The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine of the week: Pine Ridge Chenin Blanc-Viognier 2012

What's not to like about the Pine Ridge ($10, purchased, 12%)? It's cheap and it delivers so much more value than what it costs that I can't find a sufficient metaphor to describe how much more value that is.

The 2012 may be the best vintage ever, which is saying something given the wine's quality over the past decade. This California white wine blend offers peach fruit and a bit of floral from the viognier plus some citrus and a touch of honey from the chenin blanc. The chenin and viognier play off each other so well that it's hard to believe this wine didn't cost as much as one of Pine Ridge's $50 and $100 reds.

In this, it demonstrates one of the keys to finding great cheap wine from California. Forget the goofy names and cute labels; look for a less expensive wine from a producer who makes lots of expensive wine, be it Pine Ridge or Dry Creek. That's one of the lessons, by the way, in the Cheap Wine Book.

Highly recommended, and will almost certainly be included in the 2014 $10 Hall of Fame. Drink this chilled on its own or with almost any sort of white wine dish.

Wine of the week: Dry Creek Fume Blanc 2012

California wine takes a lot of abuse on the blog, and with good reason. Too much of it is cynically made and with little concern for value. Slap a marketing campaign on it, make sure there is a lot of sweet fruit in the mix, and flog it to unsuspecting consumers.

In fact, one blog visitor, then doing public relations for a wine producer, said her bosses were quite angry with the Wine Curmudgeon for writing just that several years ago, since it applied to one of their products. Which, of course, made me smile – isn’t that why I’m here?

But there are California labels that remind me that the state produces some of the best wine in the world, cheap or not. Dry Creek is one of them and its fume blanc ($10, purchased, 13.5%) is a classic that never disappoints. It’s made with sauvignon blanc (20 years ago, calling sauvignon blanc fume blanc was a popular marketing technique) and displays all of the flavor and character a California sauvignon blanc should. It’s not thin or watery or overdone, but has grassiness, lemon and lime fruit (maybe even a little more this vintage), and a clean, fresh finish.

Highly recommended, and almost certain to return to the $10 Hall of Fame in 2014. This is the fourth or fifth $10 California sauvignon blanc from the 2012 vintage that has been exceptional, including Joel Gott and Maxwell Creek. They have restored my faith in California sauvignon blanc.

Wine review: Benziger Sauvignon Blanc 2011

Periodically, the Wine Curmudgeon will wax nostalgic about great $10 wines that are no more – the old Big House Red, when Randall Grahm owned it, for example, or the legendary Hogue Fume Blanc, which once got me out of a wine bar fight (a story I’ll have to share one of these days).

Benziger’s Fume Blanc, which the winery stopped making four or five years ago, was one of those wines. It was a regular in the $10 Hall of Fame in those dark, pre-recession days, when I wrote that “wineries, producers, and marketers seem to be spending their money on packaging and advertising instead of what’s in the bottle” and I worried that great cheap wine was going to go away.

This, as near as I can tell, is the successor to the fume (which is just another name for wine made with sauvignon blanc), though I haven’t tasted it in a while. The 2011 ($8, purchased, 13.5%) is a previous vintage, which is why it cost so little; suggested retail is closer to $15, though the 2012 may be available for $10 or $11 in some places. This is classic California-style sauvignon blanc with grassy aromas, but also a very refreshing tropical pop in the middle. Very well done, and a steal at this price.

Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2014 $10 Hall of Fame – as it should be, if the past is any indication.

Wine of the week: Maxwell Creek Sauvignon Blanc 2012

Maxwell Creek has been one of the great mysteries of the wine business – incredible $10 wine from Napa Valley, but no one quite sure who or what Maxwell Creek really is.

The Wine Curmudgeon, using post-modern technology (in the form of a federal government website that matches producers and wine labels) can confirm the rumors: Maxwell Creek is a second label for St. Supery, long a consistent and quality and expensive Napa producer.

Whatever possessed St. Supery to do Maxwell Creek, the Wine Curmudgeon is grateful. The sauvignon blanc ($10, purchased, 13.5%) is $10 Hall of Fame quality wine, and the only thing that will keep it out of the hall in January is limited availability. Apparently, it’s only sold at World Market (and maybe Bed Bath & Beyond with wine departments), and World Market has stores in just 30 states.

This wine has a little more citrus (grapefruit and lime?) than a traditional California sauvignon blanc, but it’s not quite as overwhelming as similar wines from New Zealand. There’s even a little tropical fruit in the middle, and it’s not nearly as simple as a lot of other sauvignon blancs at this price. And yes, the adjectives fresh and clean and zingy apply here.

Drink this chilled with an end of summer picnic or barbecue (grilled chicken, perhaps?) and hope that St. Supery will continue to do us this favor.

Wine of the week: Tractor Shed Red 2010

The Wine Curmudgeon is always looking for $10 red wine that tastes like it costs more than $10. These are the most difficult cheap wines to find, though I’m not sure why. Yes, it’s easier to make quality cheap white than red, but not easier to make cheap quality sparkling. And there is plenty of the latter.

So I ask a lot of people if they can recommend a red that’s worth serving as a wine of the week. Many of the people I ask are retailers, and their choices are spot on more often than not (which is one reason why the forthcoming cheap wine book spends a lot of time discussing how to find a good retailer).

That was the case with the Tractor Shed ($10, purchased, 13.5%), and a tip o’ the Curmudgeon's fedora to Jeff Stuart at Spec’s in Dallas for the suggestion. It’s a California red – from Napa Valley, no less -- that combines an old-fashioned field blend with modern winemaking to produce a fruity wine with character and qualities other than just the fruit. Most of the fruit (sweet cherry?) is in the middle, surrounded by spiciness in front and earthiness and pleasing tannins on the finish.

This is a red wine to keep around the house and open as needed. It will pair with most red wine foods, but is also pleasant enough to drink on its down. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2014 $10 Hall of Fame.

Wine of the week: Yellow + Blue Chardonnay 2011

The Yellow + Blue boxed wines have long been among the Wine Curmudgeon’s favorites – cheap, well-made, and aimed at wine drinkers who want a quality product without any fuss.

Retailers have not always shared that enthusiasm. The wines come in a 1-liter juice box with plastic screwcap, which is terrific for consumers but problematic for retailers. Stores, after all, are built with shelves designed for 750-milliliter bottles. So the wines, if the retailer carries them at all (“Boxed wine? We don’t need no stinkin’ boxed wine”), get shunted to the back of the store, out of sight and out of mind.

That’s too bad. The Yellow + Blue rose, torrontes, and sauvignon blanc are top notch, and each has been in the $10 Hall of Fame at one time or another. The chardonnay ($10, purchased, 13.5%), though not quite as well done as the best Yellow + Blue wines, may be an even more impressive achievement.

That’s because the grapes come from Lodi in California, hardly the lodestone of chardonnay and a region that out tankerloads of flabby and almost sweet versions of the varietal. Yellow + Blue impresario Matt Cain, though, has made a wine with pleasant tropical fruit and a bit of a pithy finish that tastes like chardonnay. That’s not easy to do, given what he was working with in Lodi.

This is the kind of well-priced and professional wine that we need to see more of from California. Now all we have to do is to convince retailers it’s worth carrying.

Barefoot wine review 2013

This year, the Wine Curmudgeon picked two Barefoot award winners to review – the pink moscato, which earned a double gold this month at a prestigious California competition, and the merlot, which got a gold at the 2011 Critics Challenge (the 2013 version of which I judged over the weekend).

My impressions? Both were sound, not flawed, provided value, and were much more impressive than the pinot noir and sauvignon blanc in the 2012 Barefoot review.

More, after the jump: