B:Rot Gut

A wine review...





Newman's Own Wine - Sonoma Valley Cabernet Sauvignon




I bought this because it was on sale. Normally $18, the supermarket had it for $13. I should have known it was too much to hope for it to be a dependable inexpensive Cab. From the pour into the decanter it was thin and watery with a strong nose of alcohol and cedar. I had my first sip after an hour in the decanter.

The first sip was heavily tannic with a leathery feeling on the tongue, strong alcohol on the nose and dirt and tobacco on the pallette with just a little fruit thrown in there, and a touch of vanilla on the finish. Initially I thought that it just needed a little more air and time, and it did open up a bit to some fruit with plums and currant, but it retained the tannins on the front and the dirt / tobacco / wood in the mid pallette. After sipping over several hours, it just didn't get any better.

Lot's of wine in the jug variety are of similar quality. It isn't quite vinegar or corky, but it sure as hell doesn't taste nice either. On doing a bit of research it would appear that Paul has branded wine produced by the three thieves. This is pretty close to their usual level of quality in my opinion and a big fat waste of money. This one goes in the same category as the Newman Newtons as barely passable, and fails to reach the quality established in the dressings and other cookies.

For my $13 I wish I had.....9 Hagen Daz bars, or the Thermals album ironically (or not) titled Fuckin A.

it's getting hot in here...

.
I get it. It's hot here.

(This was taken a few weeks ago. In April. Seriously. It was nice for a while but today it started heating up again. I suppose that's what the AC is for.)

We've been watching a bit of Gary Vaynerchuk (and when I say "we," I mean B; he then convinces me to watch it, and I'm slowly coming around to enjoying it). Ever since we moved down here we've been trying to get into California wines, but it's been kinda hard. It seems crazy, with all the wine stuff going on around here and all, but we're still having a tough time. Good Napa wines are expensive, and it's just so easy to go back to something we know is going to be good (Eroica, for example), instead of blowing $30+ on something that may or may not be any good. BevMo is a great store, but there's no wine people for suggestions, and the local wine store with the smart wine folks doesn't have much for under $30. Arrgh. It's also that the good wines here are totally different varietals than the ones in the northwest - here there's a lot more Cabernets and Zinfandels, wines that we never really drank up there.

That's not to say we haven't been trying though. When stress levels go up, I tend to do a pretty good job helping B finish a bottle with dinner, so we've been going through a good amount of wine lately. We got lucky with a Sonoma Zin last night (Seghesio 2006)- we both thought it was quite delicious, and we're really trying to keep an open mind towards CA whites (oddly enough, Chardonnays are totally different than the Rieslings we've been big fans of).

Not sure what the point of this post was, but I thought we needed something...

So 1,287 years ago Monday, Odo of Aquitaine defeated the Moors in the Battle of Toulouse. 74 years ago Donald Duck debuted in The Wise Little Hen. It's also the birthday of Tsar Peter I, Michael J. Fox, and Johnny Depp.

Wikipedia rocks.