The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine of the week: Eco Balance Carménère 2009

The Wine Curmudgeon, once a huge fan of Chilean wine, has become mostly ambivalent over the past several years. Too many Chilean wine have gone from being cheap and well done to just cheap. Labels that had once I counted on, like the Veramonte sauvignon blanc, have morphed into just another grocery store wine. Blame the weak dollar for much of this, but the Chileans have been turning out a lot of ordinary wine as well.

That's why the Eco Balance ($10, sample) was so welcome. Carmenere is a tricky grape to work with, and the Chileans are still trying to figure out what to do with it, especially for cheaper wines. I didn't expect much with this, and at first sip there wasn't much there. But let it open a bit, and you'll find lots of cherry fruit, something that tastes like fake oak but that isn't cheesy, and healthy tannins. The tannins were a nice touch; most wines at this price either have no tannins at all or tannins that are so harsh they grate your tongue. It's a beef wine, probably best suited for burgers and meat loaf.

And yes, it is eco-friendly. Emiliana, the producer, does three green wines -- biodynamic, organic, and the Eco, which is produced using environmentally protective farming practices.

Winebits 157: Holiday gift guide

• Dave McIntyre on books: The Washington Post wine columnist suggests efforts by importer Terry Thiese, writer Matt Kramer, and Laura Catena on Argentine wines. High praise for the Thiese book: "And if you wonder why wine matters so much to a loved one in your life, let Theise explain."

• Jon Bonne on wine: The San Francisco Chronicle wine writer offers a variety of gift strategies, and our old pal, Pine Ridge's chenin blanc-viognier blend, shows up as one of the best wines to bring to a party. Great description, too: "like wet pine needles after rain".

• Tom Johnson on kitsch: How does the proprietor of the Louisville Juice blog find this stuff -- a moose horn wine glass, brass knuckles wine opener, and bathroom humor wine labels?

Consumer Reports' top wines

One would think that it would be incredibly difficult to rate wine as if it was a refrigerator. There are objective measurements for refrigerators -- how well does it maintain temperature? -- and hardly any for wine.

Nevertheless, Consumer Reports, which has been rating products for some 80 years, does wine. I don't know that I agree with all of the choices in the December issue (a famous critter wine made it), but I can't argue with their methodology. This is about as objective as wine tasting gets.

"We're very specific about what we're looking for," says Maxine Siegel (no relation), who oversees the wine project for the magazine. "There are acceptable standards that we're looking for. And it does have to be a tasty wine."

More, after the jump:

So long, Ron Santo

The great Louie Canelakas, a very wise man, said that being a Chicago Cubs fan prepares one for life. Life, ultimately, no matter how successful, is about disappointment, and those of us who follow the Cubs -- a team that has not really won anything for more than a century -- know disappointment all too well.

Ron Santo, who played third base for the Cubs in the 1960s and early 1970s, embodied that ethos. He was a great player on great teams that never won anything; and, to add insult to injury, was regularly voted down for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Santo died yesterday, and his passing is worth noting here -- not just because I'm a Cubs fan, but because Santo stood for everything that matters. He worked hard and he kept trying, even though he was repeatedly disappointed. What better approach is there to life?

Enjoy this effort from YouTube, courtesy of TerminalShockRecords, featuring Santo and several of his teammates from the 1969 Cubs.

The Freakonomics view of the wine business

Stephen Dubner is the co-author of the popular Freakonomics books and blog, which look at economic theory from a less than traditional perspective. In this radio interview transcript, Dubner talks about wine prices and the wine business, and whether price reflects quality and whether the experts are really experts.

A couple of the Wine Curmudgeon's pals show up, including Robin Goldstein of The Wine Trials, and it's a decent discussion of the objective vs. subjective nature of wine quality and wine prices. Which is nothing new to regular visitors here.

But anyone who appreciates what we do on the blog will love this. Dubner quotes his Freakonomics co-author, Steven Levitt: "My approach to buying wine for gifts is simple: I go in the store, and I look for the label that looks the most expensive of anything in the store. And I make sure it costs less than $15, and if it does, then I buy it."

Maybe I should should send each of the Steves a tin of Wine Curmudgeon M&Ms.

"Consumer-friendly" wine prices

I've been digging around for the last couple of months, trying to get a sense of where wine prices are headed in 2011. My gut feeling is that we're in for at least another year of oversupply and lower prices, with lots and lots of previous vintages still clogging winery back rooms and distributor warehouses. The recession may have officially ended, but the wine business is far from recovering.

And that seems to fit with the anecdotal evidence I've seen -- news stories, talking to retailers and distributors, and walking around grocery and liquor stores and comparing prices. I saw Perrier Jouet, a $40 bottle of Champagne, going for $25 in an ordinary, national chain grocery store. Three years ago, the producer would have refused to allow its wine near the store, let alone be sold there or discounted.

The best description of where we're going? It came from a Dallas retailer whose family has been selling wine for about as long as it has been legal to sell wine in Dallas. "I call it consumer-friendly," he said. "Pricing will be beneficial to the consumer. There's still a lot of wine out there, and there are still a lot of deals to be found. I'm buying them whenever I can."

So, for at least another year, $10 is still the new normal.

Wine of the week: Mouton Cadet Blanc 2009

A long time ago, before livestock wines and malbecs from Argentina, Americans drank cheap French wine. And one of the most important cheap French wines came from Mouton Cadet. Mouton was part of Le Famille Rothschild, which included Mouton Rothschild, a Bordeaux first growth that was (and still is) one of the great wines of the world. I'm not sure those of us who drank the Cadet understood what that meant, but the label was classy and we were drinking French wine -- which was a big deal 30 years ago.

These days, Mouton is not what it used to be. It's still a major brand, but it's just another of many major brands. Much has changed since Mouton's heyday in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the Australians, Chileans and Argentines have mostly replaced the French as the world's source of cheap wine.

In fact, I have been debating whether to review the Cadet for a couple of months, and have always passed. I didn't have the heart to buy the wine, taste it, and discover that another part of my past was gone. Still, when Mouton sent samples this fall, I decided to take a chance.

I'm glad I did. The Cadet ($10, sample) has changed significantly since the old days. It's more fruit forward, with a lemony-grapefruit flavor more reminiscent of Chilean sauvignon blanc than the typical slate and minerality of a white Bordeaux. This change is aimed at the modern American palate, and it pretty much works. I don't know that I like the new style better than the old, but the Cadet offers $10 worth of value. And that's the important thing.