A Good Introduction to Whites

As mentioned in a previous post, we recently picked up two bottles of wine while shopping at Target. While we weren’t that jazzed about Folie à Deux’s red version of Ménage à Trois, the California White Table Wine version turned out to be OK.

The first thing we noticed about the white 2005 Folie à Deux Ménage à Trois was its color. It was a very pretty, clear light yellow. It looked a lot like pear juice. The smell was very pleasant, too. It smelled sweet, like apricots and orange blossoms. Before looking at the label, we thought the wine smelled like a Viognier or a Sauvignon Blanc. Actually, the three grapes that comprise this ménage à trois are Chardonnay, Moscato, and Chenin Blanc. The Moscato and Chenin Blanc grapes explain the sweet smell.

Moscato is a grape typically used in light, sweet dessert wines. Moscatos are often just a hint fizzy and frighteningly easy to drink. We’ll review one of our favorite Moscatos as it gets closer to summer. Chenin Blanc wines are also a bit on the sweeter side, although they are not dessert wines. The first wine one of your Wine Nuts started drinking way back when was a Callaway Chenin Blanc. It was just sweet enough to be drinkable for a Wine Nut in the Making. And this white Ménage à Trois shares that characteristic.

Overall, we would describe the taste of this wine as a bit watery, bland, and lacking pizazz. It’s not offensive; there’s just not a lot to it. On the plus side, it is not harsh or acidic or alcohol-y. For this reason, we think this wine would be great for someone who is new to wine. It’s just sweet and easy enough to be enjoyable if most wines make you pucker your lips and say, “Yick.”

We think this wine is a little steep at $10. For $5-$7, we would keep it on hand for guests who aren’t Wine Nuts but want to join in the fun. Like its red brother, this Ménage à Trois can be found at Target and World Market. And it’s a better buy than the red.

A Red that Misses the Target

Last week while we were at Target, we spotted some wine from a winery we used to know. Folie à Deux used to be a fun boutique wine whose winery was a small farm house on a side road in Napa. Now that we can find their wine in Target and World Market for $10, we’re not sure how boutiquey Folie à Deux is any more. Hoping for the best we picked up a bottle of red and a bottle of white. Last night we opened the red version of 2005 Folie à Deux Ménage a Trois. We were disappointed.

“Folie a deux” is French for “a madness shared by two” or “a shared fantasy.” We won’t bother to define “ménage a trois” other than to say in this context it means the wine is a blend of three different grapes. This “California Red Table Wine” is a blend of Zinfandel, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. It sounds promising, doesn’t it?

The look and smell were what we’d expect from of blend of those three grapes. The wine was a deep, rich, purple-red, and it smelled like a nice heavy Cabernet – some berries, some oak, a tiny bit of chocolate or coffee. But the taste was disappointing. It was sweeter than we were expecting, almost like one of those jug wines from long ago. It was also rather light and the taste disappeared very quickly. We expected a lot more flavor and interest from a Zinfandel-Merlot-Cabernet blend, even at $10 a bottle. In our opinion, you can do a lot better for $10 – and probably even for $5-$7.

We still have the white to try. Stay tuned.