The Wine Curmudgeon

2011 $10 Wine Hall of Fame preview

The work is mostly done for the fifth annual $10 Wine Hall of Fame, which will appear on the blog on Jan. 3. I'm still doing some fine tuning, but most of the decisions about which wines will drop out and which wines will be added have been made.

We're even going to do a special Internet radio kickoff for the 2011 $10 Hall -- 8 p.m. central on Jan. 2 on Olivia Wilder's Art of Living program on Blog Talk Radio. Olivia and I will talk about the wines, take questions from listeners, and field queries from the show's chat room.

The good news is that there were many great $10 wines in 2010, and I'll probably add a half dozen or so to the Hall. The recession focused consumer attention on cheap wine, and wine drinkers discovered that they didn't have to pay $15 or $20 or more for quality wine.

The bad news is that I tasted way too many flabby and dull $10 wines over the past year, and especially $10 wines from California. Lots of producers were apparently throwing anything in a bottle that they could find to sell for $10 or less, regardless of quality, in order to lure all those customers who had discovered cheap wine during the recession. Or, sadly, they were downgrading the quality of the wine to keep their margins up, figuring their customers were too stupid to know the difference.

The results, too often, were not pleasant. So call the 2011 edition a mixed case -- some fine wines, but lots of disappointment.

Barefoot wine, because you're searching for it

The Barefoot post that ran on the blog more than two years ago is attracting tremendous traffic this holiday season -- about 10 percent of the visitors over the past week, a number that has been consistent for a month or so and is pretty amazing for a two-year-old post. It looks like wine drinkers want some Wine Curmudgeon advice before taking Barefoot to the office party or serving it to the in-laws.

So if you're here looking for the Barefoot post, you should know that I wrote another Barefoot post in September -- Barefoot wines (again): Value or just cheap? It updates the original post and offers some thoughts on the Barefoot merlot. There is also a review of the Barefoot riesling, written last December.

Wine of the week: Peirano Estate The Other 2008

It's the holidays. You want wine. You don't want to have to think about it. That's what The Other is for.

It's a red blend from Lodi (mostly cabernet sauvignon and merlot with a splash of syrah) and yes, I can see the wine snobs shuddering. That's their problem. The Other ($14, purchased) is a fine value, it's well made, and it has never let me down. Look for black fruit, but in a sensible, this tastes good sort of way. Serve this wine with red meat, as an aperitif for people who want a glass of red wine when they come to visit, or in front of the fire when you're worn out from holiday fun.

It's true that most people who pick up The Other for the first time do so because of the label, which is the back of a naked woman. But the wine is consistent, and that doesn't happen often enough with less expensive labels. And, sadly, it's not $10 any more, which it was when I started drinking it. But that doesn't mean I still don't enjoy it.

More about holiday wine:
• Holiday wine guide 2010
• Holiday wines 2009
• Holiday wine in a hurry
• Expensive wine 12: Twomey Santa Barbara Pinot Noir 2008

Winebits 159: Holiday wine

A look at what some of the rest of the wine world is recommending that we drink this holiday season:

• Port for dessert: The great Dave McIntyre reminds us not to overlook port as a gift: "Champagne comes to mind, but a less obvious and equally impressive choice is Port." Best yet, four of his five choices are around $20 or less -- a huge value for port.

• Eric Asimov likes sparkling wine: The New York Times wine columnist, in his holiday rundown, notes that "Unless the object of your largesse is seriously misanthropic, Champagne is always — I repeat, always — welcome. ..." His choices? Charles Heidsieck Brut Réserve and Camille Savès Carte Blanche. Asimov, as always, has impeccable taste (and the wines aren't ridiculously expensive.)

• Sommelier wine: Even wine experts in Los Angeles are in search of value, reports the Los Angeles Times. Their choices include Alsace's Albert Mann, sparkling from the Loire, and Spanish bubbly. I know the first two -- very nice wines.

Holiday 2010 gift guide redux

Still stumped? Never fear. The Wine Curmudgeon has you covered:

• Our annual holiday gift guide, which has links to several previous gift guides, as well as a link to the Wine Curmudgeon's gift giving guidelines.

• The holiday wine category, which has links to all of the posts about holiday wine. And yes, it's allowed to adapt a Thanksgiving wine for a Christmas or New Year's gift.

• The expensive wine category, which has links to all of the posts and reviews about expensive wine. Because, frankly, if it's an expensive wine that I liked, odds are that it would make a nice gift.

Wine and grocery stores

The wine selection in grocery stores has never been better, and we're just not talking about high-end and speciality grocers like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. Many of the biggest national chains have beefed up their wine departments over the past several years, using wine to better compete with warehouse clubs like Sam's and Costco.

In this, the national grocers are taking advantage of the recession to offer brands that used to be sold only in wine and liquor stores. Producers and distributors, faced with reduced demand from their traditional retail and restaurant customers, have lots of wine to sell, and so are selling it to supermarkets that they never would have sold to before.

In addition, grocers have noticed two things abut wine: Its increasing popularity among the U.S. public in general, and that many wine drinkers come from an upscale demographic that they want to attract. Hence, the national chains are adding shelf space, holding wine tastings, and even putting in wine rooms with $100 wines in their stores. More, after the jump:

Wine review: Bolla Valpolicella 2009

This is the first wine I ever drank. It is, in fact, the first wine I have any memory of. In the 1970s, if you were a "serious" wine drinker in the United States, you drank French Beaujolais, California burgundy or chablis (which were not necessarily pinot noir or chardonnay), German liebfraumilch, Lancers and Mateus rose, or the Italian Bolla. My father, an Italophile, drank the Bolla.

Which meant I did, too. I brought it with me with when I went to someone's house for dinner. I bought it to impress girls (one of my first big dates, actually). I had no idea whether the wine was any good. I knew very little about wine 30 years ago; the Bolla was wine, and that was good enough.

Bolla, as a brand, mostly disappeared in the 1990s. It was bought and sold several times, and I had not seen it in years. And then, at the grocery store this week, there it was. I checked with my Italian wine expert, who told me, yes, the current owners dusted the brand off, changed the label, and are bringing it back.

Memory is part of wine, as much as the grapes or the soil. This is one of Alfonso Cevola's favorite themes, that it's not just what the wine tastes like now, but what we remember of the tasting -- who we were with, where we were, what we were doing when we tasted it. So when I opened the Bolla ($6, purchased), I was thinking about my dad and Chicago in the 1970s and the girls I bought it for. The Wine Curmudgeon was sipping and analyzing, but Jeff Siegel was remembering.

So maybe this is memory talking. Maybe the Bolla isn't what I tasted the other day -- young and disjointed, yes, but fresh and clean, with a funky Italian nose and lots of sour cherry fruit. It's an incredible value at this price, a wine for winter stews and red meat and tomato sauce. And, of course, for memory.