The Wine Curmudgeon

An expensive bottle of wine, January edition

The Wine Curmudgeon’s entire reason for being is cheap wine. Anyone can write about the pricey stuff; hell, there’s an entire industry devoted to the subject called the Wine Magazines. So when I get to chance to taste something that costs more than $10, I pay careful attention.

That’s what happened last week at a Dallas restaurant, Hector’s on Henderson, where  I shared a bottle of Domaine Amiot Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Desmoiselles 2003.

Wine of the week: Tamarí Malbec Reserva 2007

Knowing importers is as important as knowing producers (and probably worth a blog post of its own one of these days). After all, who can keep track of the thousands of foreign producers, many of whom are small and use another language?

So if you find a wine brought to the U.S. by a company like Kermit Lynch or Robert Kacher, it’s almost certain to be well made and a fair price. After tasting the Tamari (about $13), I think you can add its importer, Terlato, to that list. The wine, from Argentina, is not especially tannic or harsh, and the dark berry fruit is fresh and lively. Best yet, it’s not too jammy, as many malbecs at this price are. The Tamarai a step up from the Yellow + Blue, one of my favorite malbecs and a $10 Hall of Fame wine.

Serve this with any red sauce, meat loaf or hamburgers. It’s even pleasant enough on its own, which I find to be less true of more and more red wines.

Technorati Tags: wine reviews,wine of the week,Tamari Malbec,Terlato Imports,red wine,malbec,Argentine wine

Tuesday tidbits 59: Texas wine at the White House, wine packaging, iPod breathalyzer

• A big-time Texas recommendation: Lettie Teague, the executive wine editor at Food and Wine, told a California newspaper that president-elect Barack Obama needs to add some regional wine to the White House list. "As a New Yorker, I'd like to see some New York wines represented -- we were a huge state for him," she said with a laugh, suggesting a sauvignon blanc or cabernet from the North Fork region or a Finger Lakes Riesling. Other picks: a Washington state merlot, "because I feel they really do that grape well," a hearty California zinfandel and "to show that he is an all-inclusive sort, I would throw in a viognier from Texas." Nicely done. Can the Wine Curmudgeon suggest the Becker, McPherson and Brennan viogniers? And maybe we should recruit Teague for DrinkLocaWine.com?

• Boxes instead of bottles: Glen Ellen and Fish Eye will replace its four-packs of 187-milliliter bottles with a more environmentally-friendly four-pack of 250-milliliter Tetra Paks.This, by itself, is not that big a deal. Glen, Ellen, for example, probably sells most of its wine in 1.5-liter bottles, and these represent just a small portion of its sales. Plus, since the packages are bigger, they’ll cost more. But it is indicative of a trend that is apparently hear to stay. My pal John Palazzo, who is a packaging expert, discusses this here.

• Blow into your iPod, please: Attach this gizmo, called the iBreath, to the bottom of your iPod and you can tell if you’re too drunk to drive. There’s also a timer to remind you to check your blood alcohol level to see if it has gone down. And, believe it or not, the iBreath doubles as an FM transmitter. The cost is $79.

Technorati Tags: regional wine,Texas wine,wine boxes,iPod,iBreath

Donald E. Westlake, 1933-2008

In the early 1990s, during one of my other careers, I moderated a panel about mystery writing. It was my great good fortune that Donald Westlake was on that panel. I barely had to moderate at all.

Westlake died last week, and the obituaries described his talent and his proficiency – more than 100 books since his first novel was published in 1960. But what struck me about Westlake in the couple of years we kept in touch was how much he enjoyed actually being a writer – not the seeing your name on a book or signing autographs part, but the staring at the typewriter or going to the post office to see if a check had arrived part. To this day, I can’t believe that Westlake, who got movie money (a huge, big deal, which made him more secure than the rest of us) would come home and bellyache that some publisher had not sent a promised payment.

Westlake was also incredibly gracious and generous with his time and knowledge. He told about working with director Stephen Frears on The Grifters (Westlake got an Academy Award nomination) and his less happy experience as one of the writers for a TV disaster called Supertrain (he said he got fired). He also shared writing advice and recommended agents, neither of which he had to do.

The author Jo Walton put it best: “He is a writer that writers like.” There aren’t many better epitaphs than that.

Technorati Tags: Donald E. Westlake,obituaries

The 2009 $10 Hall of Fame

And it’s full of good news, detailing one of the best years for cheap wine since I started doing this almost 10 years ago.

The full list, with links to previous Hall of Fames, is here. You can also click on the link on the left sidebar. Briefly:

• No wine dropped out because it dropped in quality,  the first time in three years that has happened.

• I added five wines, including the Yellow+Blue malbec; Meridian’s chardonnay; the Les Jamelles wines from southern France; Domaine du Tariquet from Gascony; and Lockwood sauvignon blanc.

• If I wasn’t such a curmudgeon, I could have added 10 or 12 wines. The quality in 2008 was that good. But I don’t want this to turn into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Comments are most welcome on the selections.

Technorati Tags: cheap wine,$10 wine,inexpensive wine,#10 Wine Hall of Fame

Wine and cheese

Let’s start the New Year with a few thoughts on the cheese part of the classic wine pairing, courtesy of Monty Python. This is from the 1979 benefit for Amnesty International, called The Secret Policeman’s Ball, with John Cleese and Michael Palin reprising their TV series Cheese Shop roles. One word of warning: It’s live, and Cleese uses an epithet at one point. He also makes Palin crack up.

The blog will be back Monday with the $10 Hall of Fame. Happy New Year.

Technorati Tags: wine and cheese,cheese shop,wine pairings,Monty Python

Happy New Year from the Wine Curmudgeon

The blog is mostly off until Monday, when the 2009 $10 Hall of Fame makes goes up. Until then, this, from one of the early proponents of cheap wine, Carlo Rossi. This commercial is from the early 1970s (there are two others on the Rossi web site). A couple of notes: Burgundy, in those days, referred to almost any California red wine and not pinot noir from the Burgundy region of France, and Rossi was a real person – a distant relative of the Gallo family, whose company owned (and still owns) the brand.

It’s funny. Watch the commercial, and you’ll realize how little wine has changed in the U.S. in the past 35 years despite all the scores and wine writing and our supposedly improved and sophisticated palates. “It’s not fancy labels and big prices that make good wine,” says Carlo, and who can argue with that?

Technorati Tags: cheap wine,$10 wine,Carlo Rossi