The Wine Curmudgeon

Winebits 262: New Year's Eve bubbly

Recommendations from around the Internet for sparkling wine for tonight. My suggestions are here.

• Same old wines: The AskMen.com website has a thorough look at Champagne history, the differences between the various kinds of bubblies, and even serving suggestions. What it doesn’t have? Many interesting wines. It recommends Veuve Clicquot and Perrier-Jouet, which are usually two of the top five brands in the U.S. You don’t need to know much about Champagne to pick those.

• If you don’t want Champagne: NorthJersey.com does an excellent job with cava, cremant and the like, including a New York state bubbly, Brotherhood Winery Blanc de Blancs Brut for $10. These are all (save the Brotherhood) widely available.

• And if you don’t like bubbly? Which the Wine Curmudgeon can’t imagine, given how much sparkling wine I drink even when it isn’t New Year’s. But the Today.com website has more beer suggestions than I would have thought possible, complete with beer-speak (“[I]t packs a hearty 10 percent ABV that’s very well hidden within an ambrosia of earthy fruits and dark caramel flavor notes.”) I’m sure they’re all fine beers; I just wish the author hadn’t intimated those of us who like sparkling are less than manly. Should I challenge him to a spitting contest?

Mini-reviews 43: Cheap wine edition

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. This edition, in honor of the upcoming 2013 $10 Hall of Fame, features cheap wine.

• Pennywise Pinot Noir 2010 ($12, sample): Stunningly well done, considering how I usually don't like California grocery store pinot noir. Bright cherry fruit, and though not much of a middle, an almost earthy, pinot-like finish. A fine value.

• Domaine Cazes Canon du Maréchal 2010 ($10, purchased): This muscat-viognier blend from southern France has white fruit that gives a hint of sweetness and an almost white peppery spiciness. Different, but intriguing.

• Château La Maroutine 2010 ($10, purchased): Post-modern white Bordeaux blend with more citrus than minerality. Does its job for $10, but don't expect anything especially classic. 

• Colosi Cantine Bianco 2010 ($10, purchased): This Sicilian white blend isn’t as fresh and lively as others I’ve tasted (and a little thin in comparison). This doesn’t make it a bad wine, rather, other Sicilian wines offer more for the same price.

New Year’s sparkling wine 2012

Which means sparkling wine, plus a couple of other ideas -- whether for dinner on Dec. 31 or brunch on Jan. 1.

Our Champagne and sparkling wine glossary is here. This is also the place for my annual plea to drink more sparkling wine during the year. Bubbly deserves deserves more than just one post in the Wine Curmudgeon top 100 (90th place in 2012).

More, after the jump:

Wine of the week: Domaine Ste. Michelle Brut NV

Those of us of a certain age remember American “champagne” – sweet and flat and almost more like 7-Up than 7-Up. If you went to a wedding reception or big party until the 1980s wine boom, that’s what you drank. One of the two worst hangovers I’ve ever had came from that stuff, when I had entirely too much at a newspaper colleague’s wedding in 1980.

That we no longer have to drink that sort of thing is testament to the revolution in American wine over the last 30 years. I may pick at the biggest U.S. wineries for one thing or another (and another and another), but the technical quality of their work is beyond reproach.

Which brings us to the Ste. Michelle ($11, purchased), which amazes me every time I taste it. This Washington state sparkler (from the same company that does Ste. Michelle riesling, Columbia Crest and 14 Hands) is a stunner – varietally correct, tasty, inexpensive and widely available. if someone had told me in 1981 that I’d be able to go to a grocery store and buy this quality of bubbly, I’d have been appropriately curmudgeonly.

It’s zesty and tingling, with green apples, a bit of caramel and a hint of sweetness in the back. Use it to toast the New Year, for brunch on New Year’s Day, or anytime bubbly sounds like a good idea.

Happy Holidays 2012

Joyeux Noël! from The Boss (whose accent, surprisingly, is even worse than mine) -- Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" in front of an enthusiastic French audience (courtesy of The Stone Pony Fan Club at YouTube). "Santa Claus," of course, is the blog's annual Christmas tradition.

Enjoy the holiday with the people you care about. The Wine Curmudgeon will return on Wednesday with a wine of the week to drink for New Year's.

 

Winebits 261: Joe Pollack, Texas wine, most powerful women

• College scholarship: The St. Louis Media History Foundation has established a college scholarship in honor of Joe Pollack, who died earlier this year. Joe was not only a great wine writer, but a fine human being who was a huge supporter of what we did with DrinkLocalWine. He could also tell a story with the best of them, and I missed that this year. I can hear him analyzing everything that happened, whether the presidential election or Robert Parker. Contributions to the scholarship fund are tax-deductible; contact the foundation for donation information.

• Best Texas wines: Two of the state’s best critics have published their top 2012 wines, and there are some impressive efforts on both lists. What struck me about Jessica Dupuy at Texas Monthly's selections was the breadth – not just the same old names. Russ Kane at Vintage Texas had red and white posts; Russ does love his tempranillo (which I note because I never thought it would amount to anything in Texas, and I was quite wrong).

• Most powerful women: The Drinks Business trade magazine, based in Britain, shows why it may be the most insightful liquor trade in the world with this top 50 list. It includes two Americans in the top three, neither of whom has initials after their names or has anything to do with Bordeaux, which are usually the only types who make these lists. Gina Gallo is No .1 because her family’s company, E&J Gallo, “sold 75 million cases of wine last year, up 7 percent on 2010, dwarfing second place Concha y Toro’s 29.7 million.” In third was Costco’s Annette Alvarez-Peters, one “of the most powerful wine buyers in the world, responsible for influencing hundreds of thousands of consumer palates.”

Holiday blog schedule changes

Christmas and New Year’s Day each fall on a Tuesday this season, so I’ve had to make some adjustments to the the blog’s schedule:

• The blog will be off Dec. 25 and Jan. 1 for the holiday. On Christmas, the annual Bruce Springsteen “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” video will post, while I’ll run Whit Hill’s “Cook a Chicken” video on New Year’s Day.

• The wine notes that usually run on Tuesday will appear on Monday, Dec. 24 and Monday, Dec. 31.

• The 2013 $10 Hall of Fame will appear on Jan. 7.