The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine review: Cupcake Chardonnay 2009

This review has been on the Wine Curmudgeon's to do list since Cupcake was named the country's hottest wine brand. And now that E&J Gallo's Barefoot, a similar sort of brand, has been anointed the country's top-seller, what better time to do the review? (And there will be a follow-up to the Barefoot post soon, which apparently created some controversy.)

The Cupcake wines are from Underdog Wine Merchants, which has established a very profitable niche by selling grocery-store wines with incredibly cute names -- not just Cupcake, but brands like Fish Eye, Flip Flop, and Big House.

Cupcake always does well in blind tastings, and has earned some impressive medals at competitions. This wine got a big-deal gold medal at the California State Fair, and a silver at my pal Robert Whitley's Critics Challenge. So how would I feel about the wine when not tasting it blind, but with my critical, don't-judge-a-wine-by-its-label eye?

About the same way I feel about many grocery store wines. There was nothing really wrong with the Cupcake ($10, purchased) other than its price. It's a pleasant enough as $10 wine -- not quite as interesting as the Bogle chardonnay, with some pear and green apple. It also had what seemed to be vanilla wood chips, which added a not subtle flavor that got in the way of the fruit (which may be a function of the wine not aging well, and the 2010 may not have that problem).

The catch, though, is that Cupcake is a $12 or 13 wine; this was on sale for $10, as near as I can tell, because it was a previous vintage. So that's the choice the consumer has to make. Do you pay an extra 20 percent or more for the name and label, or do you buy something like Bogle, which is often on sale for as little as $8 or $9? We all know the choice the Wine Curmudgeon would make.

Consumers like wine if they like the label

A German-Australian study has discovered that consumers decide whether they like wine not necessarily because of what it tastes like, but because of what the label looks like.

The study, noted in Australia's Food magazine, found that "[w]hile both taste and extrinsic attributes influenced a consumer’s liking for a bottle of wine, packaging and brand were the biggest influences. ... While the study shows extrinsic attributes such as packaging can play a more significant role in determining consumers’ liking of wine than taste, [the study found] the best advice for food and beverage producers is to ensure taste and packaging are equally as good."

More, after the jump:

Indy International, day 1

What can you say about a day judging wine when the last flight includes ouzo? Yes, the Wine Curmudgeon understands that this beats working for a living.

A couple of highlights from the first day of the three-day competition, held at Purdue University:

• I'm judging with Rene Chazottes of the very fashionable Pacific Club in Los Angeles and Indiana wine distributor Michel Pascal. We judged together here last year, and I learned a lot. Learning even more this year. Michel, for example, grew up on a vineyard in the Rhone, which gives him a perspective not many others have. Our head judge is Amanda Stewart, who is doing important research on growing hybrids.

• Gave a gold medal to a chambourcin and a double gold to what seemed like a cool climate syrah among the 100 or so wines we tasted today. Otherwise, quality seemed uneven, though there were some very well done sparkling wines, including a catawba.

• We judged a bunch of white wines made with grapes I had never heard of, like ehrenfelser and geisenheim. One of the reasons I enjoy this competition so much is because I get to taste these kinds of wines. Anyone can judge chardonnay; who gets to judge ehrenfelser?

Wine of the week: Joseph Drouhin Macon-Villages 2009

The Wine Curmudgeon's guilty secret is white Burgundy -- chardonnay from the Burgundy region of France. Why guilty secret? Because white Burgundy is not cheap, and has not been so for years. It's not unusual for a very ordinary bottle that's worth $8 or $10 to cost $15 or $20; unless I get a sample (or splurge on a $60 bottle for a special occasion), I don't drink much white Burgundy any more.

So you can imagine my excitement when this wine, along with several other white Burgundies, arrived at the house. Joseph Drouhin is a respected negociant, and its wines are almost always well made. I figured, if nothing else, I could get an expensive wine of the month out of the shipment. And a couple of the bottles do fit that category.

But several weren't expensive, including the Macon ($13, sample). Macon wines are not complicated, don't get much oak (if any), and are made to drink now. In other words, they are Wine Curmudgeon wines. In the long ago days of the strong dollar and more sensible French export policies, there were half a dozen or so quality Macon-Villages wines for $10 or so, but the ones that still cost $10 are usually disappointing and the others aren't $10 any more.

Which makes the Drouhin all that more wonderful. It's one of the best values I've tasted in white Burgundy in years, and my tasting notes show that the producer actually cut the price this year. This is a very traditional wine, with hardly any fruit at all (lime zest?), no oak, and lots of minerality. So, no, it doesn't taste like came from California, but it's not supposed to. In this, it's a hint of what the 2009 vintage will ultimately deliver in Burgundy. Drink this chilled with roast chicken, any kind of shellfish, or on its own.

Winebits 191: Wine blogging, wine blog awards, restaurant wine

• Unhappy bloggers: Not everyone was thrilled with the 2011 Wine Bloggers Conference, held in Charlottesville, Va., a couple of weeks ago. Or, as my pal Dave McIntrye noted, the Whine Bloggers Conference (where the comments have angled all over the place, including a discussion of Missouri wine and whether it's any good -- which it is, for the uninitiated). Tom Johnson also has a few thoughts at Louisville Juice. Meanwhile, back at the WBC, Richard Jennings, who blogs as RJ on Wine, was quite unhappy with the record heat, and held the  organizers accountable. Why, he wrote, would the conference hold a major tasting event outdoors in 100-degree heat and high humidity, despite plenty of advance warning of weather conditions? Boy, that's a tough crowd, isn't it? As someone who organizes events for the media, the Wine Curmudgeon will take note of this and make sure the weather is more acceptable for our next DrinkLocalWine.com conference in Denver. Don't want DLW to get ripped in the cyber-ether for too much snow in April.

• Wine blogger awards: Congratulations to our pal Lenn Thompson at the New York Cork Report, who won his third consecutive wine blogger award (for best single subject wine blog). Lenn has broken new ground for regional wine with the Cork Report, and it's nice to see him honored. Also a winner: the Enobytes blog, which is never afraid to speak its mind, for best wine reviews.

• Wine in restaurants: Some sage advice from the great Dan Berger about buying wine in restaurants: "Always look at the non-traditional categories for the best values. (Try Albariño as an alternative to chardonnay, or Argentina malbec instead of merlot.)" The article offers a number of other useful tips, and offers wine buying etiquette pointers as well, like when it's acceptable to send back a bottle of wine.

Heat wave wine advice

Most of the country seems to be suffering from record-breaking heat: 108 in New Jersey, 101 in New Hampshire, 104 in New York. It's even supposed to be in the 90s this week in Indiana, where I'll be judging the Indy International Wine Competiton, always one of my favorites.

And we've even noticed the heat in Dallas -- call it unseasonably warm. Today could be the 31st consecutive day that the temperature has exceeded 100 degrees, the second most on record. But what may be worse is that we have had only two mornings since July 6 when the temperature dropped below 80.

But never fear. The Wine Curmudgeon has a few suggestions so that you don't let the heat get in the way of your wine drinking.  (and no, none of them involve setting the thermostat to 68 -- I'm even cheaper about electricity than I am about wine). More, after the jump: