The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine of the week: A to Z Chardonnay 2011

From the scores are stupid department: Someone on CellarTracker, the blog’s unofficial wine inventory web app, gave the A to Z chardonnay an 85. If this wine is only an 85, I’m going to start writing rave reviews of over-oaked, too alcoholic California chardonnay.

To be fair, I can can understand why someone would not treat Oregon's A to Z ($10, purchased, 13.5%) with the respect it deserves. It doesn’t have any oak, and if you expect chardonnay to taste like a vanilla milkshake, then this wine will confuse you and you’ll score it lower. Which is just one of the many reasons why scores are stupid, since they don’t account for individual likes and dislikes. In wine, one size does not fit all.

What the A to Z does have: Crisp, juicy green apple fruit, classic for this style of chardonnay; a little richness at the back, which makes up for the lack of oak; and an intensity that is quite refreshing. Serve this chilled on its own, or with any white wine dish that isn’t too rich, and especially grilled seafood. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2014 $10 Hall of Fame – unless, of course, you like a lot of oak with your chardonnay.

Wine of the week: La Fiera Primitivo 2011

One of the questions we got during our Savor Dallas wine event last week was about price: Is there really all that much good $10 wine?

Several people, knowing the Wine Curmudgeon’s reason for being, chuckled. I was actually quite restrained, since I was in public and did not not want to embarrass myself or the other people on the panel. Throwing things and jumping up and down tends to do that.

In fact, I spoke barely at all, and when I did it was to recommend the La Fiera ($8, purchased, 13%), an Italian red that is everything a cheap wine should be – varietally correct and indicative of its place, all the while treating the consumer with respect.

Primitivo may or may not be zinfandel; I’ve tasted some that had nothing in common, and some, like this, that show that the grapes are related. Look for some black pepper on the nose and more dark red fruit than I expected (zinfandel characteristics). This is not a perfect wine – the vanilla on the back was annoying and the wine would have benefitted from less oak or chips or whatever. But it cost $8 – how much more could I want?

Drink this with takeout pizza, any Italian-American dinner, or even hamburgers on the grill. I just hope the people at the panel take my advice.

Wine of the week: Pacific Rim Dry Riesling 2011

The sweet wine craze, for some reason, has not really included wines that were available before sweet wine got hot. This is particularly true of riesling, which has been the world’s best-known sweet wine for hundreds of years.

This is just another of the things about the wine business that I’ll never understand, given how many quality, cheap rieslings exist. One of my favorites is Pacific Rim, which shows up more often than not in the $10 Hall of Fame.

The 2011 dry riesling ($12, purchased, 13.5%) is not the best of the past several vintages, but it does a workmanlike job of demonstrating why riesling deserves more attention than it gets. It’s a touch sweet, which is true of most dry rieslings (sweet rieslings can have six times as much sugar), but that sweetness is balanced by some zingy lime fruit, a floral hint, and a little riesling oiliness. My only disappointment was that the wine’s finish was too short, leaving me wondering where the rest of it went to. But that’s the difference between a $10 wine and a Hall of Fame wine.

Chill this and pair it with Asian food, grilled seafood, or even cold plates. It’s not so sweet that the manly among us will be offended, but it is sweet enough so that sweet drinkers will be happy.

Wine of the week: Barahonda Monastrell Sin-Madera 2010

The joy of wine – the absolute, most wonderful thing – is tasting something you’ve never had before and knowing that it’s something you want to drink again and again.

Such was the case with the Barahonda ($9, purchased, 14%), a red wine from Spain made with monastrell and from another regions that only Patrick Mata at Ole Imports seems to have hard of.

How impressive was this wine? It’s a previous vintage, and whenever an $10 wine still tastes like this, imagine how wonderful it will be when it’s the current vintage. Look for a funky Spanish aroma -- the wine geeks call it barnyard, but that doesn’t do it justice. It’s an earthy, intriguing smell that always makes me think of Spain. There is also some dark fruit, lots of spiciness and not a bit of oak.

It’s a food wine, as many Spanish wines are, and really needs something like grilled meat to show it at its best. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2014 $10 Hall of Fame.

Wine of the week: Dry Creek Dry Chenin Blanc 2011

I’m doing research for an upcoming blog post about U.S. wine sales – what varietals we’re drinking, the brands we’re buying, and so forth. Chardonnay, not surprisingly, is still the white wine of choice for most of us.

This wine and grape are not high on those lists. Which, frankly, is a shame. The Wine Curmudgeon has long been an advocate of chenin blanc, a white wine grape that is fairly well known in France but is known in the U.S., if at all, for indifferently made sweet wine. Chenin blanc is much better than that.

The Dry Creek ($10, purchased) is not indifferently made and is not sweet. In fact, It's one of the few wines in the world that isn’t reisling that lists the residual sugar on the label -- 0.6 percent, which makes it as dry as many red wines. (Though, given that hardly any consumers know what residual sugar is, it’s more a good idea in effort than execution).

Look for lots of white fruit aromas, a little lemon peel fruit, and a sort of slate-like, fruit pit finish. This is a wonderful alternative to chardonnay, especially for salads, grilled vegetables, and cheese courses.

Wine of the week: Cusumano Nero d'Avola 2011

One day, perhaps, Sicily will take its place as one of the world’s great wine regions. The Winestream Media will flock there, and its members will write glowing 94-point reviews about wines made with grapes most people have never heard of. The region’s winemakers will become celebrities, starring in glossy cover photos and showing up in wine gossip columns.

Until then, let’s drink the wine and not let anyone else know how well done it is.

Case in point is the Cusumano ($10, purchased), yet another Sicilian wine that is stunning in its combination of value and quality. It’s made with the nero d‘avola grape, common on the island, and one that gives the wine a dark, plummy and almost earthy character. Which, of course, is not what most of us expect from a $10 red wine. There is no sweet fruit, no winemaking alchemy to take out the tannins and smooth out the acid. You get what the terroir and the grapes offer, and that’s a drinkable, impressive hearty red wine of the kind not found often enough in California.

Pair this with a red sauce, roast chicken, hamburgers or sausage. And if someone asks you where you got it or how much it cost, mumble your answer so it stays our secret.

Wine of the week: Gruet Brut NV

The Wine Curmudgeon used to regularly pour this wine blind, and dare anyone who tasted it to guess where it was from. It was, of course, a trick question – there’s no way anyone would guess New Mexico.

Unfortunately, Gruet has been a victim of its own success. It was probably the first regional wine with distribution throughout the U.S., and it long ago had to start using grapes from California to ensure it could make enough to meet demand. And its price hasn’t been $10 in a number of years (to say nothing of the company’s other problems).

I was also unsure about quality after the addition of the California grapes. It might have been my imagination, but something seemed to be missing the couple of times I had tasted it. So I was relieved to find that the Brut ($13, purchased), Gruet’s entry level wine, was up to its usual standards this time around.

Look for lots of tiny bubbles, some crisp green apple and a little something more than most bubbly at this price has. In this, it’s less austere than a cava but not quite as complicated as a well-made, medium-priced California sparkling. Which means it’s an ideal wine for The Holiday That Must Not be Named; you can still get a smile when you tell the other person the winery is in New Mexico.