The Wine Curmudgeon

Holiday wine gift guide

Just in time for the beginning of the holiday shopping season (but if you think the Wine Curmudgeon is going to be in a store at 4 a.m. today, then you haven’t been paying attention).

Happy Thanksgiving

The Wine Curmudgeon hopes you enjoy the holiday, and that you spend it doing what you want with people you want. And I think everyone will enjoy the video, courtesy of halyhsit at YouTube.

If these two can open a bottle of sparkling wine, anyone can.

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Wine of the week: Osborne Solaz Cabernet-Tempranillo 2006

There is a chance this isn’t the world’s most perfect cheap wine. But it’s a very small chance. This Spanish red is $7, and it has body and structure that most $7 wines can only dream of. It has remarkable fruit; usually, cheap wine either has body or fruit, but rarely both.

What’s even more impressive is that the Solaz is consistent from vintage to vintage, something else that you don’t see in quality cheap wine. Most good inexpensive wines will have a four-, five-, or six-year run, and then fade from the scene like old ballplayers. That’s what happened to two of my all-time favorites, Hogue’s sauvignon blanc and a red blend from France, Jaja de Jau. Great wine, and then not great.

But not the Solaz. How good is it? Even Robert Parker agrees with me, and how often does that happen?

This should please the cabernet drinkers at Thanksgiving dinner. But save it for Saturday night when everyone has gone home and you’re alone and worn out and you feel like take out pizza. Open the Solaz then, and marvel at how they do it.

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Tuesday tidbits 54: Wine and health, boxed wine, Jackson Browne

• Wine and health: Three items to consider – that a red wine pill may help cut obesity, that a glass of wine may contain dangerous levels of heavy metals, and that wine drinking may prevent dementia. The Wine Curmudgeon notes these not because he believes any of them, but because it’s interesting that researchers are hopping on the wine bandwagon. I wonder: Is it easier to get grant money for a wine project than for something else?

• Down Under’s wine in the box: Australia, which popularized the wine box, seems to be losing interest in the product. Its share of the Aussie wine market fell from 60 per cent to 40 per cent in the past decade, thanks to screw cap bottles, cheaper bottled wines, poor margins and heavier taxes. If boxed wine can’t make in Australia, where it has been immensely popular for almost 40 years, how is it going to make it in the U.S.?

• Jackson Browne wine: The singer-songwriter, apparently, will not be running on empty. (We will now pause while the Wine Curmudgeon apologizes for that last sentence. Sorry.) Browne may turn his California ranch into a winery. The singer says he has the perfect soil and weather conditions to grow grapes.

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Thanksgiving wine suggestions

Wine types love to agonize over Thanksgiving. How can anyone possibly pair wine with a meal that includes so many things that are so different? In other words, wine types agonize too much. Or, as Jacques Pepin, who has cooked for everyone from French presidents to TV audiences, told me: Get a bottle of red and a bottle of white, put them on the table, and let people drink what they want.

In fact, Thanksgiving wine can be that easy. Thanksgiving dinner is supposed to be fun, and not a wine final exam. So when you plan your dinner, plan on serving a couple of different kinds of wine. They don’t have to be expensive or highly rated. They just have to be enjoyable.

Times Ten Cellars

This is one of an occasional series detailing Texas wineries. The complete list is here.

This Dallas winery, soon to add a location in Fort Worth, is the leader in a Texas trend: a winery that is more wine bar than winery. It’s similar to the brewpub phenomenon that was was popular 15 years ago, but seems (in Texas, anyway) to have more staying power.

It’s not unusual for a winery to sell the wine it makes. At Times Ten, though, the business is more than tourists passing through for a couple of tastes before going to the next stop. Its customers are people who stop in for a glass or two of wine on their way home from work or who meet for an evening of sipping and chatting.

Wine review: George Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau 2008

The good news is that the Duboeuf nouveau has some character this year. It's not the soft, soapy, banana frosting wine that it was last year. There is actually more of a berry aroma, and even some tannins and acid in the back. All told, this vintage is a marked improvement over most of the past several years.

The bad news is the price. The Duboeuf costs as much as $14 in Dallas, and that's silly. Nouveau's entire reason for being is that it's cheap, since it doesn't age. When nouveau starts to cost as much as red wine that has spent six or nine months in oak, there is very little incentive to drink it. The Duboeuf went on sale in Paris today at 6.5 euros, which is a bit more than $8. That's probably closer to the right price.

In fact, this has been a very controversial year for nouveau. There were evens calls to boycott the wine because it isn’t especially eco-friendly. I mentioned this earlier, but my cohort in regional wine, Dave McIntyre, had an even better take on how silly a boycott was.

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