The Wine Curmudgeon

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.

Wine of the week: Thorny Rose Sauvignon Blanc 2011

New Zealand sauvignon blancs were all the rage in the couple of years before I started the blog. One of them, Cloudy Bay, even got big scores from the Winestream Media, something that almost never happens to sauvignon blancs.

Since then, they’ve mostly faded into the store shelf and have become just another wine to buy. I’m not quite sure why; the fickle consumer, perhaps, who moved on to something else?

So I was surprised to see the Thorny Rose ($9, purchased, 13.5%), apparently a new label from Big Wine’s Constellation Brands. Who is doing new sauvignon blancs these days?

Be glad they’re doing this one. I expected another tepid grocery store New Zealand sauvignon blanc, with lots of sort of grapefruity fruit and not much else. Instead, I tasted lots of real grapefruit, as well as a tiny bit of tropical fruit in the middle and even an attempt at a finish. This is not a one-flavor wine by any means. (Though, if you click on the link to the wine, be warned: The copy reads as if it was written by someone my age trying to appeal to someone in their 20s.)

Serve it chilled with roast or grilled chicken or boiled or grilled seafood, and don’t forget how much sauvignon blanc likes garlic and parsley.

Wine of the week: Faustino 2010

Rioja – red wine made with the tempranillo grape from the Rioja region of Spain – has long been one of the world’s great wine values. The simplest Riojas, called crianza, are everyday wines that usually deliver tremendous quality for $10. That more of us don’t know about them is one of the many things that make the Wine Curmudgeon so cranky.

Bodegas Faustino, which has been making wine in Spain for 150 years, has long been known for its wines with Roman numerals – Faustino I, Faustino V, and Faustino VII. This Faustino ($10, purchased, 13%) is part of its “modern reds” line – a term that usually makes me run screaming into the night, hinting as it does of merlot blended into the mix, winemaking alchemy to produce sweet fruit, and lots of fake oak.

Happily, this “modern red” is terrific basic Rioja, with everything as it should be. Look for cherry fruit, bright acidity, earthiness and that wonderfully funky Rioja aroma. The only thing that seemed modern about it was better winemaking – no off flavors or smells, which can sometimes happen with old-style Rioja.

You can serve this with almost anything except a white cream sauce, which is one of the great strengths of Rioja. It’s especially fine with bean dishes.