The Wine Curmudgeon

Mini-reviews 39: Schug, Anne Amie, Acrobat, Colores del Sol

Reviews of wines that don’t need their own post, but are worth noting for one reason or another. Look for it on the final Friday of each month. Today, wines to enjoy over the Labor Day weekend:

• Schug Chardonnay Sonoma Coast 2010 ($25, sample): Elegant chardonnay that is a huge bargain at this price. It retains California freshness and fruit while showing some of the length and breadth of a fine white Burgundy.

• Anne Amie Pinot Noir Cuvée A 2010 ($25, sample): Classic Oregon pinot (and always a favorite), with berry fruit and earthiness that balance each other, and a fine value at this price.

• Acrobat Pinot Noir Rose 2011 ($10, purchased): Nothing really wrong with this Oregon rose, but mildly disappointing if only because it’s not up to the quality of the Acrobat pinot gris. Tastes of red fruit with almost sauvignon blanc-like acidity.

• Colores Del Sol Malbec 2010 ($12, sample): At $8, this is a nicely done grocery store wine, featuring the typical blueberry cola aroma. But, unfortunately, it doesn’t cost $8.

Labor Day wine 2012

So why a Labor Day wine post? Because wine is suitable for every day of the year; haven’t you been paying attention? Needless to say, the Wine Curmudgeon will spend this weekend doing wine things, including my annual visit to the Kerrvile Wine & Music Festival. I'll participate in a panel discussion on Saturday about the state of Texas wine – which is quite good, by the way, despite the attempts made by the legislature to reduce it to no state at all.

Holiday picnics and back porch barbecues usually mean lighter wines, and I've offered several suggestions below. But, assuming this summer's heat wave is finally ending, Labor Day also marks the return of bigger red wines, which will pair with ribs or burgers.

These suggestions should get you started:

• Ferret Côtes de Gascogne 2011 ($10, sample): This white blend from southwestern France is a solid effort, if not quite up to the standards of the Gascon wines in the $10 Hall of Fame. It has more sauvignon blanc character and less of the Gascon grapiness that I like.

• Gloria Ferrer Sonoma Brut NV ($15, purchased): You can find this California sparkling wine for as little as $12, which makes it one of the great values of the year (or any other). Look for green apples, some minerality, and even a little yeastiness.

• Bodegas Cepa 21 2007 ($23, sample): A surprisingly nuanced red wine from Spain’s Ribero del Duero, without a lot of the shouting that so many of these wines do. It does need food, and a Labor Day steak would be perfect.

For more on Labor Day wine:
• Labor Day wine 2011
• Labor Day wine 2010
• Wine of the week: Yellow + Blue Torrontes 2011

Wine of the week: Yellow + Blue Torrontes 2011

Yellow + Blue makes some of the finest cheap wine in the world, and I’ve waxed poetic about almost every one of the company’s releases. The torrontes ($13 for a 1-liter box, purchased) is no exception.

So why does this review come with the availability caution? Because retailers still haven’t figured out a way to successfully sell wine, like Yellow + Blue, that comes in a 1-liter box. Most store shelves and racks are made to take standard-sized wine bottles, so anything that isn’t a standard-sized bottle gets stuffed in a corner. And if a product is stuffed in a corner, it won’t sell as well as a product that’s prominently displayed, regardless of quality. After all, when’s the last time you got on your hands and knees to look for wine?

Hence retailers are wary of carrying something that they know they’ll have trouble selling. Which means the Yellow + Blue wines are harder to find than they should be. Which is too bad, because they’re well worth the effort – hands and knees even, which is almost what I had to do for this one.

Torrontes is a white Argentine grape that has been made so badly for so long – sweet and sticky – that I’m surprised there’s still a market for it. The Yellow + Blue, though, shows just enough sweetness to be torrontes, but is in no way cloying. Look for peach fruit and even a tiny bit of lime zest as well as a very pleasant floral aroma and a peach pit finish.

Serve chilled as summer comes to an end, and pair it with the usual summer and spicy fare. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2013 $10 Hall of Fame (since 1 liter is about one-third more than a standard bottle, making the price about $10 a bottle).

Winebits 244: Climate change, Ubuntu, Bed Bath & Beyond

• California’s changing climate: Because that’s not the way it used to be, when the rest of the world was jealous of the state’s incredible wine growing climate. Writes Jon Bonne in the San Francisco Chronicle: “It's starkly clear that the climate for wine growing in California is becoming less stable. … Whether you blame climate change or human meddling for the shifting styles of California wine, the net result is that those who want to make truly great wines will have to adapt to ever less routine vintages.” That difference has consequences not only for those who buy more expensive wines, where climate is part of the terroir, but for those of us who buy $10 wine. The weather was so perfect In California that it was easy to make quality cheap wine – just let the grapes ripen and don't get in the way. If the grapes aren’t going ripen on schedule anymore, those $10 winemakers will have to show skills they didn’t need before.

• Wine and computers? The Wine Curmudgeon is a bit of a computer geek, so I was excited to hear that someone had released a wine with the same name as Ubuntu, one of the leading Linux operating systems. The wine is Portuguese, from Niepoort,, and was issued in 2008 and 2009 when South Africa hosted the football (soccer, for those of us in U.S.) World Cup. The operating system and the wine aren’t apparently related, though, notes the OMG Ubunutu blog; they’re both named after a particular African philosophy.

• Pairing wine with kitchen appliances: Bed Bath & Beyond, which recently bought World Market, is adding wine to one of its suburban Chicago locations. It also wants to do tastings, says the Chicago Tribune. I speculated about how well that would work for Bed Bath & Beyond after the World Market acquisition, and now we’ll get a chance to find out. I wonder: When someone goes in to buy a slow cooker, are they really going to buy wine, too?

The Coppola alicante bouschet mystery solved

What's wrong with my wine that you needed to look for this guy's review? Didn't I make you an offer you couldn't refuse?

A tip o’ the Wine Curmudgeon’s fedora to two of the blog’s regular readers, Rich Liebman and Denise T., who emailed me with the solution to Friday’s Coppola alicante bouschet mystery. World Market was selling the new vintage of the wine for $9 over the weekend, and sent an email telling its customers about the sale.

Apparently, people who received the email did a Google search and came up with my four-year-old review, and the blog numbers over the weekend took an appropriate upward tick. For which I am most grateful, since late summer weekends are usually pretty slow. Hopefully, the review helped the new visitors make up their mind about whether to buy the wine (and that they'll come back more often).

In this, it speaks to one of my favorite subjects – how Americans buy wine. The alicante was a $9 wine from a well-known producer that was being sold by a trusted retailer, but that didn’t stop people from searching for a review. They couldn’t decide to buy it without a third-party opinion, and if I’m a boss at Coppola or World Market, that would worry me. If my brand isn’t enough to sell a cheap wine, something may be wrong with my brand

In fact, the alicante in the ad is the 2008 vintage ($9, purchased), and it's starting to show its age. Much of the fruit is gone, and what's left is dark and plummy, with a bit of a sour edge. But, given when it was made, that's not surprising.

The other thing this demonstrates is that Americans, faced with a wine that isn’t cabernet sauvignon, merlot, or chardonnay, get confused. And we have the wine business, with its unending commitment to consumer education, to thank for that.

Thank you, Francis Ford Coppola

Man, what's up with all of the alicante bouschet hits?

The Wine Curmudgeon has had his disagreements with the wine company fronted by the legendary Hollywood director, but today I owe the company a big one. About one-sixth of the hits on the blog so far today have been for a four-year-old review of the Coppola Alicante Bouschet.

I have no idea why this is. The review has never been all that popular, and the wine isn't all that easy to find; there apparently hasn't been a vintage since 2008. But there it is, the second most read item on the blog on Friday. So thanks, Francis. Not sure what you did, but I appreciate it.

Sweet red wine by the numbers

Sweet red wine continues to burrow its way into the consciousness of the U.S. wine drinker, according to two recent reports that looked at sales data. I’m still not sure anyone knows exactly what this means, but I am willing to guess that it has a lot of people in the wine business dazed and confused.

More, after the jump: