The Wine Curmudgeon

Restaurant wine: What we're drinking, part II

This is the second of two parts looking at restaurant wine and what Americans drink. Part I is here.

The good news, if anyone in the restaurant business is paying attention, is that Americans want to drink interesting, quality wine in restaurants – if the restaurants will let them.

That was one of the most intriguing bits buried in this year’s Top 100 Wine Brands and Top 100 Individual Wines, a report compiled by Restaurant Wine magazine tracking restaurant wine sales in 2007.

Sales of some of the least interesting traditional wines declined in 2007, and there were sales boosts for several newcomers that were not the same old stuff. What does this mean? Forward-thinking restaurateurs, and even those who work for chains and corporations, can put together a more appealing and less expensive wine list.

10 things to like about Bordeaux

A few thoughts about Bordeaux, before I get home and write about how much fun this has been:

1. It's a pleasure to be in a country where people hold a wine glass by the stem.

2. Cheval Blanc is very, very good.

3. Bordeaux is quite pretty. Richard Carleton Hacker, who is on this press trip, said it looks like the kind of wine country that defines the term, the kind of ambiance that the rest of the world aspires to.

Wine review: Menage a Trois Red 2007

The menage (about $10), from Folie a Deux, is a very confusing wine, which has nothing to do with its double entendre marketing. It’s a red blend from California that isn’t heavy, tannic or alcoholic, which is so rare as to be worth mentioning. And the wine is supposed to have been aged in oak, but I’ll be damned if I could taste it. In fact, it tasted like a steel-aged Beaujolais.

Plus, it’s cheap and tasty. The blend of zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon and merlot is quite approachable, quite jammy and even juicy. It’s a style of wine that’s almost old-fashioned in California, harkening back to the days before Wine Magazines and point scores. Drink this with barbecue, fall picnic food like grilled corn on the cob, or even takeout pizza.

Technorati Tags: wine reviews,red wine blends,California wine,cheap wine,Menage a Trois

Three Australian winemakers, part I

This is the first of two parts about selected Australian wine and winemakers. The second part is here.

One of the Wine Curmudgeon’s favorite things to do is to taste wine with Australian winemakers, even though I’m not a huge fan of the Australian style of wine.

So why is it so much fun? Because most of the Australians I have dealt with are genuine, sincere, open-minded, and plain-speaking. This is a welcome change from U.S. winemakers, many of whom are scared to death of critics, and quite a few Europeans, who aren’t quite sure why they need to explain their wine to people like me.

But the Aussies? We just sit around and drink wine.

Wine of the week: Reds 2006

One of the few good reasons for using corks to close wines was when Reds had pictures of famous Bolsheviks on its corks. The Wine Curmudgeon still  has some Lenin and Trotsky corks in a drawer somewhere.

Reds (about $9) is a screw top these days, but the wine remains true to its mission –  a cheap, quality red wine blend that’s food friendly. It’s a little more fruit forward and raspberry jammy than it used to be, but it’s still a well-made wine that offers considerable value and deserves $10 Hall of Fame consideration. I drank it with roast chicken, and it would also do well with hamburgers, grilled sausages and spaghetti and meatballs.

Technorati Tags: wine reviews,red wine blends,California wine,Reds,cheap wine

Tuesday tidbits 44

• GrapeFest People’s Choice awards: One reason why the Wine Curmudgeon loves the event so much is because ordinary wine drinkers get to be completely honest about what they like. And this year, they liked mead – more specifically, mead from Purple Possum Winery in Navasota, Texas. The cranberry and habanero meads won their categories. And you know what? I have never been able to figure out what people like about mead.

• Updating the ultimate wine textbook: There’s a new version, with a new title, of the industry’s standard text. WineWise: Your Complete Guide to Understanding, Selecting, and Enjoying Wine, written by Culinary Institute of American professors Steven Kolpan, Brian H. Smith, and Michael A. Weiss. It’s $29.95, and should be out by the end of the month. It’s highly recommended (though the authors should know by now to include more about Texas).

• Wine intern meets wine harvest: The farming and production part of wine making is, to put it politely, a lot of work. William Goebel, an intern at Folie a Deux Winery, which makes some nice $10 wine (even some more expensive stuff) has decided to write about his experience, and it’s a lot of fun to read. My favorite, in a post about barrel samples: “That’s it, I have to give up, bed time at 6:45pm.” That’s the Wine Curmudgeon’s kind of guy.

Technorati Tags: GrapeFest,People's Choice awards,wine books,WineWise,grape harvest. William Goebel

If the world ends this week. ...

It’s probably going to be the Wine Curmudgeon’s fault. I’m going to be in Bordeaux Thursday through Monday on a wine trip, and on our itinerary are Cheval Blanc, one of the jewels of Bordelais winemaking, and perhaps Chateau Petrus, which produces one of the most expensive wines in the world.

Regular visitors here know that I like cheap wine. I thrive on cheap wine. It’s as much a part of me as my Chicago upbringing or my fondness for the Ramones. The minute that I set foot on the grounds of either of those two properties, I am terrified that the heavens will open, various people will be felled by lightning bolts, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will ride up.

As if the world doesn’t have enough problems already.