The Wine Curmudgeon

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).

Wine of the week: Brancott Sauvingon Blanc Reserve 2011

This was not the scheduled wine of the week, but since I’m still waiting, weeks later, for a distributor to call me back about a Gascon wine I want to do, I had to shift the schedule around.

I mention this not to damn the Brancott with faint praise, because it deserves better than that. Rather, it’s to note (again, sadly) how lazy distributors are and to point out that we shouldn’t force ourselves to stick to some sort of wine drinking schedule. Which even I find myself doing sometimes. Drink what you like, but be willing to try all sorts of things.

The Brancott ($10, purchased) is a mostly one-dimensional New Zealand sauvignon blanc, but that's not a bad thing for a grocery store wine at this price -- especially since so many others aren't even that. Right, Monkey Bay? There is grapefruit, and it does dominate, which is to be expected. But it’s not overdone, and there is also some ripe tropical fruit in the middle, just 12 1/2 percent alcohol, and a clean, fresh approach. All in all, a very pleasant surprise.

Drink this chilled on its own, or with grilled vegetables, small plate salads, and even something like hummus. And be glad that I was forced to take a different path.

Wine review: Jules Taylor Sauvignon Blanc 2011

The Wine Curmudgeon’s favorite New Zealand sauvignon blanc is Spy Valley; the catch is that it’s very difficult to find in Dallas. So when I had a chance to meet Jules Taylor, whose New Zealand winery gets high marks for quality and professionalism (“Plus, Jeff, she’s a great person"), I was excited. There’s nothing wrong with having two favorites.

I was not disappointed. Taylor is clever and passionate about her work. How do I know this? When someone can sound as excited as she did about her wines when talking to a wine writer after a long and hot day of visiting retailers and sitting in meetings, she must be passionate. (She is also a tequila aficionado, and was very excited to be in Dallas if only for that. Not many interesting tequilas for sale in New Zealand, apparently.)

The sauvignon blanc ($18, sample) is New Zealand sauvignon blanc the way it should be. There is more grassiness than citrus in the front (and lime instead of grapefruit); a soft, almost seductive tropical middle (passion fruit?); and a long, very subtle mineral finish. This is a complex wine, especially for the price, and not only well above the entry level wines on the market, but on par with many more expensive ones. Highly recommended.

Taylor also makes a late harvest sauvignon blanc dessert wine ($20 for a 375 ml bottle, sample), which I really shouldn’t mention. It’s not that it isn’’t very nicely done (lots of apricot, honeyed sweetness, and a bit of sauvignon blanc character). It’s that she makes very little of it, and even less gets imported to the U.S. If you can find it, buy it.

Mini-reviews 38: Muscadet, Toad Hollow, Brocard, Rhiannon

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.

• Alfred Pery Vallee Loire Muscadet 2010 ($10, purchased): Those of us who think Muscadet, a French white, is one of the world's great cheap wine secrets can skip this one. Not much to it other than some lemon fruit amidst a bland, watery style.

• Toad Hollow Pinot Noir Rose 2011 ($10, sample): California wine is better than the 2010 vintage, which was a white zinfandel knockoff, but still not up to its former $10 Hall of Fame standards. Thin and missing any sort of noticeable fruit.

• Jean-Marc Brocard Chablis 2009 ($20, purchased): This French white is more New World chardonnay in style than most Chablis. It’s rounder and softer, with more red apple instead of green apple and Chablis' tell-tale acidity. Having said that, it's not worse, just different.

• Rhiannon 2010 ($13, sample): Find this California red blend for $10, and you're in business. Simple, dark fruits (even a little less than ripe, which I liked), and a bit of tannin.

Wine of the week: Bollini Pinot Grigio 2011

The Wine Curmudgeon doesn’t trust Italian pinot grigio. Since it’s a wine that people who don’t drink much wine drink, a lot of pinot grigio producers feel it’s their duty to foist poorly-made, over-priced wine off on them. Some of the samples I get are so awful that I pour them down the drain after the first couple of sips (with loud muttering under my breath).

So I haven’t done an Italian pinot grigio review in two years, and an Italian pinot grigio has never been a wine of the week.

Until now.The Bollini ($12, purchased) is everything the rest of those wines aren’t. It’s reasonably priced. It doesn’t taste like rubbing alcohol. Even more amazingly, it’s varietally correct. There are aromas of flower blossoms, just enough apple and pear fruit to be recognizable, and bit of minerality (and not turpentine) on the finish. Serve this chilled, either on its own or with almost any light summer dish. It would also go with pasta and seafood. I'd even buy it again.

This is the kind of wine that people who don’t drink wine would love; if you know someone like that, tell them about it. To be honest, I’m not quite sure why I bought the Bollini. I guess I was feeling guilty about my attitude toward pinot grigio given that one of my goals for the blog this year has been to be more accessible to non-wine drinkers. I took one for the team, and I’m glad I did.

Wine of the week: Vinho verde

A funny thing happened on the way to the annual vinho verde review. I tasted some poorly made wine, which has never happened before, and almost didn’t do the review.

The thing about the Portuguese vinho verde, as regular visitors know, is that it’s not complicated enough to screw up. It’s an inexpensive, simple wine, slightly sweet with lime or green apple fruit, plus some fizz – more like club soda than sparkling wine. It’s low in alcohol and needs to be ice cold, which makes it the ideal wine for this time of year. It’s not made to age, even for a couple of months, and usually wears out by the time cooler weather arrives.

A couple of producers make most of the vinho verde, which they sell under different labels.This year, though, much of the wine was underwhelming. The Gazela ($7, purchased) was sour, not especially fruity, and thin – more like Alka-Seltzer than wine. The Famega ($7, purchased), usually the standard, was only a little more enjoyable than the Gazela. It had some sweetness and the traditional spritz, but also an unpleasant, almost quinine flavor.

Fortunately, the Casal Garcia ($6, purchased) was up to snuff, fresh and lively. It tasted of very tart green apples, with the right amount of fizz and sweetness. I drank it with linguine with grilled shrimp (lots of garlic and parsley, too), and it did exactly what it was supposed to do. What more can you ask of a $6 wine?

Wine review: Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay 2010

The wine business doesn’t have a national brand, in the way detergent has Tide or ketchup has Heinz. Those products are instantly recognizable, sold everywhere in the country, and seen as representative of their category.

What the wine business has, instead, is Kendall-Jackson. It’s about the only brand sold everywhere that wine is sold, and even people who barely drink wine know Kendall-Jackson. And what was the big wine news when Barack Obama was elected president? That someone had seen K-J bottles in his Chicago home.

The chardonnay is the most ubiquitous of the Kendall-Jackson wines. It made the brand famous, and has been the best-selling chardonnay in the country for 20 years, according to the winery. Some 2.5 million cases are sold annually, which would make it the 12th biggest winery in the U.S., according to Wine Business Monthly.

The secret to the wine’s success? Stuck fermentation, which the late Jess Jackson, who started the winery, pioneered in the early 1980s. In stuck fermentation, not all of the sugar in the grape juice is converted into alcohol during fermentation, which produces a sweeter wine.

As such, the chardonnay ($15, sample) is rarely taken seriously. Or, as issacjamesbaker wrote on CellarTracker (the unofficial wine inventory software of the blog):

“I picked this up at the grocery store just for the hell of it. The nose shows the expected buttered pear, but also some crisp green apple. The palate actually has some fresh acid, which I like. Crisp apple flavors, rounded out by some whipped butter. Not toasty at all, just pure buttered fruit. The acid on the finish keeps it balanced. This is not a serious wine, but it's very pleasant, albeit not very exciting.”

That’s a fine description of the wine (though “whipped butter” is a bit much), and is pretty much what it tastes like. What surprised me were how those flavors and qualities were so noticeable, when in most wines at this price (and I’ve seen it for as little as $10), you have to hunt for them. This is not a shy wine.

But the tasting note is written entirely from the perspective of someone who doesn’t think the wine is worth writing about. And that’s the thing about K-J and its wines that always baffles me. It takes effort to make the wine taste that way year after year, because the key to grocery store wines is consistency of quality. Consumers will forgive one lesser vintage, but after that, it’s on to the next cute label.

In this, K-J also pioneered something taken for granted these days – the professionally made wine, produced every year without flaws or off-tastes. When I started drinking wine in the 1980s, it was all too common to find wines that were oxidized or made with unripe fruit or tainted in some way. That almost never happens anymore, and today’s arguments about wine quality are about styles and not whether the wine is technically well made.

No doubt I wax too metaphysical. K-J and Jackson’s successors probably don’t care about that. What’s a 92 in the Spectator when your chardonnay is bigger than all but 11 wineries in the U.S.?