The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine review: Charles & Charles Rose 2011

The blog has made substantial progress in its five-plus years of existence – helping wine drinkers appreciate cheap wine and local wine in particular, and adding to the limited number of resources written in English for beginning wine drinkers.

Its great failing, though, has been in rose. No matter what I do, I can’t find a way to interest you in dry pink wine. The rose reviews are rarely well read, and at a time when thousands and thousands of people visit the blog, their poor showing seriously hurts my numbers.

Someone more business savvy or better attuned to the ways of the cyber-ether would get the message and cut back – or even eliminate -- the rose reviews. Needless to say, the Wine Curmudgeon is neither of those.

Because roses are worth drinking, even when it’s not summer. The Charles & Charles ($10, purchased, 13%) is bone dry, food friendly, balanced and fruity – the sort of wine that would go with any informal dinner, afternoon wine sipping, or friends in the living room. It has lots of strawberry and watermelon, which is balanced with pleasant acidity and a touch of minerality.

This is what U.S. rose should aspire to -- enough fruit to please Americans, but not so much as to confuse it with sweet, blush wine.

Mini-reviews 40: Red Newt, Rene Barbier, Quincy, Steelhead

Reviews of wines that don’t need their own post, but are worth noting for one reason or another. Look for it on the final Friday of each month:

• Red Newt Cellars Semi-Dry Riesling 2011 ($15, sample): This New York white, which I tasted as part of a Finger Lakes Twitter event, didn’t have as much varietal character as I expected. More sweet than anything else, without enough fruit or minerality to balance the sweetness.

• René Barbier Mediterranean Rose NV ($5, purchased): The best of the three Rene Barbier wines (and the most difficult to find), made more like a New World rose with strawberry fruit. Highly recommended.

• Domaine du Adéle Rouzé Quincy 2010 ($20, purchased): French white from the Loire is imported by the always reliable Charles Neal. Lots and lots of lemon; the wine may require a little more time in bottle to even out. Needs food, and probably seafood (boiled or grilled shrimp, steamed mussels).

• Steelhead Red 2010 ($15, sample): California blend is heavy on the cabernet sauvignon, so it needs beefy food. But it has lots of character and oomph, as well as blackberry fruit and dusty tannins.

Mini-reviews 39: Schug, Anne Amie, Acrobat, Colores del Sol

Reviews of wines that don’t need their own post, but are worth noting for one reason or another. Look for it on the final Friday of each month. Today, wines to enjoy over the Labor Day weekend:

• Schug Chardonnay Sonoma Coast 2010 ($25, sample): Elegant chardonnay that is a huge bargain at this price. It retains California freshness and fruit while showing some of the length and breadth of a fine white Burgundy.

• Anne Amie Pinot Noir Cuvée A 2010 ($25, sample): Classic Oregon pinot (and always a favorite), with berry fruit and earthiness that balance each other, and a fine value at this price.

• Acrobat Pinot Noir Rose 2011 ($10, purchased): Nothing really wrong with this Oregon rose, but mildly disappointing if only because it’s not up to the quality of the Acrobat pinot gris. Tastes of red fruit with almost sauvignon blanc-like acidity.

• Colores Del Sol Malbec 2010 ($12, sample): At $8, this is a nicely done grocery store wine, featuring the typical blueberry cola aroma. But, unfortunately, it doesn’t cost $8.

Catfish meuniere, Randall Grahm, and Spy Valley

Honest wine is the best pairing for honest food.

The most important lesson I ever learned about seafood came from the late, much loved and much missed Merlin Kleinpeter: If you can’t buy it from Robert at Bayou Seafood, she used to say, then don’t buy it.

Which was Merlin’s way of telling me that fresh is what matters, and that any supplier who wasn’t honest about things like freshness wasn’t worth my time and money. If the crabs weren’t good that day, then Robert told her so, and Merlin didn’t buy them.

I mention this because food and wine are inextricably linked, and not just about which wine goes with which food. Pairing wine with most takeout pizza, which never tastes as good as you think it should, is one thing. That’s what $10 grocery store merlot was invented for.

But pairing wine with honest food – food that someone cared about and that required them to make an effort when they prepared it -- is another matter entirely. More, after the jump:

Mini-reviews 38: Muscadet, Toad Hollow, Brocard, Rhiannon

Reviews of wines that don’t need their own post, but are worth noting  for one reason or another. Look for it on the final Friday of each month.

• Alfred Pery Vallee Loire Muscadet 2010 ($10, purchased): Those of us who think Muscadet, a French white, is one of the world's great cheap wine secrets can skip this one. Not much to it other than some lemon fruit amidst a bland, watery style.

• Toad Hollow Pinot Noir Rose 2011 ($10, sample): California wine is better than the 2010 vintage, which was a white zinfandel knockoff, but still not up to its former $10 Hall of Fame standards. Thin and missing any sort of noticeable fruit.

• Jean-Marc Brocard Chablis 2009 ($20, purchased): This French white is more New World chardonnay in style than most Chablis. It’s rounder and softer, with more red apple instead of green apple and Chablis' tell-tale acidity. Having said that, it's not worse, just different.

• Rhiannon 2010 ($13, sample): Find this California red blend for $10, and you're in business. Simple, dark fruits (even a little less than ripe, which I liked), and a bit of tannin.

Wine of the week: Fattoria La Valentina Cerasuolo 2010

The wine of the week, which usually posts on Wednesday, runs today because of the July 4 holiday. The blog's schedule will return to normal next week.

The Wine Curmudgeon is criticized regularly because I have standards. Just because a wine is cheap does not mean it doesn't have to be well made and varietally correct. Or, as my pal Tim McNally put it the other day: "There are cheap wines, and they have a place. Then there are wines that are made cheaply, and they don't have a place at all."

The La Valentina ($7, purchased) is firmly and unequivically one of the former. In a perfect world, whenever someone sends me a tart email or leaves a snide comment on the blog about my insistence that a California appellation, cute label and too much fruit does not make a quality wine, I would pour them a glass of this.

This is a surprisingly complex rose made from the montepulciano grape in the Abruzzi region, east of Rome (and not to be confused with the Montepulciano region of Tuscany, home to many high-priced wines). It's not just refreshing, but offers some zip and crispness. Look for strawberry fruit and even a bit of citrus finish.

It's a perfect porch wine, and will go with almost anything you can think of for a July 4 picnic. Highly recommended, and candidate for the 2013 $10 Hall of Fame.

More about Fourth of July wine:
• Fourth of July wine 2012 
• Wine of the week: Louis Tete Beaujolais-Villages 2010
• Wine of the week: Luc Pirlet Pinot Noir Barriques Reserve 2010

Boy, you really don't like rose, do you?

As noted in yesterday's post about rose, it's far from the most popular topic on the blog. But not even the Wine Curmudgeon realized how little wine drinkers like rose. Hardly anyone showed up to read it -- my visitor numbers were equal to those of a Sunday, about one-quarter less than normal.

Never fear, though. You won't dissuade me from my quest to convince Americans it's OK to drink pink wine. I am, after all, the Wine Curmudgeon.