July 20th, 2010

The Real Meaning of “Value”

2009 Silver Birch Sauvignon Blanc (Octavin)

I just don’t get it.

A few people I really like and respect have reviewed this wine ahead of me. Jason over at Jason’s Wine Blog (who, it should be noted, specializes in reviewing wine at the lower end of the price spectrum), while not formally giving the 2009 Silver Birch in the bladder inside the octagonal cardboard the once-over, did mention it in a recent post as “…impressive and… a crowd favorite.“

A couple of my homeboys (as it were), including fellow Trés Amigo Josh Wade at Drink Nectar wrote this guy up, and gave it a 3 out of 5, which I translate in my little head as something resembling an 80 on the Robert Parker point scale. Josh mentions specifically that this is a value buy.

The same score was given out by Those Who Are The Best New Wine Blog Twentyten at Swirl, Smell, Slurp, where both She and He gave, individually, a score of 3 out of 5. They refer to the wine as “good” after calling food They consumed “great,” so I have to consider that a less-than-rousing endorsement of the wine—but an endorsement nonetheless.

Liking this a bit more is my buddy and fellow fantasy baseballer Josh Sweeney at wine(explored). With his forgiveness, I am going to include here his entire review verbatim, including his 7 out of 10 (which, in my little messed up world, is something like an 85 on Parker’s scale):

2009 Silver Birch Sauvignon Blanc: 7/10. This is a classic, aggressive, beautifully flavored Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. I actually had a lot of trouble keeping my pace with this box. It drank so well for so long, I actually finished it a week early. If you can get the 2009 before we hit 2011, I highly, highly recommend it for anyone who likes a crisp, acidic Sauv Blanc.

Josh likes.

So, the consensus seems to be that this is average-to-good wine, that when coupled with its price (around $24 for a 3L box, or about $6 per bottle-equivalent) is recommended pretty much across the board by my blogging contemporaries.

I don’t fucking see it.

This is plonk. This is nigh-undrinkable, one-note, over-acidic plonk, and I can’t consider wine like that a “value” at any price, including free (which, because this was sent to me by someone involved in the promotion of this product, it was).

I think the wine blog whateversphere has found itself in the dangerous territory of trying to redefine “value.” High value is not necessarily correlated with low price.

The Chateâu d’Yquem I reviewed last week, regardless of how good it is (and oh my GOD it is good) cannot be considered a “value.” It costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $300-$400 per bottle-equivalent (and is much more common in the 375ml half-bottle). But that’s not why. It can’t be considered a “value” because that price point is basically the worldwide peak for Sauternes.

However, the $30 Napa cult wine The Prisoner is absolutely a value. It drinks like a $60-$80 bottle. Many people would argue that wine that costs $30 (or $20, or some other arbitrary number) cannot be considered “value” wine, because it is out of some people’s price range.

To me, this is a bastardization of the concept of “value,” and leads to situations like this: crap wine given more than its due simply because it costs less than a child’s ticket to the cinema.

So here are my notes.

The wine looks like a sauv blanc, very light yellow-to-clear in the glass. On the nose is a light alcohol sting (but not terrible), grapefruit, and some grass.

The palate, however, is all one note. This tastes like grapefruit juice. Almost sour, but really, it’s the high, unbalanced acidity here that is making me think “underripe grapefruit.” Can’t blame the grapefruit for that. Did I mention this tastes like grapefruit juice?

I can’t call that a value, personally. And I can’t recommend this wine.

Verdict: C-

P.S., since I compared everyone’s else’s score to the RMPJOHPS (Robert M. Parker Jr. One Hundred Point Scale), I will tell you that in my little world—where we are right now—a C- is something in the high 60s. Definitely under 70 points.

P.P.S., a 12-pack of 32oz bottles of Ocean Spray white grapefruit juice will run you about $35. That’s around $2.30 per 750ml. Just sayin’.

(full disclosure: this wine was received as a press sample. No way I’d pay for this.)

2009 Silver Birch Sauvignon Blanc

2009 Silver Birch Sauvignon Blanc

Tags: 2009, C-, Marlborough, New Zealand, sauvignon blanc, Silver Birch

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May 27th, 2010

Dredging Salmon Creek To Find A Chardonnay

2009 Salmon Creek California Chardonnay

This is the kind of wine that gets me in trouble.

Not because it’s difficult to review, or because it’s getting a particular score (good, bad, or mediocre), or because a friend makes it or I like the people at the winery, or anything like that.

This is going to make me look like a snob.

This is the kind of wine that if you ask people at a wine shop, they not only won’t have it (it’s primarily sold at restaurants), but they may give you the stinkeye if you say you like it. I’m not here to do that. I still believe to each their own, and that just because I don’t like the wine doesn’t mean someone else can’t. I still believe that. But this is really crappy wine.

The 2009 Salmon Creek California Chardonnay (they also make a more regionally-specific Napa Valley chard, but this is not that) starts off just fine, it glows ever-so-faintly in the glass, a pretty light yellow straw. On the nose is some red apple (not nearly as bright and clean-smelling as a green apple note would be) and some wood.

Did I mean “oak”? No, interrupting reader, I did not. I meant “wood.”

The wine is medium-bodied and shows off an astonishingly high amount of heat for a wine that clocks in at 12.5%. There’s no balance here. What fruit notes are here are very tart apple, and not much else. More wood notes (still doesn’t come off like “oak” to me, really).

All in all, blecch.

Verdict: C-

2009 Salmon Creek California Chardonnay

2009 Salmon Creek California Chardonnay

Tags: 2009, C-, California, chardonnay, Salmon Creek Cellars

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March 29th, 2010

Better Than Jug Wine

2007 Tre Cellars California Cabernet Sauvignon

Tre Cellars is the supermarket-bound, $10-price-point wine label of Guglielmo Winery, in Morgan Hill, CA. Not a ton of wine is made in the Santa Clara Valley home of Guglielmo, certainly not as much as in the Napa and Sonoma valleys to the north, nor the Santa Cruz Mountains to the south.

Even Guglielmo’s premier label, Guglielmo Private Reserve features just three wines (Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, and Rosatello) that are marked as “estate bottled & grown,” leading one to the natural conclusion that Guglielmo buys a lot of grapes from grape growers, and is primarily a winemaking outfit. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.

However, wine is as much about where it’s from as what’s in its bottle. In order for an American wine to use an AVA designation on the label, 85% of the grapes in the wine must have come from that AVA. Which is why when I see a label name its home as simply “California,” I get just a little nervous. What’s in the bottle? Cabernet Sauvignon grown in the cool heights of Howell Mountain above the Napa Valley is going to be very different from Cabernet Sauvignon grown in the sunbaked fields of Lodi. Et cetera.

Not surprisingly, this wine has very little character. It says very little about itself. The color of the wine is a bit tawny in the glass, especially around the edges, but it does get nice and ruby red near the very core. The nose is a bit hot, but features some black fruit notes, and a nice spice note, like cinnamon, that, while I don’t normally attribute such an aroma to Cab Sauv, was pleasant.

The wine is medium-bodied, but lacks any complexity whatsoever. Some very basic red fruit spars with some alcoholic heat (a bit surprising considering the wine clocks in at a modest 12.5% ABV), and there isn’t much else there.

That having been said, the wine is $9.95. It’s far superior to jug wine and lots of other California supermarket wines. It’s just not something I would choose to drink or can recommend.

Verdict: C-

(full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample from Folsom & Associates)

2007 Tre Cellars California Cabernet Sauvignon

2007 Tre Cellars California Cabernet Sauvignon

Tags: 2007, C-, cabernet sauvignon, California, Guglielmo Winery, Tre Cellars

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December 23rd, 2009

A Fruit Bomb From Livermore

2007 Tamas Estates Zinfandel Riserva

I’ve reviewed a couple wines from Tamas already (barbera and sangiovese) and really liked them both. So when the gang headed out to do our big tasting day in the Livermore Valley, we had to put Tamas on our itinerary. I’m glad we did, as a couple of the wines that we tasted that day topped my list along with the Merrillie Chardonnay from Steven Kent.

This wasn’t one of them.

Not that it was an awful wine. Everything from Tamas was decent-to-excellent. But this was not for me at all.

On the nose is cherry. Very heavy cherry. So much cherry, I wondered if someone had dropped a cough drop in my glass, but no, just the zin.

The palate is no different. Huge huge cherry-centered fruit flavor. Seriously, this wine is like drinking a box of Juicy Juice. To be fair, my compatriots did not, as a whole, agree with me, and many of them liked it. But no one raved. Even if you like fruit bombs, the one-note character of this wine is still off-putting.

For the first time, I cannot recommend a Tamas wine. The Riserva is not one of their “touring” wines, as they call them, so it is not available in stores nationwide. Which is fine by me.

Verdict: C-

Tags: 2007, C-, Livermore Valley, Tamas Estates, zinfandel

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October 26th, 2009

A First Shot At Tempranillo Falls A Bit Flat

2003 Vinea Tempranillo Reserva, D.O. Cigales, Spain

I’d never had a Tempranillo before. This was my first, and it left me rather uninspired.

The nose was lacking almost entirely of fruit, with heavy notes of earth and oak. The color is a light garnet red with tinges of rusty orange at the edges.

The first thing I noticed was the incredibly — almost distressingly — light mouthfeel. It was almost as if the wine wasn’t really there. Still lacking in any discernible fruit notes, the palate played with hints of rock and wood. The finish was clean and very short — the wine left as inconspicuously as it came.

All in all, I am hoping this is not indicative of Tempranillo as a varietal. One bright note: My tasting partner, Karly, noted that the wine paired nicely with her lunch, an italian sandwich of black forest ham, salame, and caper aioli. While I didn’t partake, it makes sense to me that this wine would pair well with deli meats — a steak would wreck it like a steamroller, leaving nothing in its wake.

Verdict: C-

Tags: 2003, C-, Cigales, tempranillo, Vinea

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