Wine
 

Ok, just started getting into the "wine thing"....like Barola, but it is a little pricey for me at about $40 per bottle, so I am now drinking Merlot Yellow Tail.

Just tried a great Pinot, Santa Margharita..

Anyone have any suggestions?

Katkeeper is away right now or I'd ask her to check in. She has a large temperature-controlled/humidity controlled wine cellar and I'm guessing about 300 bottles or so.

I was greatly interested in the hobby for a while, but I couldn't keep up and paying the prices wore me down.

My favorite wine? I like: --snip-- But George says it's ... hhhaaaarrrrddd.--snip--

paraphrasing from the movie Sideways...
lifes too short to be drinking Merlot.


Look for Renwood Zinfandels particularly Jack Rabbit Flat and Fiddletown should be ~$25-30 per. And please! Pretty please... let 'em 'open' for at least 15 min before tasting! 30 min would be even better.

A less expensive alternative would be South African Pinotages. The pinotage is a hybrid of Pinot Noir and a native African grape. You should be able to find some good choices in the <$20 range.

I really enjoy the Black Box Wines - yes, they are in a box, but they are really really good. My fave is the cabernet, but I also like the Merlot.

Last night at dinner I had Beaulieu Vineyard cabernet (has a big "BV" on the label, so easy to spot). Yum. Will set you back about $20, and worth every penny.

A few wines.
 

Beringer Knights Bridge Cabernet ($20 or thereabouts) is a good bet. I've had their ~$100 Cabernet on a few occasions, but it's only been good enough to justify that price once.

"Lan" Rioja Reserva (actually available at the PA state store but not at Total Wine.. go figure!) is tasty.

Several of the Australian Cabernet/Shiraz blends are decent.

Has anyone tried Barolo? It's Italian (duh?), heavy and GOOD!

Greg Norman is another good wine, about $20 per bottle.

Rutherford Hill Merlot. Great flavor, somehow avoids that used gym sock woodiness that characterizes most moderately priced Merlots

Yes, it's a Merlot. I don't know why they dissed it in Sideways, a movie I am unlikely to see because no one's head explodes.

Sycamore is a big fan of the Boones Farm family of screwcap wines.

I fell sound asleep watching sideways.

I think I have tried Rutherford Hill and it was a good wine.

Never really got on with Merlot, maybe it's my tastebuds but whenever I've tried it it has always been heavy on the tannins so tastes a bit mouldy (have you seen the wine wheel - become an instant connoisseur with all the right words to use to describe the flavour of your wine).

Red - enjoy a good cabernet Shiraz (Chileans are good and fruity - plus will help with the old shut-eye), or else a claret like Haut Medoc

White - like tenchards* from cote d'or - Chablis, Challonnais, Montagny and the favourite, Rully

Sorry not up on US wines...

* tenchards, what the hell are tenchards? Finally worked out my own typing - please read as 'the chards' (short for chardonnays) - back to typing school!

Amen! April and I went through...*thinks*...4 or 5 bottles last weekend: Orange Hurricane, Strawberry Hill and, of course, Blue Hawaiian. I think there's also a half-bottle of Arbor Mist chardonnay left.

I'm not an expert on wines, but I know enough to get by and know what I like. As far as "real" wines, I like cabernet sauvignons, chardonnays and rieslings. I generally prefer reds over whites, but if I'm with April, reds are out of the question--they give her migraines.

I'm liking Cotes du Rhone wines, or the appelation dodging, (South African I think) knock off -Goats do Roam. I pretty much only drink bottles under $20, up to $30 in a restaurant. Plenty of good affordable wine!

mmmm... sweaty sauerkraut (at about 10:30 on the wheel) :headshake

Must be a German vintage....

Hey - I'm German!! Part anyway!

I have to give big cudos to the Aussies for their wines. Absolutely lovely, and usually fairly reasonably priced. No, I can't remember which ones I really liked. I tend to buy wines rarely and somewhat at random ... often based on the pretty colors on the label. Really. But I know the Aussies make nice 'uns.

Achtung baby (apologies to U2) - don't worry, we still like you...

Apology accepted! :blush:

Now, I have this feeling that I might just be getting myself into trouble here, but honesty being the best policy, when I said 'U2', I didn't mean 'you too' but U2 :o

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so used to the kids typing on the computer - I did think you meant you too!!!! Again, sometimes I must apologize for being a blonde! :lol2:

Never apologize, and never admit you aren't actually blonde.

Lindeman's (Australian) is a decent, inexpensive table wine. Both their Chardonay and the Cabernet.

Tonight, I picked up a bottle of Rabbit Ridge Zinfandel. Medium bodied, a little on the fruity side, and definitely spice-ay! A little better than that overexposed Ravenswood Zinfandel, cute bunny on the label, and not too intense, overall. Hey you single kids, this is a good wine to keep on hand for those "impromptu" dates...

Cost: about 18 bucks.

Told yah cool label was the way to go. Bully Hill with the picture of the Goat wine is really good.

Sorry Wolf but I must contradict. Bully Hill made several of the very worst wines I've ever had. Back when I was involved with the CompuServe Wine Forum (ca 1988!), they had an acronym for these kinds of things: DNPIM (Do Not Put In Mouth).

The Bully Hill whites are passable, but the reds are foul (including "Goat du Rhone" IMO) and only to be used for gifts to neighbors you don't like.

I had the Goat Blush, which definitely had the best label.

I've never tried any of their reds.

One wine I buy in quantity when in France (Calais Hypermarkets) is J P Chenet.

It retails at about £1.50 (about $2.75) per bottle there and about £4 ($7.25) in the UK. Despite the very low price, the flavour is very good and quality consistent. It is instantly recognisable by its 'bent neck' bottle - says a lot for the marketing dept as well.

Judging from the link above it is available in the US. I'd be interested to hear the cost of it over there and, if anyone has tried it, what they think of it.

I'm not a wine guy, I'm a beer snob, but my wife wanted to go Nappa Valley for vacation (so of course we went). I ended up having a great time and actually enjoyed much of the wine. It was amazing to me that you could have the same type of wine from two places next to each other and they tasted totally different.

The wineries we enjoyed the most are:

• Sterling: Really liked their merlots. The Three Palms Merlot is the best one but is $60/bottle.

• Niebaum-Coppola: Their chardonneys were great.

• Praeger: This is actually a Port place. They had great ports and the owners were super cool and friendly. The shirts they sell are all tie dies.

I recommend a trip to Nappa Valley or Sonoma to anyone even if they're not huge wine fans. It's really cool to wander through the places and just try out a ton of different wines.

JErry

Love Sterling cabernet! Gotta have it with a seared steak. :drool:

Coolest label I've seen lately--Papio wines. Has a funky illustration of monkeys playing latin jazz. I bought a bottle, but I can't tell you how it was because my fiance guzzled it, dammit.

I'm back.

One of the best buys in wine right now is Georges DuBoeuf Beaujolais Villages 2003. 2003 was a fabulous year for Beaujolais; in fact, DuBoeuf calls it the Vintage of the Sun and has attached a special extra label saying so on the bottle near the neck. Remember that hot Summer when people died from the heat in France? It concentrated the flavors in the grapes so that the wine has wonderful fruit. I have paid as little as $7.99 for it on sale in Pennsylvania where it is normailly $9.99. I saw it in Tennessee last week for $12.49 which was still a bargain.

I'll have to look for that stuff, Kat, I'm very fond of Beaujolais. Something I haven't seen here yet is a Central Coastal Californian: Mirassou. They make a lively, lovely, quite sweet white. I suppose it would be lovely for marinating dessert ingredients in but so far I just couldn't bear doing anything with it but drinking it.

Currently, we're cooking with Two-Buck Chuck, white or red -- Charles Shaw, available at Trader Joe's all over the country, gets its name from its rock-bottom price of $2 per 750ml. Vin très ordinaire, but pleasant, and superb value for money.

* Except in Pennsylavnia.

Anything that unites French and Germans should be viewed with suspicion. :-)

I'll take CA reds (Bordeaux primarily with Berringer vinyards being at or near the top) and German whites (dry is my favorite). CA has figured out how to engineer what the French leave up to mother nature. And the Germans, like the Californians, leave nothing to chance.

The Aussie have also shown that they know how to produce a good red but there are some imposters piggybacking on that success.

Where you have to go to the ABC store instead. I get a mite spoiled in California with its one-stop shopping for groceries and beer and wine and liquor, in the grocery stores.

MO and IL are the same as CA when it comes to beer and liquor. But for whatever reasons, Walgreens no longer carries beer and liquor here in MO. And they used to have the best selection and prices.

ABC is Virginia...and one or two other states, IIRC. In PA, they're officially called Wine & Spirits Shoppes...most folks generally refer to them as "state liquor stores."

Missouri boy, they are called "State Stores".

This "Wine & Spirits Shoppe" is a new innovation where they're trying to pretend that they aren't state-owned businesses and also trying to make us forget that the booze is twice as expensive as that across our southern borders.

Oh, and beer, incidentally, isn't sold in a State Store. Beer is sold by a "distributor."

On the upside, for the first time ever, you can buy beer by the case in a distributor on Sundays. It's quite exciting. (before last month you had to go to a restaurant bar that had sunday sales and you couldn't buy more than two six packs per visit. The turnaround from taking two six packs out to your car trunk counts as a new visit).

We can tell. I just wouldn't use the word "spoiled", exactly.

Yeah...my bad.

hell Syc the CRAP wine you drink can be found at 7 11 , or Mapco Express !!!!

Or my local Mobil. :D

Okay, with all this superb local knowledge, here's a question for the ages that may braid this thread together with the one about what foods you're addicted to:

Philly Cheese Steak: best wine to accompany? And best beer?

Wine: a hearty but cheap red, probably a Zinfandel or the afore-mentioned "three-buck Chuck".

Beer: a deep, dark stout or porter with some tang to it.

Beer-wise, I would recommend something light such as Yuengling, because you don't want to add anything too heavy to the ton of grease that you've just consumed.

Wine...Boones Farm, of course! :)

What flavor, and why? :biggrin:

I have to say that I just opened a twist cap with a cork screw. Didn't work out too well. I normally do not buy the screw top!

Blue, I prefer Blue Hawaiian or Orange Hurricane...they probably taste the best out of all 9 kabillion flavors of Boones.

Another inexpensive wine that is not half bad considering the price is the merlot put out by Frontera/Concha Y Toro, a Chilean contribution. You can buy a 1.5 liter bottle of the stuff for only 8.99 in Colorado. Three Thieves (or is it Six Thieves?) brand out of California is a fun screw top wine with a nice orange label and a black silouette of guys on horses holding up bottles of wine.

Utah has the most awful state run liquor stores in the world. They are small, with almost no selection to speak of and impossible to find. Usually, they are located in little a non-descript brick building set back from the road with a small sign that reads State Liquor Agency. Utah keeps 'em open from like 2:00pm to 7:00pm. Many small towns in eastern Utah won't even have one, and if you want a glass of wine to go with your steak, you'll be driving 40 miles out of your way for it. Prices tend to be high, too. The situation might be better in a big town like Salt Lake, a place I have always avoided for fear invoking the wrath of Moroni.

We are having our first snow storm of the year here in Colorado, and I am drowning my sorrows in hot buttered rum before hitting the hay. ;)

any Napa/Sonoma red from 2001-2003 has been good for me. I'm not picky. People like those in Sideways (haven't seen it, btw) love to take the joy out of everything. Depending on the event/meal, a box of white zinfandel is just as worthy as a $80 Beaujolais elsewhere.

Pizza and zin FTW.

hey that rhymed.

As a potential Sideways character, I disagree all around... partly because an $80 bottle IS better than that box white zin any day, and partly because there's no such thing as an $80 Beaujolais. It's a cheaper region. :D :D :D

We just picked up something at Trader Joe's whose label is entirely a large orange question mark. A helpful description on the shelf label said it's a blend of cabernet and shiraz -- so it's Australian. I'm not entirely sure if we're going to drink it or just look at the label and laugh for half an hour.

My 2003 Beaujolais GDB Moulin-A-Vent Carquelin might be worth a lot more than its cost, if not $80 in a few years.

Trader Joe's has good wine values so that you might not laugh after drinking the wine. The Aussies have been good at designing clever labels which has helped their marketing. As opposed to the French who have labels that are difficult to figure out (though not as bad as ther Germans). The labels of the European wines are all controlled as to what infomation can and must be listed them. It is helpful to the knowledgeable consumer, but not to others. The Aussies can put what they want on their lables.

I always laugh after I drink wine!

This wine sounds interesting.

Was just in Chi-town this weekend, and visited my first Trader Joe's. LOVED IT. Wish they'd get one here in Cedar Rapids. Anyway, my in-laws heard about $2-Chuck wine from some friends, and wanted some. They bought a case. Note,it's now $3 Chuck. 2.99/bottle. If I remember to post, I'll let you know what they think. They have really gotten into wine the last few years.

I love sweet wines. White: Moscato D'Asti and late harvest Gewürztraminer. Red: Lambrusco. (I have been known to drink entire bottles of this at a sitting. :yum:) Most Zins are OK too.

I don't drink a whole lot, but I do prefer wine to beer.

Trader Joe's is cool, but only for supplemental stuff. I wouldn't shop there for staples. I've only ever been on the weekends, and it's too much of a hassle to deal with the crowds. The aisles are always very tight and crowded. I hate that.

But my wife goes during the week and gets stuff there. Wine, Olive oil, pizza dough, etc. Good stuff.