The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine review: High Note Malbec 2007

Malbec, despite its surge in popularity over the past couple of years, remains a mystery to most U.S. wine drinkers. Is it supposed to be an easy drinking wine, similar to California merlot? Or is it supposed to be a little more complicated, like a mid-priced French wine?

The answer may well be the High Note (about $13), which makes room for itself between those two groups. The wine, put together by the company that brought the world Fat Bastard, isn’t completely malbec. Rather, winemaker Fernando Buscema blends the malbec with cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, and petit verdot. The result is a wine with quality malbec fruitiness but more backbone than most malbecs.

Serve this everything from spaghetti to roast lamb to roast chicken. One warning, though: availability may be limited. Enough of the wine was made – the catch will be getting it into U.S. retailers.

Technorati Tags: wine reviews,malbec,High Note

Wine of the week: Douro Vale do Bomfim 2006

Portuguese red wines are so little known that that they might as well be made on Mars. When’s the last time you saw a Portuguese wine on a retail shelf?

This is a shame, because Portuguese wines almost always offer value, and often tremendous value. Forget that you’ve never heard of the wine regions and that you can’t begin to pronounce the names of the grapes (most of which are also used to make port). Focus on the wines, which are food-friendly, very accessible, low in alcohol, and fruity and tannic without being overwhelming.

That’s an especially accurate description of the Vale de Bomfim (about $12), which is the third or fourth cheap, quality Portuguese red that I’ve tried this year. (Among the others: the Altano 2006). It’s a quintessential summer red wine, the kind that will pair with burgers and barbecue and long Sunday afternoons with not much to do.

Technorati Tags: wine reviews,red wine,wine of the week,Portuguese wine,cheap wine,inexpensive wine,Douro Vale do Bomfim

Winebits 85: California grape harvest, three-tier system, Aussie wine troubles

• Big 2009 crop: Expect to see one of the biggest harvests since 2005 this year, reports Paul Franson in Wines & Vines. Estimates are that it will be one-half million tons bigger than 2008, and will approach the epic 2005 harvest. That one was so big that it took the state several years to work its way through all of the grapes. For wine drinkers, this should be good news by lowering grape prices and boosting quality for mid-priced wines.

• Appeals court upholds New York law: This is not unexpected, given the 2005 Supreme Court decision that legalized direct shipping between wineries and consumers didn’t lift the restriction that barred consumers from buying wine from out-of-state retailers. Still, the appeals court’s logic was interesting. It wrote that the three-tier system, which requires producers to sell to wholesalers and wholesalers to sell to retailers, prevents “the existence of a 'tied' system between producers and retailers, a system generally believed to enable organized crime to dominate the industry." Which century do the appeals court judges live in?

• What went wrong in Australia: This article, by the New York Times’ Meraiah Foley, is the best explanation I’ve seen about the crisis facing the Australian wine industry.My favorite quote: “But that wave soon turned into what Mr. Hayward described as ‘a perfect storm of laziness’ in which no one — neither wine media nor importers nor the top United States sommeliers — felt the need to learn much about Australia besides South Australian shiraz.” That’s so accurate I wish I had written it.

Technorati Tags: California wine,2009 harvest,direct shipping,three-tier system,Australian wine

Expensive wine, July 2009 edition: Olivier Leflaive Meursault 2002

I found the Leflaive Meursault on a closeout a couple of years for $40. In my notes, I wrote: “I overpaid for this, but it is a 2002. I'm going to let it sit for a couple of years, at least, and get my money's worth out of it.”

Once again, the Wine Curmudgeon amazes himself with how little he knows about wine.

I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote that. Leflaive is a top Burgundian producer and 2002 is a top Burgundian vintage. The wine more than lived up to its price, and my regret is that I didn’t buy a second bottle. It was full of green apples, almost a clove-like spiciness, and the oak was wonderfully integrated. It was a bit young, but still eminently drinkable. I have a flock of $40 California chardonnay in the wine closet (white Burgundy is the same thing as chardonnay) that wouldn’t come close to this in a trillion years.

I drank this with roast chicken, green noodles tossed with some of the chicken fat rendered during cooking, and a green salad with lettuce from the Wine Curmudgeon garden. Anyone who wonders why some of us get so excited about wine need to try that dinner, and they’ll understand.

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Happy Fourth of July

The 2007 fireworks finale from the annual Bernkastel-Kues wine festival in Germany, courtesy of timandsaundra at You Tube. Because one can mix wine and fireworks (and because the Wine Curmudgeon really likes fireworks).

Enjoy the holiday.

Technorati Tags: wine festivals,festivals,Bernkastel-Kues

Wine review: Charles Shaw Sauvignon Blanc 2007

Let it never be said that the Wine Curmudgeon doesn’t go to the ends of the earth to track down wine. Or, in this case, to Trader Joe’s in Santa Fe, N.M.

This white wine is one of the legendary Two Buck Chucks – given its name because it costs $1.99 at Trader Joe’s in California (though it’s $2.99 in New Mexico and $3.49 at points farther east). So what do you get for $2.99?

A very ordinary wine, actually, which was quite disappointing. There was very little to it, save for a bit of grassy aroma. But there wasn’t much fruit, nothing in the middle and barely a finish at all. The wine was not flawed in any way; it just wasn’t very interesting. As I write this, I’m wondering: Did it just get old and wear out?

In this, it was different than the Two Buck Chuck sauvignon blanc that I tasted several years ago. But that’s not surprising. As noted, the winemaking process for many cheap wines is not about quality, but about price. The producer uses grapes that allow it to sell a wine for a certain price, not to taste a certain way. Some years, the quality of the grapes at that price is better than in other years, and the wine tastes better – an unintended benefit.

But, at $2.99, was it a value? Probably, because it is so cheap. But I’d argue that all of the wines in the $10 Hall of Fame offer better value.

Technorati Tags: Two Buck Chuck,wine reviews,white wine,sauvignon blanc,cheap wine,$10 wine,inexpensive wine,California wine

Fourth of July wine 2009

There was news this week that beer replaced wine as this country’s favorite alcoholic beverage, which did not surprise the Wine Curmudgeon. I never really believed the survey that said otherwise.

That’s because the wine business still gets its jollies by positioning wine as an “elite” drink, something that people who are better than the rest of us drink. Given that attitude, it’s not surprising that more Americans drink beer.

Case in point: How many July 4 wine articles will you see in the Mainstream Media or on the Internet? Hardly any, since most of the people who write them don’t see any connection between wine and a backyard, barbecue holiday.

But I understand the connection – it’s a party, dammit. My recommendations are after the jump: