The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine of the week: Vignerons de Caractere 2007

The Caractere (about $7, purchased) is cheap French wine the way the Wine Curmudgeon remembers it -- interesting and inexpensive, and not tasting in any way like California wine. In fact, if it had a screwcap, the Caractere would be close to perfect.

It's a red blend of syrah and grenache from southern France that doesn't have much fruit (plums, perhaps?), but does have lots of earthiness and enough tannins and finish to make it pleasant to drink. Serve this with any wintery stew or beef dish, or use it to make coq a vin.

Highly recommended and a candidate for the 2011 Hall of Fame (hint, hint to the Texas wine business, which produces some quality syrah and grenache).

wine reviews, red wine, French wine, wine of the week, cheap wine, $10 wine

Winebits 115: Lighter wine bottles, 2009 wine sales, British bubbly

• One-third less bottle: The world's lightest wine bottle is on supermarket shelves in Great Britain. It weights 300 grams (about 10 1/2 ounces), 30 percent less than the standard bottle. This is another initiative from European retailers to reduce bottle weight and thereby cut carbon emissions. I did a story for the trade magazine Vineyard & Winery Management about this last year (unfortunately, there is no link), and the Europeans are much more serious about this than most U.S. producers are.

• 2009 was "brutal": That's from no less an authority than wine business consultant Jon Frederickson. "Usually, we're raving about how great the year was," he told a group of winery professionals and grape growers. "But this was probably the worst year you ever had." Shipments of California wine were down 4 million cases, a drop of nearly 4 percent from 2008 -- the worst showing in 16 years.

• English wine smacks French: And we thought it couldn't get any worse for Champagne, which is enduring its worst sales slump in decades. But British producer Nyetimber recently won a blind tasting in Italy, besting some of the best Champagne houses, including Bollinger and Louis Roederer. (This reference has been struck out because the Wine Curmudgeon is boycotting Roederer products.) There were 52 entries in the category and Nyetimber was the only producer to have two wines make it into the top 17.

wine bottles, wine sales, Champagne

Darryl Beeson, the Wine Guy

One of the great moments of the Wine Curmudgeon's career came during my semi-regular appearances on Darryl Beeson's all too short-lived Dallas radio show. Every Sunday afternoon, Darryl would lead travel expert Kevin Kalley and myself through two hours of wine, food and travel.  Darryl actually made me sound knowledgeable.

Darryl died last week at 54, after complications following a car accident. He will be much missed.

One of the best things about this business is that there are so many good people in it. When I started writing about wine, Darryl was one of the leading wine experts in Dallas. He had worked for many of the top restaurants in town, and his work had appeared in a variety of prestigious publications. He knew everyone, and everyone knew Darryl. He was The Wine Guy, always nattily attired in sport coat and bow tie.

But Darryl always had time for people like me, then and now. I called him once when I was starting out to ask him if Beaujolais was a part of Burgundy. It's a simple question, but Darryl was happy to answer it, and he explained the differences to me without getting annoyed. I'm grateful we chatted on the phone about a month ago, and he was as generous as always with his kind words and advice.

His old pal Jim White, who runs the Savor Dallas wine festival and gave Darryl his start on radio in the 1990s, said it best: Darryl was a good soul, and there weren't many like him.

Darryl Beeson

Wine competition season is underway

The Wine Curmudgeon is spending today and tomorrow at The Dallas Morning News Wine Competition, one of the most prestigious in the country. I mention this not to give myself a tip o' the fedora (there will be plenty of people there who know more than I do), but to note the beginning of the wine competition season.

Wine competitions are an odd duck. Lately, there has been much rumbling about whether they're fair or not, including a study in a learned journal about judging bias. And that doesn't take into account that most commercially made wine is made competently enough to deserve at least a bronze medal. It's not unusual to see competitions give some sort of medal to more than half of the wines entered, which does make one wonder about the value of the medal.

Having said this, competitions play a key role the wine business. In Dallas, consumers flock to retailers when The Morning News results are announced to scoop up the medal winners that have obliging been put on sale. It's really a sight to see. And there are lots of competitions across the country: I've already judged one, and I'm going to do four more and maybe a fifth.

Hence a new feature here, which you'll find on the left hand side of the page -- Wine competition notes from the events that I've judged. I'll update it every time I do one, and let you know a note on the blog. The first one is the Virginia Governor's Cup.

wine competitions, wine judging, Dallas Morning News competition