The Cruz Alta was the last wine of the night, and we all agreed that this was a delicious, well balanced wine. In stark contrast to the peppery Malbecs, this Cabernet Sauvignon had smooth, ripe fruit back flavors. We all agreed that this was the one wine of the night that could be easily enjoyed without food. The other wines, as solid as they were, really benefited when combined with food be it meats or cheeses or dark chocolates - anything to smooth out the spiciness and bring out the subtleties. This wine had its full flavors more evident.
It was at the Brown Bag Sommelier price ceiling - 12.99. The BBS member found it at Whole Foods. I'd say she did well.
I have always found Whole Foods a difficult place to buy wine. They have some good selections, however, like everything else in the store - their wines tend to be overpriced. Worse than that, I have found that their staff in the wine section consistently tries to up-sell me. That is when I tell them what kind of wine I am looking for, they have time and again directed me to wines in the 16 to 20 dollar range. It could be because their lower priced wines are poorly curated for the most part with poorly structured flavors that never open up. Then again I have never been incredibly impressed with the wines that they have managed to up-sell me on.
This is not to say that you cannot find a solid, moderately priced wine in Whole Foods or any other supermarket for that matter. This Cruz Alta is proof of that. Super market chains, however, seem unable or unwilling to either find or choose wines in the 12.99 and under range.
The long and short of it: The Brown Baggers loved this wine.
RATING: 3 Screwcaps
LABEL: Cruz Alta
GRAPE: Cabernet Sauvignon
PRICE: $12.99
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Pascual Toso
The second wine we put the screw caps to was a Malbec from Pascual Toso. This was a wine that had no real nose to it. Not that that is an entirely bad thing. Though it was high in alcohol, it didn't have that boozy smell that some powerful California reds pack.
A Malbec loaded with pepper, this is a spicy wine which some in the group found off-putting.
Filled with hints of dark fruits like blackberries and cherries as well as fresh currants, this is a dry, fruit back wine with a quick finish. This wine could cut right through the richness of a big, juicy hamburger.
I can recommend this wine at the price I bought it for: $9.99 with an even stronger buy order if you see it on sale for $7.99.
RATING: 2 Screwcaps( out of 5)
LABEL: Pascual Toso
GRAPE: Malbec
PRICE: $9.99
A Malbec loaded with pepper, this is a spicy wine which some in the group found off-putting.
Filled with hints of dark fruits like blackberries and cherries as well as fresh currants, this is a dry, fruit back wine with a quick finish. This wine could cut right through the richness of a big, juicy hamburger.
I can recommend this wine at the price I bought it for: $9.99 with an even stronger buy order if you see it on sale for $7.99.
RATING: 2 Screwcaps( out of 5)
LABEL: Pascual Toso
GRAPE: Malbec
PRICE: $9.99
Monday, February 16, 2009
Crios Torrentes
It was a clean wine with a good color. This wine would go well with seafood, most especially shellfish. But you could also have it as an aperitif.
As a general note for the Brown Bag Sommelier, we rate wines based on their nose, balance, and finish as well as for price. The Crios was our most expensive wine of the night coming in at 12.99. The Holy Grail for this website is finding an awesome tasting wine for 5 bucks.
Despite the fact that its price was at our ceiling, it was strong in all of its categories and at its price a good value.
RATING: 2.5 Screwcaps (out of 5)
LABEL: Crios
GRAPE: Torrentes
PRICE: 12.99
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Best Served with....
Just a quick post. In the coming days, I'll start listing the wines we tried and rated from Argentina. One of the things I'll reference is common: what would go great with this wine? What is best served with this wine?
All wine is best served with friends. One of the problems I have with the fetishizing of wine as has happened in the United States is that the emphasis has been so put into the wine. So much power has been placed into the bottle, that the djinni overpowers what it is meant to serve.
Wine is a drink in celebration of social gatherings whether family weeknight dinners, wine and cheese served at sunset, or big blowout dinners for extremely special occasions. Wine is meant to be served with and in the service of friends and friendship.
If you have ever felt weird tasting wine from a bottle that you've ordered in a restaurant, or have been unsure about what bottle to pick up for a dinner party, or if you have felt burned by the $20 bottle you did buy for that party, then this blog is designed to help.
Greatness can be found at all levels of price and variety. Greatness that is best served with friends.
All wine is best served with friends. One of the problems I have with the fetishizing of wine as has happened in the United States is that the emphasis has been so put into the wine. So much power has been placed into the bottle, that the djinni overpowers what it is meant to serve.
Wine is a drink in celebration of social gatherings whether family weeknight dinners, wine and cheese served at sunset, or big blowout dinners for extremely special occasions. Wine is meant to be served with and in the service of friends and friendship.
If you have ever felt weird tasting wine from a bottle that you've ordered in a restaurant, or have been unsure about what bottle to pick up for a dinner party, or if you have felt burned by the $20 bottle you did buy for that party, then this blog is designed to help.
Greatness can be found at all levels of price and variety. Greatness that is best served with friends.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The Liquid Fruit of the Gauchos
I've read that Yerba Mate is known in Argentina as the "liquid vegetable of the gauchos." This nickname has been slapped on the tea-like yerba mate for its supposed healthy benefits. It is traditionally drunk from a hollow gourd, and every now and then in Los Angeles you'll see someone drinking mate from just such a gourd. Yes, you're right, he is the one wearing the angry, smug expression and matching Che T-shirt.
I've tried to get into yerba mate with no success. So, instead, I've turned my attention on the liquid fruit of the gaucho - wine - Argentinian wine. And at the last Brown Bag Sommelier tasting event, I can say I had a lot of success.
Again, the Brown Bag Sommeliers went in search of delicious wines for 12.99 or less. Argentina has a lot more wines that fit that description than does Southern California within a one hundred mile radius of Brown Bag HQ. Of course, Argentina's wine regions comprise an area about the size of the entire state of California( but this is no excuse So-Cal - you still have to wear the Brown Bag of Shame until you start crushing and bottling delicious wines for 12.99 or less). So, there is a greater margin for success. Still, every wine we had had something good going for it. Even the chewy tannat that made my mouth pucker up like a wine-drinking large mouth bass had the chance of showing up again on my table next to an Astro-Burger with a side of fried zucchini sticks.
Argentina's star grape, the Malbec had a strong presence at the tasting, but we also had a bonarda, a cabernet sauvignon, a tannat, and one white, a torrantes, amidst the deep reds.
Over all, the wines were great. They were satisfying. They were peppery, spicy, and went great with dark chocolate. Aside from the cabernet sauvignon, the wines we had should be paired with food. The cab we found was definitely a wine that worked with or without food.
These wines were tight, clean, modern. They aren't structured like the intense, highly engineered California wines, but neither do they have the traditional taste of European wines. Argentinian wines seem a mixture of the Old and New Worlds.
Reviews to follow...
I've tried to get into yerba mate with no success. So, instead, I've turned my attention on the liquid fruit of the gaucho - wine - Argentinian wine. And at the last Brown Bag Sommelier tasting event, I can say I had a lot of success.
Again, the Brown Bag Sommeliers went in search of delicious wines for 12.99 or less. Argentina has a lot more wines that fit that description than does Southern California within a one hundred mile radius of Brown Bag HQ. Of course, Argentina's wine regions comprise an area about the size of the entire state of California( but this is no excuse So-Cal - you still have to wear the Brown Bag of Shame until you start crushing and bottling delicious wines for 12.99 or less). So, there is a greater margin for success. Still, every wine we had had something good going for it. Even the chewy tannat that made my mouth pucker up like a wine-drinking large mouth bass had the chance of showing up again on my table next to an Astro-Burger with a side of fried zucchini sticks.
Argentina's star grape, the Malbec had a strong presence at the tasting, but we also had a bonarda, a cabernet sauvignon, a tannat, and one white, a torrantes, amidst the deep reds.
Over all, the wines were great. They were satisfying. They were peppery, spicy, and went great with dark chocolate. Aside from the cabernet sauvignon, the wines we had should be paired with food. The cab we found was definitely a wine that worked with or without food.
These wines were tight, clean, modern. They aren't structured like the intense, highly engineered California wines, but neither do they have the traditional taste of European wines. Argentinian wines seem a mixture of the Old and New Worlds.
Reviews to follow...
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
One Hundred Miles From Home
They said it couldn't be done, but Saturday, the Tenth of January 2009 AD, the high order of the Brown Bag Sommelier held its first group tasting. The rules were simple: the wine had to be 12.99 or under, and it had to be made within a hundred miles of central Los Angeles, an area known to local realtors as Hancock Park Adjacent. Originally we had considered within seventy five miles, but that proved too difficult, so we expanded the range to include a little over a hundred miles. Some BBS members bent the rules a little further. Still, most of the wines came from within one hundred miles. We had wines from Temecula, Camarillo, and even what according to google maps on my iPhone seemed to be Lancaster ( home of creosote bushes and people more interested in crystal meth than Kristal). Yes, Southern California wines were well represented.
I can say this about wines priced under 12.99 made within a hundred miles of Hancock Park Adjacent: you have your work cut out for you. Was I expecting too much from these wines? Was it wrong of me to think that for 8.99 I should be able to get a delicious wine made in my backyard - this being California - major wine producing region that it is.
I suppose the answer is yes. It was far too much to ask for great tasting, well priced wines, made within a hundred miles of Los Angeles.
But, we're optimists here at the Brown Bag Sommelier. And we're already dreaming( perhaps a pipe dream as in a crack pipe dream) of the day when we can pick up a bottle of locally sourced and produced syrah for 7.99. Sound far-fetched? Drinking is believing. And that holy grail is out there, either already produced and somehow over-looked, or perhaps a Platonic truth in the mind of some visionary wine maker just waiting to be distilled from the combination of our beautiful sunlight and cool ocean breezes.
At any rate, I'll be posting over the next several days about the wines we tasted at the first event. And coming soon, we'll be casting a wider net this time looking for great value wines from Argentina.
BBS
I can say this about wines priced under 12.99 made within a hundred miles of Hancock Park Adjacent: you have your work cut out for you. Was I expecting too much from these wines? Was it wrong of me to think that for 8.99 I should be able to get a delicious wine made in my backyard - this being California - major wine producing region that it is.
I suppose the answer is yes. It was far too much to ask for great tasting, well priced wines, made within a hundred miles of Los Angeles.
But, we're optimists here at the Brown Bag Sommelier. And we're already dreaming( perhaps a pipe dream as in a crack pipe dream) of the day when we can pick up a bottle of locally sourced and produced syrah for 7.99. Sound far-fetched? Drinking is believing. And that holy grail is out there, either already produced and somehow over-looked, or perhaps a Platonic truth in the mind of some visionary wine maker just waiting to be distilled from the combination of our beautiful sunlight and cool ocean breezes.
At any rate, I'll be posting over the next several days about the wines we tasted at the first event. And coming soon, we'll be casting a wider net this time looking for great value wines from Argentina.
BBS
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
The Finest Team of Wine Drinkers Known to Mankind
One of my favorite movies as a child was THE GUNS OF NAVARONE directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring the great Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn. The movie is one of those great World War II epics in which there is an impossible mission to be undertaken by a rag-tag outfit of hard drinking, spit fire talking, down on their luck men who have a chance to finally redeem themselves. In this case, their mission is to take out an impregnable Nazi mountain fortress that has two massive guns threatening a Royal Navy rescue of British soldiers stranded on a Greek Isle. Good to know that the British are still stranded on Greek Isles in the form of drunken tourists.
In the weeks since my first post, I have been assembling a rag-tag group of wine drinkers to take out the impregnable fortress of wine inequality and the threatening guns of lack-of-quality and lack of good taste. My team is ready, and we have been planning our first Brown Bag Event in which we'll have a tasting of wines all under $12.99.
The first region we are taking on is the Great State of California (we might hone it down to one particular wine growing region - there's a good chance Paso Robles will be first up). California is the Navarone of Wine Regions to me in terms of affordability and quality. I find it very difficult to find an affordable and great tasting California wine for under $12.99. It could be because our real estate is so expensive, or it could be because the California wine culture puts a lot of emphasis on elevating wine above everything around it. That emphasis leads to a lot of heavy taste engineering - which is costly.
Don't get me wrong. I love California wine, but it tends to fall in a range of $20 and above. Then again, there could very well be bargains out there in the every day affordable range. There has to be.
And in my first major review, me and my rag tag team of wine lovers will be bringing them to your attention.
Oh, and I promise to start adding pictures and stuff that most people like in blogs.
BBS
In the weeks since my first post, I have been assembling a rag-tag group of wine drinkers to take out the impregnable fortress of wine inequality and the threatening guns of lack-of-quality and lack of good taste. My team is ready, and we have been planning our first Brown Bag Event in which we'll have a tasting of wines all under $12.99.
The first region we are taking on is the Great State of California (we might hone it down to one particular wine growing region - there's a good chance Paso Robles will be first up). California is the Navarone of Wine Regions to me in terms of affordability and quality. I find it very difficult to find an affordable and great tasting California wine for under $12.99. It could be because our real estate is so expensive, or it could be because the California wine culture puts a lot of emphasis on elevating wine above everything around it. That emphasis leads to a lot of heavy taste engineering - which is costly.
Don't get me wrong. I love California wine, but it tends to fall in a range of $20 and above. Then again, there could very well be bargains out there in the every day affordable range. There has to be.
And in my first major review, me and my rag tag team of wine lovers will be bringing them to your attention.
Oh, and I promise to start adding pictures and stuff that most people like in blogs.
BBS
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