I needed to spend more for decent quality and interest. Spending less on wine makes me happy on its own, but the fact that often times I actually prefer the unadorned, straightforward, and open nature of such wines makes it a win-win.” Shocking news, no?