The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine review: Yosemite Road Chardonnay NV

The Wine Curmudgeon really, really wanted to like this wine, which is one of the two, new $4 private label wines from 7-Eleven. But, unfortunately, it tastes like $4 wine.

This means the Yosemite Road (purchased) doesn't have enough varietal character -- the green apple and pear flavors that chardonnay is supposed to have aren't really there. And it wasn't especially balanced, as if more acid had to be used to compensate for the fruit quality.

This, obviously, won't bother everyone. The clerk at the 7-Eleven where I bought the Yosemite said he was selling quite a bit because it was so cheap. And, for those who like to keep a couple of bottle of the various ultra-cheap wines around the house because they are so cheap, the wine is probably OK.

The Yosemite had more off-tastes than some of the Trader Joe Two Buck Chucks I've tried, which are just thin and watery as opposed to off-putting. It didn't seem as well done as Walmart's $3 wine, but I haven't tasted that one in almost two years. And I've had some $6 wines, like Barefoot, which aren't appreciably better than any of these.

I only have one other question: Who will come up with a snazzy nickname for this wine, in the style of Two Buck Chuck?

7-Eleven wine, cheap wine, inexpensive wine, Yosemite Road, Two Buck Chuck, chardonnay

Some advice for wine PR people

There are two jobs in the wine business that the Wine Curmudgeon does not want to do. One is making wine, which is way too complicated. The other is doing wine public relations, since it means that I would have to deal with people like myself.

I mention this because the recession has not been kind to wine PR people, who are being asked to market wines that no one is buying, and they're being asked to do it by clients who don't always understand about the recession. As noted, I have seen an increase this summer and fall in cold calls from PR people, an excess of samples, and emails about wines and wineries that never would have contacted me in the past.

And the sad thing is that most of this extra activity hasn't helped. Most of the time, I'm no more inclined to write about their wine than I was before all the extra effort. I suppose, somewhere, there is someone who thinks $40 sparkling wine is affordable. But I don't, and it's a waste of time to try and convince me otherwise.

The emails and phone calls have increased over the past three or four weeks, as the holidays have pushed the PR world into hyper mode. But the problem is that these pitches, mostly for the holidays, haven't been very good. So, as a service to my friends who do this for a living, a few thoughts after the jump about what you can do to improve your efforts.

Wine of the week: Jim Jim Shiraz 2007

The Wine Curmudgeon is not a big fan of shiraz. The excessively fruity, alcoholic, inky style that is popular in the U.S. is almost undrinkable to those of us who see wine as a complement to a meal and not as an endurance contest.

That's why, when I find a wine like the Jim Jim (about $12, sample), I'm always happy to write about it. It has the characteristics of shiraz that make it interesting, like its fruitiness and spice, but it doesn't taste like it was made for a frat boy Friday night. Best yet, it's reasonably priced from a producer that offers value. Winemaker Hugh Hamilton is a bit of a curmudgeon himself, and takes pride in doing things a little differently from the rest of his fellow Aussies. There's a reason, he says, that his winery's symbol is a black sheep.

And yes, there is an actual Jim Jim -- he's the winery dog, getting older, reports Hamilton, but still as cantankerous as ever.

Pair the Jim Jim with almost any red meat -- steak frites come to mind -- and duck, which I ate with the wine, worked too.

wine reviews, Australian wine, wine of the week, shiraz, Jim Jim, red wine, Hugh Hamilton

Winebits 103: Bordeaux harvest, Robert Parker lawsuit, deceptive wine pricing

· Harvest of the century: One of the Wine Curmudgeon's favorite giggles is the annual appraisal of the Bordeaux harvest from the region's winemakers. So far, in the last 10 years, we have had four harvests described as vintages of the century -- 2000, 2003, 2005, and now 2009. Even the Wine Magazines have had enough of this foolishness: Gil Lempert-Schwarz, chairman of the Wine Institute of Las Vegas, said that the hype was “mainly a ploy” to offset falling sales amid the economic crisis. That's one reason why I don't do much in the way of harvest reports. Who is going to say the harvest is lousy?

· Parker, ex-aide drop lawsuits: Robert Parker and and his former translator Hanna Agostini have dropped their respective court actions against each other. It's incredibly complicated, but the cases revolve around a fraud that French authorities say Agostini perpetrated against a Dutch-Belgian wine company by pretending she was acting with the authority of Parker's Wine Advocate ratings empire.

· Is five-cent sale legitimate? A San Francisco man is suing Beverages & More, a West coast retail chain, claiming that its famous "five-cent" sales are deceptive advertising and should be stopped. BevMo, as the chain is known, will sell you a second bottle of wine for a nickel if you buy the first bottle for full price. The lawsuit alleges that BevMo inflates the price of the bottle so much that it's actually more expensive to use the nickel promotion than to buy two bottles at the normal price. This blogger discovered the same thing: Alamos malbec, mostly a $10 wine, being sold for $19.99 for the first bottle and five cents for the second.

Bordeaux harvest, Robert Parker. Beverages & More, five-cent sale

Wine review: Spy Valley Sauvignon Blanc 2008

New Zealand sauvignon blanc has become justly famous over the past decade, and many of us who pay attention to these things consider it to be the best sauvignon blanc in the world. The wines are fresh, well-made, food friendly and almost always deliver value. (And most of them use a screwcap, too.)

And Spy Valley may well produce the best sauvignon blanc in New Zealand.

The 2008 (about $16, purchased) is another in the producer's long line of classic New Zealand-style sauvignon blancs. It offers the region's telltale citrus aroma and flavor up front, but it's more complex than that. There's a tropical fruit middle (pineapple, maybe?) and a long mineral finish, both qualities that don't often show up in $16 wines.

You can drink it on its own, or with almost any shellfish that you can think of. Highly recommended.

sauvignon blanc, New Zealand wine, Spy Valley, white wine, wine reviews

7-Eleven gets into the $4 wine business

The news this week that the convenience store chain was launching a $4 wine brand called Yosemite Road sent chills of excitement through the Wine Curmudgeon. Finally, there was a Two Buck Chuck equivalent that I could buy at a store just three blocks from my house.

Not so fast, cheap wine breath.

Turns out 7-Eleven, through a wine producer called The Wine Group  (best known for not having a Web site and its Franzia and Big House labels), made hardly any Yosemite Road at all. There are just 3,500 cases in the U.S., split between cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay.  That's about what a small regional winery makes in a year. 7-Eleven's Kevin Elliott, senior vice president for marketing and logistics, said he expects most of the wine to be gone by the end of the month.

Or sooner, as the case may be. I stopped at four 7-Elevens yesterday (no sacrifice is too great in the pursuit of cheap wine), and none of them had the wine. If and when I get my hands on some, I'll review it. Or, if anyone else tries it, leave a comment or send me an email and I'll post it. Until then, a few thoughts about what it means that one of the world's largest retailers is getting into the very cheap wine business.

Update: "$10 wine is the new $100 wine"

The recession continues to pummel the wine business. Or, as wine business consultant Christian Miller of Full Glass Research told me recently: "I don't think the wine business is in denial. The differences have been too dramatic."

At the beginning of the year, I wrote that that experts who predicted a mild slump may be in for a surprise. And, in fact, says Miller, they mostly were surprised.

"There's been a total meltdown in the restaurant business," he says, "and a severe drop in high-end wines that cost more than $30. And there has been a significant shift in sales between what's selling and what's not."

What's selling is cheap wine -- so much cheap wine, in fact, that although total dollar sales for the year are expected to be down as much five percent (depending on whose study you believe), the total amount sold looks to be flat or even up a tiny bit.

Or, as Miller put it, "a radically different environment than just three years ago." More, after the jump: