The Wine Curmudgeon

Judge to Gruet: Pay $4 million

The final tally -- as well as some incredibly juicy details -- is in, and the soap opera that was New Mexico's Gruet Winery's attempt to buy Texas' bankrupt Cap*Rock Winery is apparently over. Regular visitors here will recall that Laurent Gruet, whose family owns the New Mexico sparkling wine producer, bid $6.5 million that he didn't have for Cap*Rock at a bankruptcy sale. When Gruet couldn't come up with the money, he was sued by the bankrupcty trustee. 

The details are in the Lubbuck newspaper; some highlights after the jump:

What we're drinking, and why no one wants to write about it

Two of the leading wine tracking consultancies have released their 2011 top brands surveys, at more or less the same time that one of the most influential wine bloggers in the cyber-ether asked if it's true that wine writers don't write about wine that people drink. Needless to say, the conclusion in the latter's post was that yes, it's true, and, more importantly, said the comments, why would we want to?

Let it not be said that the Wine Curmudgeon doesn't appreciate irony. More, after the jump:

Wine of the week: Zestos Blanco 2010

There are a couple of importers whose wines are so trustworthy that the Wine Curmudgeon will buy them regardless of what's in the bottle. Kermit Lynch, of course, for French wine, and Ole Imports and Patrick Mata for Spanish wine.

Mata's passion for Spanish wine is famous, and his palate is exceptional. Which is why I trust Ole implicitly. Otherwise, a wine like the Zestos would raise all sorts of red flags. It's a white wine from a region in Spain best known for red wine, and the red wine doesn't have all that great a reputation. Its color is different, sort of off-yellow, and it's made with a grape, the malvar, that is obscure even for those of us who appreciate obscure. Malvar, grown only in that part of Spain, is not even listed in the incredibly comprehensive Winegrape Glossary.

My faith, not surprisingly, was rewarded. The Zestos ($10, purchased) is unique, though it had some similarity to the Gascon wines I like, including a little white grapiness. It is simple, but definitely Spanish in style -- less fruit than the Gascon wines (some lemon, maybe) with a stone fruit pit kind of finish. One tasting note described the finish as bitter almonds, and that works, too.

Drink this chilled on its own or with a any week night dinner that calls for white wine. It's a candidate for the 2013 $10 Hall of Fame, and is highly recommended. Just don't expect it to taste like something you've tried before.

The Wine Curmudgeon on #winechat

That's at  8 p.m. central on Wednesday night, where a crowd of people -- representing wine from Texas, Maryland, Florida, and Virginia  -- will talk about what's going on with the drink local movement as well as DrinkLocalWine's upcoming conference in Colorado (and the train ticket giveaway). This is a Twitter event, so follow the conversation at #winechat. I'm @wine_curmudgeon on Twitter.

A big tip o' the Curmudgeon's fedora to Dezel Quillen, Virginia wine blogger extraordinarie, who put this thing together and patiently answered my questions about the format.

Winebits 223: Baseball players, college wine, expensive wine

• What's in a name? This week marks the start of baseball season, and what better way to note it than with this incredibly clever post from the U.S.S. Mariner baseball blog, which ranks baseball players who have the same last name as wine grapes. The Wine Curmudgeon had noticed that an Oakland pitcher, Andrew Carignan, had the same name as the Rhone grape. While I was trying to figure out a way to be funny about this, Marc W did so with his post. His only flaw? He limited his search to vinifera, the European wine grape, and didn't include hybrids or native grapes. That meant he missed five players named Norton and an outfielder named Jose Vidal. What strikes me, after spending way too much time on this, is that there aren't a lot of baseball players with the same names as wine grapes. Which seems odd.

• Sip and spit: The Illinois legislature is apparently going to do the right thing and let underage cooking students taste wine. A state Senate committee approved the bill by a 12-1 margin, reports the Chicago Sun-Times, and it now moves to the full Senate. The bill's sponsor said it would help students under 21 learn how to cook with wine and spirits, as well as helping them with wine and food pairings. The Wine Curmudgeon, who once taught culinary students just this subject, applauds the Illinois senate for its progressive stand. It's a whole lot better than what so many of its members usually do, which is to get indicted. (One learns a lot about politics by growing up in Chicago.)

• What makes expensive wine so expensive? Victoria Moore, who writes for The Telegraph in London, tackles this question from a reader, and makes some good points. The biggest difference, she writes, is grape quality. It's "a limiting factor when it comes to the quality of the wine, and you immediately stumble into 1,000 decisions, all of which cost money." I don't think she spends enough time discussing the cost of land, which is a huge factor in California, but otherwise it's a fine primer on the subject.

$640 million worth of wine

Frankly, $640 million is probably more than I want to spend on wine.

The Wine Curmudgeon did not win the world's largest ever lottery jackpot, some $640 million. One has to buy a ticket to win, and I'm entirely too curmudgeonly to participate in any gambling scheme where the odds are stacked so much in favor of the house.

But that doesn't mean I didn't consider what one could do with $640 million worth of wine:

• Buy 64 million bottles of $10 wine. If you didn't think that's the first thing I thought of, you haven't been visiting the blog very long, have you?

• Buy a couple of bottles of French wine that I would never taste otherwise, like Chateau Petrus, some first-growth Bordeauxs, and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti from Burgundy -- all of which have limited availability and can cost thousands of dollars each. But no more than a couple. My brother, who has a sizeable cellar, worries that he will never finish all the fine wine he has purchased, and that's the last thing I would want to happen to me.

•  Probably not buy a winery. Think of the headaches. Think of the aggravation. Think of the snotty wine bloggers who would criticize the winery for no other reason than I owned it and they didn't.

• Move to Burgundy, but still drink Texas wine. Imagine all the people I would annoy by doing that. 

• Purposely not drink Champagne, even though I could certainly afford as much of the overpriced bubbly as I wanted, Instead, I would still drink cava, the great $10 sparkling wine from Spain, and especially Cristalino. That would show those Champagne producers, wouldn't it?

• Buy a wine magazine, eliminate scores, and make the staff write their tasting notes in English and not wine-speak. How much fun would that be?

April Fools' Day 2012

April Fools' Day means it's time to re-run the annual California secedes from the United States to become its own wine country post. Some of the references are dated, but it still works. Though, sadly, it's not one of the 100 greatest April Fools' jokes of all time.

And a tip o' the Wine Curmudgeon's fedora to my pal and funny guy W.R. Tish, since this was partly his idea. Tish is perhaps the only stand-up comic in the wine business -- intentionally, anyway.