The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine of the week: Aldi private labels

Aldi, with 1,000 stores in 29 states, has just opened a dozen or so outlets in the Dallas area. Which means the Wine Curmudgeon has been busy sampling the discount grocer's private label wines, none of which costs more than $8. The results were mixed: The $3 wine pretty much tasted like $3 wine, though the $5 and $6 wines were a bit better.

Aldi, in fact, probably gets more publicity for its wine than it deserves. It only sells 15 kinds of wine, and it's nowhere near the wine operation that Trader Joe's, with its Two Buck Chuck, is. The Aldi wines are made by a handful of major producers; Winking Owl, a $3 line of California wines, is a Gallo product, while the Argentine malbec comes from the company that makes Marcus & James wines.

What's worth drinking? The Landshut Riesling ($6, purchased) was comparable to $8-$10 German rieslings like Clean Slate and Polka Dot. It's sweet, but not overwhelmingly so, and there is a bit of balance. Serve it chilled, and it's adequate for porch sipping and spicy takeout.

My favorite was the Charles De Monteney merlot ($6, purchased) from France. It reminded me of cheap Bordeaux that I drank 20 years ago, with bell pepper aromas and fruit that was a bit green. It's not for everyone, but if you're tired of cheap, California-style wines that are too fruity, it's worth trying.

cheap wine, Aldi, inexpensive wine, private label wine

Winebits 126: "Flight to value," fake chardonnay, best sommeliers

• Consumers still want value: Which, of course, is only surprising to those in the wine business. But a report by Moody’s Economy.com says the dramatic shift to lower-priced wine is expected to continue this year, reported the North Bay Business Journal. Said the report: "“For smaller wineries, the combination of falling sales and accumulating inventories has been damaging to their balance sheets. The number of defaults and foreclosures of wineries in the ... surged last year."

• Aussie chardonnay fraud: The former head of an Australian wine company has been found guilty of selling chardonnay adulterated with grape juice, and his customers included leading box wine producer Hardys. Decanter reports that the scam was first uncovered in 2003, when thousands of liters of so-called chardonnay sent to major winemakers, including Hardys, was quarantined by the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation after buyers raised doubts over what was in the product. Some of it turned out to be sultana grape juice. Note to Winestream Media and hysterical bloggers: This is a much bigger deal than the three-tier bill introduced in Congress that everyone is throwing a fit about. In the last several years, several of the world's biggest wine producers have been selling wine that wasn't what they said it was. Why aren't you writing about that?

• Frenchman named best sommelier: Gerard Basset, who is co-founder of the Hotel du Vin chain of and president of the Court of Master Sommeliers, has won the World's Best Sommelier Competition in Santiago, Chile. He bested 51 other contestants and survived a grueling 40 minutes of practical tests to take the title. That included blind tasting and describing in detail four different wines, aw well as identifying eight spirits in three minutes. Said Basset: "It's the most difficult thing I've ever done."

cheap wine. value wine, wine recession, chardonnay fraud, best sommelier

More bad news for direct shipping

And no, it's not necessarily the bill introduced in Congress that would reaffirm the power of the states to regulate alcohol sales within their boundaries. And no, it's not necessarily several recent federal court decisions that seem to strike at the Supreme Court's establishment of direct shipping in 2005.

And it's not even the request by 39 state attorneys general, asking Congress for relief from what the attorneys general called the "the growing threat" of deregulation.

Rather, says Tampa lawyer Richard Blau, one of the foremost experts in alcohol law in the U.S., what matters is what's going on behind the scenes, because that's what's driving these developments. And that is the re-emergence of the country's beer, wine, and spirits distributors as a potent political force in the battle over direct shipping and the reform of the three-tier system.

What's going on and why wine drinkers need to be concerned that they could lose the ability to buy wine from out-of-state wineries, after the jump.

Wine review: Dancing Coyote Albarino 2007

Well-made wine. Interesting grape. Limited availability. Is it any wonder that the Wine Curmudgeon gets so cranky?

Albarino is an important white wine grape in Spain, but done very little elsewhere. Hence I was quite excited to taste the California Dancing Coyote (about $11, sample), and was quite pleased with the results. It had more and softer fruit (almost tropical) than a Spanish albarino, which has more lemon. It also retained a lot of Spanish appeal. This is difficult to describe, but if the wine was a character in a film noir, it would say, "If you don't like me, tough. Go drink some over-oaked California chardonnay. I really don't care."

Drink this with seafood, main course salads, or by itself on the porch. Highly recommended.

albarino, wine reviews, Dancing Coyote, Spanish wine, white wine

Update: Are your blog pages loading?

We think we've found out what's going on, and thanks to TypePad for pursuing this. Turns out that the problem is being caused by the incredible success of the blog. Really.

Some of the ads that are running in the left and right hand columns are so complicated and so sophisticated, because the blog's visitors are so in demand by advertisers, that the code used for the ads is confusing some browsers. Which is mostly Microsoft's Internet Explorer products.

What can you do if you're having these problems? I recommend switching to the Firefox browser, which is safer and easier to use than Explorer. It's a free download, simple to set up, and offers add-ons -- ways you can customize Firefox for your particular needs, also free.

And, if the problem continues, I'll consider taking the offending ads off. I'd rather people be able to read the blog. If they can't, what's the point of doing it?

Oswald Mosley, Elvis Costello, and wine

Trust me. There's a link here.

Oswald Mosley was a British Fascist leader and pal of Adolf Hitler, and Hitler attended Mosley's wedding in 1936. One of Costello's fine early songs was the reggae-tinged "Less than Zero," which was about Mosley: "They're gonna take a little break and they'll be back after a while/Well, I hear that South America is coming into style."

The Wine Curmudgeon saw Elvis for the first time at the Uptown Theater in Chicago in 1981. Squeeze opened, in what was a New Wave fan's delight, and I even found a girl to go with me -- quite an accomplishment for the Wine Curmudgeon in those days. I've been an Elvis fan for more than 30 years, though I do wonder what he is doing appearing at events like the Academy Awards.

And Mosley, it turns out, collected wine. Bonhams, the English auction house, is offering 10 bottles from Mosley's collection next month. They include Cheval Blanc and Mouton Rothschild, and the Cheval Blancs are apparently quite interesting. All of which means that Mosley's taste in wine was much better than his politics.

Plus, after the jump, a video of Elvis doing "Less than Zero" and "Mystery Dance," from a benefit concert in 2007 with Clover, the band that backed him on his first album, My Aim is True. The video is from rdshp at YouTube.

Wine of the week: Château de la Ragotière Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine 2007

The Wine Curmudgeon was trapped in one of "those" restaurants on Saturday night. You know the kind: The waiter knew he was much better than where he was working, and acted accordingly. There were a couple of bosses on hand, and they didn't do anything other than tell the employees what they were doing wrong. We had someone else's dinner brought to our table, and we didn't get one of the items we had ordered. "The kitchen forgot to make it," said the waiter.

So what did I do to stop from making a scene? Ordered a bottle of the Ragotiere (about $13, purchased), famous for its black label (though I did have to "remind" the waiter to take the wine order). This is one of those wines that has been around so long that I take it for granted. But it bailed me out on Saturday night. Plus, it has a screwcap.

The Ragotiere is from the Muscadet, which is in the Loire region of France, and it's made with a lesser known grape, called melon de bourgogne. Those are two reasons why the wine isn't better known, especially at retail. Because it's certainly worth drinking. Look for lemon fruit, but in a crisp, refreshing manner and without the concentrated acidity of some sauvignon blancs. It's the perfect shellfish wine, as well as handy to have around when you want to take a deep breath and relax.

wine reviews, wine of the week, white wine, Muscadet, Ragotiere, French wine