The Wine Curmudgeon

Sweet red wine, part II

This is the second of two parts looking at sweet red wine, which could become as important to the wine business as white zinfandel once was. Today, a look at sweet reds and what they taste like. Part I on Feb. 17 explored the whys and wherefores of sweet red's growth.

Talk to any wine drinker -- even experienced ones -- and one of the adjectives they always use is smooth. "That's a smooth wine." "I want to buy a smooth red wine." And that, in one word, is what sweet red wine delivers -- and what the seemingly infinite number of new sweet reds is trying to capitalize on.

Because the red wine that most of us drink isn't smooth. It's tannic, sometimes bitterly so. It can be harshly acidic. And some of it, despite the advances in wine technology, can be unpleasantly green -- tasting of unripe fruit or smelling of bell pepper. We can argue whether smooth is a legitimate quality for a wine (I think balance is a better term), but that's what consumers are looking for.

And what happens when sugar is added to red wine? The bitter tannins get covered up. The harsh acidity is blended away. And that unpleasant green disappears. It becomes, as one blurb for Apothic Red calls the wine, "smooth."

After the jump, tasting notes for six sweet reds and a few thoughts about how these wines are made and how to tell how sweet they are.

Sweet red wine, part I

Today's sweet red wines are much different from sweet reds like Manischewitz.

This is the first of two parts looking at sweet red wine, which could become as important to the wine business as white zinfandel once was. Today, a sweet red overview. Part II, which looks at sweet reds and what they taste like, posted Feb. 20.

Moscato is getting all of the attention, and no one -- not even the Wine Curmudgeon -- would argue that it’s not the latest wine craze. It’s difficult to argue with those sales numbers, even if there are a lot of caveats

But that doesn’t mean moscato is the next big thing, like white zinfandel used to be. Dig deeper, though, past the moment, and you’ll see the trend that has the potential to not only turn into the next fad, but to significantly change the wine business in the United States. It’s sweet red wine, something that even the most dollar-grubbing producers have always been a little ashamed of.

But be ashamed no more. Sweet red wines are racking up sales, and producers big and small are launching sweet reds. E&J Gallo’s Apothic was one of the best sellers in the $8-$11 category last year, while Beringer -- which knows a thing or two about sweet wine -- expects to sell one-half million cases of its red moscato this year.

“Sweet red wine is very relevant to the marketplace,” says Shawn Bavaresco, who directs brand development for the company that makes Pacific Rim riesling and which sells Sweet Bliss, which has a sweet red. “We’ve seen the demand, so we’re going to be very responsive. We want to be out front on this.”

More, after the jump.

Why I don't do celebrity wine stories

Drew Barrymore is doing a wine. We'll ignore for the moment that she is a recovering addict, and the complications that brings to a wine brand. Or that selling wine requires a different image than selling cosmetics.

But do you want to know the main reason why the Wine Curmudgeon doesn't do items about celebrity wine (save for something like this to remind the world why I don't)? Because celebrity wine is, almost all of the time, little more than vanity.

Barrymore's wine is a pinot grigio. From Italy. Exactly what the world needed, no, another pinot grigio from Italy to join the six or seven trillion others out there?

Sigh. Some people truly do have more money than they know what to do with.

Better living through wine refrigerators

Yes, I agree: White wine goes better with hibernation.

Three Chicago-area environmentalists have likely saved hundreds of endangered snakes by moving them to a 6-foot tall wine refrigerator -- maybe just like this one. The story, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, is impressive:

Construction on old railroad tracks uprooted the snakes' winter den, where they were hiberating. The garter, brown and western fox snakes would have died if they had not been moved to a 6-foot-tall wine chiller in north suburban Lake Forest. The snakes are living in the fridge in boxes filled with leaves and soil to simulate their wild hibernation dens, about 20 to a box.

"The wine chiller acts as an artificial hibernating den," Rob Carmichael, curator of the Wildlife Discovery Center in Lake Forest, told the Tribune. "It can be set right at the temperature snakes need to survive in winter — about 48 degrees." This spring, when it's time for the snakes to wake up, Carmichael will raise the temperature in the refrigerator to 60 degrees to simulate warmer weather.

The story does not say where in Lake Forest the snakes are living, but the Wine Curmudgeon is sure they are in good hands. Lake Forest is a very ritzy suburb on Lake Michigan, and its residents are not only wealthy, but old money. I know this first-hand from time spent in my youth caddying at the Onwentsia Club, which earned a passing mention in "The Great Gatsby."

So the snakes may well be in someone's personal wine refrigerator, with the wine moved out to make room for them. And, knowing Lake Forest, that would be very impressive wine. No doubt Jay Gatsby would have approved.

Photo courtesy the Illinois State Museum, using a Creative Commons license

Wine of the week: Columbia-Crest Grand Estates Cabernet Sauvignon 2009

When I told a friend I was going to taste this for a possible wine of the week, she said, "Good luck. I've had it more than a few times, and I don't remember it fondly at all."

Which is understandable. Columbia-Crest makes the kind of wine that gets sold in national chain restaurants, where the staff's lack of wine knowledge is matched only by the managment's lack of concern about the staff's lack of knowledge. So if a bottle sits open for a couple of days and oxidizes, no one cares that the wine they serve to the customer is more or less undrinkable. It's also a grocery store wine that gets sold to grocery stores that don't sell a lot of wine, so if it sits in a hot warehouse and turns to vinegar, no one is any the wiser.

Which is why I wanted to try it. Just because a wine is sold in a chain restaurant or grocery store is no reason for the Wine Curmudgeon to write it off without tasting it. And, in fact, the cabernet ($10, purchased) is -- if not a great wine -- certainly better than my friend remembered. In this, it's a not only a value, but a big, hearty wine for those who like that sort of thing.

The cabernet has Washington state terroir, oddly enough, which you don't find in most mass-produced wines (and Columbia-Crest is owned by the same company that owns the even more massively-produced Chateau Ste. Michelle). That means it's got that dark, fruity, earthy cabernet flavor, as well as the tannins, that typify Washington state. California winemakers, on the other hand, go for a more rich and juicy approach.

The wine is a bit overwhelming at first, but let it sit for a few minutes -- something else you don't have to do with most grocery store wines -- and it opens up sufficiently. It's definitely a food wine: red meat certainly, and I drank it with Friday night take-out pizza, and that almost wasn't enough for it.

Winebits 216: Entwine, wine scores, wine snobs

• A first-year hit: How do you sell a wine with a minimum of reviews, little retail placement outside of grocery stores, and a lousy name? Make it the house wine for The Food Newtwork. That's the story of Entwine, which sold more than 150,000 cases in its first five months and which is expected to sell one-half million cases annually within two years. Which is a lot of wine. In this, Entwine's success speaks volumes about how Americans buy wine, which we've discussed on the blog more than once. We buy on price -- Entwine is $13 -- and we buy on label. In this case, the Entwine label is enhanced by the partnership with The Food Network, where it is used on the channel's cooking shows. This, as usual, more than makes up for the lack of information about what the wine tastes like.

• More bad news for scores: Winematch.com takes on scores and why they don't work, especially in the way retailers use scores to sell wine. "Wine is not unique to marketing spin but it's spin of the worst kind and the end result is you lose the consumer." Those are harsh words, but the post makes the accusation stick and it's something retailers should take into account.

• Being a wine snob is a good thing: Or, why there will be always be a Wine Spectator. This is an impassioned defense of wine elitism by the Specator's Matt Kramer, and one has to admire his enthusiasm for the task. It's wrong to say that if you like a wine, it's a good wine, exclaims Kramer: "This is, without question, the biggest lie of them all. ... They think it will make wine more accessible to more people. They think they're doing everyone a favor by 'democratizing' wine. Wine is too elitist, you see. It's important -— nay, essential -— that wine be taken down a peg or two in order to make it accessible to all." And we certainly don't want that, do we?

Happy birthday, Two-buck Chuck

This year is the 10th anniversary of one of the most important developments in the U.S. wine business, almost as important as Robert Parker and the 100-point scoring system. Two-buck Chuck made its first appearance in a Trader Joe's store in 2002.

Why important? Because Two-buck Chuck was the first cheap wine sold as something better than cheap wine. Before it, there were two kinds of wine -- cheap wine, which tasted crappy, had screwcaps, and was sold in big jugs to people who didn't know anything about wine; and good wine, which wasn't cheap, had a fancy label and a cork, and was sold to people who figured good wine couldn't be cheap.

That all changed with Two-buck Chuck, which got its nickname because it was made by a company called Charles Shaw and it cost $1.99 a bottle. The wines, though annoyingly inconsistent in quality, offered a lot more value than their $2 cost. More importantly, they weren't flawed or too tannic or unripe; in this, they were more or less the first cheap wines that were professionally made that U.S. consumers could buy.

And, as George Taber has pointed out in "A Toast to Bargain Wines," the world has not been the same since. More, after the jump: