The Wine Curmudgeon

Four French wines you can afford

The biggest problem with Friday night's Planet Bordeaux Twitter tasting was that the Wine Curmudgeon couldn't drink the four wines over four nights, one night at a time. It was a shame to have to do them all at the same time.

Planet Bordeaux is a marketing effort to give well-made and well-priced wine from the less famous parts of the French region of Bordeaux exposure they don't normally get. The Twitter tasting was part of that effort; you can follow the tweets here. The tweeters, wine writers and bloggers, seemed impressed with the wines.

Here are my notes on the four wines, which kicks off rose week. The blog will feature the dry pink wine that too many of us don't appreciate, including a rose wine of the week on Wednesday and my annual rose preview on Thursday.

• Dourthe Grand Cuvee 2010 ($12, sample): This white is very New World in style, with grapefruit and pineapple in the middle. Well done; just not especially French.

• Chateau La Freynelle Blanc 2010 ($13, sample): This is an old friend, and I wasn't disappointed. It's more French-tasting than the Dourthe, though still a fair amount of citrus.

• Chateau Ballan Larquette Rose 2010 ($16, sample): An interesting wine that divided the tweeters and is difficult to describe. Some said it smelled like tomatoes; others said red fruit. I liked it, but $16 is a problem.

• Chateau Fontenille 2010 ($14, sample): My favorite of the tasting -- clean with deep red fruit and almost more red wine than rose. It's available in some markets for $10 a bottle, which makes it highly recommended.

Wine review: Sangre de Toro 2008

As much as the Wine Curmudgeon appreciates this wine, both for how little it costs and its sentimental value, I don't do much with it on the blog. It's one of those wines that I seem to get around to only once in a couple of years.

However, people who visit the blog apparently want more. There was the request six weeks ago from a reader looking for the plastic bulls that come with the wine, and there has been a pretty significant increase in search requests from the cyber-ether this spring. So, the Wine Curmudgeon, vigilant as ever to the needs of his visitors, decided to review a bottle.

Which turned out to be a good idea. Save for a screwcap, the Sangre de Toro ($8, purchased) is much as it always has been, a rough and peasant-style red wine blend (garnacha and carinena -- the Spanish versions of grenache and carignane).

Do not be put off by that description; it's a welcome development in a world where too much wine is bland and glossy and without character. There's some red fruit and lots of acid, which means this wine needs food -- meat sauces, stews and similar dishes. I drank it with sausage gravy over rice, and I was surprised at how well it worked.

Judgment of Paris author: Cheap wine matters

George Taber chronicled the most important wine event in modern times, when California wines beat French wines in a blind tasting. Now he has turned his authorial sights on cheap wine -- and he likes it.

"For years friends and passing strangers have been asking me to recommend 'a good bottle of wine for under $10 (sometimes $5),' " says Taber. "I could usually come up with something, but that experience got me to thinking that there must be a lot of people out there with that same question."

The result is his forthcoming book: "A Toast to Bargain Wines: How Innovators, Iconoclasts, and Winemaking Revolutionaries Are Changing the Way the World Drinks". It won't be out until November, but I thought it worth mentioning for a couple of reasons -- not the least of which is that you can pre-order it. More, after the jump.

Wine of the week: Domaine du Tariquet Classic 2009

Sept. 2, 2011 update: Tasted the 2010 at The Esquire in San Antonio, where it was surreal to see Tariquet on the wine list, and for only $21. The wine was everything it should be. There was a bit of grapey fruit, lots of citrus, and that wonderful, fresh, clean style. And it paired well with fried dill pickles.

The good news: This is still great cheap wine, and a member of the $10 Hall of Fame.

The bad news: The 2009 isn't as interesting as the 2007 and 2008. I'm not sure if it's because the vintage was lacking or if the 2009 is too old. As wonderful as the Tariquet is, it's not made to age more than a year or two; hopefully, the 2010 will be here soon. There's less green apple and more grapiness in the 2009 than in other vintages.

Having said all of that, the Tariquet ($10, purchased) shows what can be done when a producer cares about making quality cheap wine. It's a white blend composed of ugni blanc and colombard, two grapes held in lesser repute most everywhere else in the world. But in Gascony, where the Tariquet is made, they are as important as chardonnay is elsewhere, and it shows in the wine. And the winery has been around since the late 17th century, so the winemakers know a thing or two about what they're doing.

Tariquet, as a winery, has become hip over the past couple of years, and its wines show up in all sorts of fashionable French bistros. Why can't that happen in the U.S.?

More about Domaine du Tariquet:
• Wine of the week: Domaine Tariquet Classic 2008
• Wine of the week: Domaine Tariquet Classic 2007
• An Internet toast to Domaine du Tariquet

Winebits 180: Riesling aroma, solar wine, Robert Parker

• Riesling and petroleum: For years, we've been told that fine riesling should have a bit of a petroleum smell -- nothing off-putting, but enough to be recognized. The Wine Curmudgeon used that fact to score some points at a big deal wine dinner several years ago. Now, says renowned Rhone producer Michel Chapoutier, that aroma isn't an asset, but a flaw. "That is a result of a mistake during winemaking," he told Decanter magazine. It's difficult to believe Chapoutier really meant that, and it's probably significant that he is releasing a line of riesling. Could this be a marketing ploy?

• Wine powered by solar energy: We've heard of organic wine, but how about solar wine?  The Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group for solar energy companies, has launched what it calls "the Solar Wine Review. ... This exciting venture shares ... reviews of solar-supporting wineries, information about the wineries, an exclusive members-only discount code for purchasing the wine, recipes and more!" Among the wineries featured is Randall Grahm's Bonny Doon. The Wine Curmudgeon, who writes about wind energy, immediately called his wind editor and asked how we possibly could have been scooped by the solar people.

• Lost in translation: The Hong Kong website for the Wine Future consumer event has an interview with Robert Parker, the most important person in the wine world, that re-ran from a Lithuanian wine site. It's odd, to say the least, and I'm wondering how much of the interview was garbled in the differences between Lithuanian, Chinese and English. Parker, for example, notes that he is a "world-famous wine critic," which doesn't feel right. And did you know that if he couldn't be a world-famous wine critic, he wanted to be a guitarist?

Expensive wine 26: Chateau Lafon-Rochet 1995

What better way to describe this wine than with a quote from my pal Jim Serroka. Jim drinks wine, but is not as serious about it as the Wine Curmudgeon. As such, he often provides much needed perspective. Said Jim: "This is what I thought wine was supposed to taste like."

The Lafon-Rochet ($60, gift) is a big-deal Bordeaux wine, a fourth-growth from Saint-Estephe on Bordeaux's left bank. Fourth-growth means the winery was included in the 1855 rankings of French wine, which classified the wineries in five groups, one (the best) to five; it's still the way left-bank Bordeaux wine is rated by the French. Saint-Estephe, meanwhile, is one of the world's great wine regions, if not quite up to Margaux and Paulliac.

As such, Lafon-Rochet has always been considered a value for this kind of wine. It provides Bordeaux quality, especially for older vintages, without the ridiculous cash outlay that so much Bordeaux requires. That's one reason why my brother, who gave me the bottle, bought it.

The Lafon-Rochet has aged well, and this is a silky, velvety wine. It still has discreet black fruit and those wonderful Bordeaux aromas -- mushrooms, forest floor and the like. The oak and fruit are tightly integrated, and the finish seems to go on forever. Don't expect to find New World-style tannins and acid. They're not there, partly from the aging, partly from the style of winemaking, and partly because this wine has more merlot than most left-bank Bordeaux, which focus on cabernet sauvignon. And yes, it would make a nice Father's Day gift for those thinking that far ahead.

Wine review: Prazo de Roriz Douro 2008

Portuguese wines are all the rage. Quality has improved markedly over the past couple of years, as has availability. Sales are growing, and not just for the the most common wines, like vinho verde. Higher quality and even more expensive red and white table wines, the mainstay of any wine business, are becoming more common and more popular.

In fact, I have had a half dozen or so top notch Portuguese wines over the past year, and that so many of them have been so good and have cost around $10 is worth an eventual Portuguese wine post. Until then, consider the Prazo ($17, sample), a red blend made with tinta roriz, the Portuguese version of tempranillo, touriga nacional, the classic port grape, and three others. As such, it could have been heavy and cloying, which was not unusual for this style of wine in the past.

But it's fresh and clean -- an almost New World-style tempranillo, with lots of red fruit, acid to balance, and soft tannins on the finish. A conscious effort has been made to steer the Prazo away from the typical raisiny, gooey style, and it shows. My only concern was value: It is it worth $17? Probably, given how many annoying, over-ripe California wines cost that much. Serve this with spring and summer barbecues, and think about it as a gift for the red wine drinker who wants to try something different.