The Wine Curmudgeon

Mini-reviews 4: Chateau St. Jean Fume, Angels’ Peak, Trefethen riesling, Mumm Brut Rose

• Chateau St. Jean Fumé Blanc 2008 ($13): Nicely done, value-priced version of this style of sauvignon blanc, which is aged in oak. It doesn’t taste like the sauvignon blanc most of us are used to, but it’s not supposed to.

• Terlato Vineyards Angels' Peak 2004 ($40): Still a little young, though I’m not sure how much it will improve. But it does get close to its goal -- replicating right bank Bordeaux (Pomerol) in a fruitier, richer Napa style. And, at $40, a value.

• Trefethen Dry Riesling 2008 ($22): How I remember Napa wine tasting: fresh, clean, vibrant and alive. Not as much acidity as German or New York rieslings, but more subtle and more sophisticated fruit. The catch, of course, is that it costs $22.

• Mumm Napa Brut Rosé NV ($24): Lovely, well-made bubbly -- fruity and dry, yet not overwhelmingly so. But, as with so many California sparklers, the price is going to scare people off.

Technorati Tags: wine reviews,Chateau St. Jean Fune Blanc,Angels' Peak,Trefethen Dry Riesling,Mumm Napa Brut Rose,white wine,red wine,sparkling wine

Alabama and pornographic wine labels

Yet another reason why we need to change the way alcohol is regulated in the United States:

An art poster from 1895 has been deemed pornographic by the Alabama Beverage Control Board, forcing distributors to remove a wine bearing its image from stores across the state.

The poster in question is the label for Cycles Gladiator, the line of $10 and $12 wine from California’s Hahn Family Wines. The Alabama distributor, MBC United, had to pull the wine from store shelves. The Alabama liquor authority, citing a consumer complaint, said the label had not been properly approved – even though it had been for sale in the state for three years. A Hahn spokesman said the label had been approved.

Why this is about more than prurient interest after the jump (and I promise – no Alabama jokes):

Wine of the week: Andeluna Torrontes 2008

A decade ago, torrontes from Argentina was going to be the next big white wine. It was cheap, it was fruity, and could be made off-dry. That meant it was sweet enough for people who didn’t like dry white wine but not so sweet that it offended the rest of us.

But that never happened. For one thing, there isn’t a whole lot of torrontes grown in Argentina, and producers haven’t planted more (I’m told there is actually some sort of vine shortage). For another, too many producers, faced with short supply and growing demand over the last decade, cut back on quality and raised prices. This might have made them some money, but didn’t do much for the wine’s reputation. I tasted some truly dreadful torrontes at a Two Wine Guys tasting last year – sugary sweet, dirty, and with very little varietal character. One even tasted like sauvignon blanc.

None of this is a problem with the Andeluna (about $10). It has torrontes’ tell-tale apricot and peach aroma and flavors, and though it’s a bit odd in the middle, it’s one of the best $10 torrontes I’ve had in years. Drink this chilled on its own, or with summer salads, grilled chicken or Thai food. It’s dry, but there is enough fruit so it will stand up to spicy food.

Technorati Tags: wine reviews,wine of the week,$10 wine,cheap wine,inexpensive wine,torrontes,Argentine wine,white wine

Winebits 88: The Bogle family, grapes aren’t selling, Starbucks as wine bar?

• Good news for Bogle: Regular visitors here know how much the Wine Curmudgeon appreciates Bogle Vineyards, whose wines are regulars in the $10 Hall of Fame. So it was good to hear that Patty Bogle, the family’s matriarch, is recovering from leukemia, and the fear that the family might have to sell is unfounded. Said Patty: “Anyone can make a great wine for $100 a bottle that you only have for your birthday. We want to make wine for the other 364 days." And they do, and I hope they keep doing so.

• High-end grapes aren’t selling: You know that recession that the wine business says we’re not having? Well, perhaps they’ll acknowledge it now, with a report from the great Dan Berger that says some industry analysts say that a good portion of the fruit, even in top locations such as Napa and Sonoma, may go unsold this year. Says one grower who can’t sell his grapes: "I have heard of some wineries which don't even have enough money to bottle last year's wine, and if that's the case, they certainly don't have enough money to buy grapes."

• Starbucks tests wine sales: How desperate is the world’s most over-hyped coffee chain, which has seen business slow and its stock price slump? Pretty desperate, apparently. Said one analyst: “I think it is a little bit of a risky move, especially if they were to do this on a large scale."

Technorati Tags: Bogle,wine and recession,premium grapes,Starbucks

John Cleese's Wine for the Confused

John Cleese of Monty Python is not only one of the funniest people in the world, but he knows his wine: There’s all “this awful nonsense that perpetuates all this awful snobbery about wine. …”

The video, courtesy of InCa Productions at You Tube, is a clip of a documentary Cleese did a couple of years ago. No cheese in it, unfortunately.

Technorati Tags: wine,John Cleese,wine documentaries

An elegy for Vern's Kitchen

The restaurant business, especially in Dallas, wears me out. It’s mostly about celebrity chefs and having the most expensive menu, and too often, it seems, the chefs cook for fame and fortune and not to satisfy customers.

This is why I was so sad to learn that one of my favorite restaurants in Dallas, a soul food joint called Vern’s Kitchen, closed last week. I can almost recite the menu by heart: short ribs, chicken and dumplings, chicken fried steak, meat loaf, stuffed bell peppers, greens, cabbage, smothered corn, white beans and black-eyed peas, sweet potatoes, and lemon pound cake (tightly, tightly, covered with plastic wrap). How much did I like Vern’s? They didn’t serve wine, and I still went as often as I could.

So why am I spending time on a wine blog writing about a soul food restaurant that didn’t serve wine? Because a great restaurant is like a great wine. It doesn’t matter how much it costs and it doesn’t really matter what’s on the menu or what the varietal is. Is the food real? Is the wine honest? Do the people cooking the food and making the wine care?

Wine terms: Residual sugar

Or, in laymen’s terms, how much sugar is left in the wine after fermentation is complete. The amount of residual sugar tells you how sweet the wine is going to be.

This is not a difficult concept to understand, though we do have to make a brief detour through chemistry class. Wine is made by adding yeast to grape juice from the crushed grapes. The yeast converts the sugar in the grape juice to alcohol, which is the process of fermentation. It’s similar to bread baking, in which the yeast eats the sugar in the flour and expels carbon dioxide, which makes the bread rise.

Fermentation can end naturally, when the yeast eats all the sugar and dies. When this happens, the wine has very little residual sugar, higher alcohol levels, and is considered dry. Or the winemaker can end fermentation early, before the yeast eats all the sugar. These wines have higher residual sugar, lower alcohol levels, and are sweet. (For the difference between sweet and fruity wines, go here.)

More, after the jump: