A Pizza Wine Zinfandel

In a previous post, we recommended a Cabernet Sauvignon by Black Mountain Vineyard. We found online reviews supporting their Zinfandel so we decided to give it a try. Verdict: So far you can’t go wrong with Black Mountain!

The 2005 Black Mountain Vineyard Cramer Ridge Zinfandel was a fun, everyday wine. It had a dark ruby red color and lots of cherry flavor. We picked up some black pepper taste somewhere in the middle, and the finish had a slight sour cherry flavor. It wasn’t a particularly complicated or bold wine. It was young and tangy and easy to drink.

Like its Cabernet brother, the Black Mountain Zinfandel would be a great pizza wine. It would also be a great wine for those folks who want to drink one glass of red wine a day for health without breaking the bank. For just $6 at Trader Joe’s, the Cramer Ridge Zin is a great buy.

New to us: White Merlot

Some of our best wine finds have been as a result of eavesdropping. Our first was when we overheard some people in a restaurant raving about a Cabernet Sauvignon called Silver Oak. Being very new to wine, we did not realize as we scribbled a note on a napkin that Silver Oak is a rather upper-end trophy wine that is not for beginners. Tasty indeed but very much a special-occasion wine for people who have been around the stuff for awhile.

So with a good track record and a sense of adventure, we waltzed over to Wal-Mart after overhearing a nearby diner rave about the White Merlot to be found there. We had heard of White Zinfandel but not White Merlot so we were very curious.

A word about these white wines made from red grapes. Yes, Zinfandel comes in red, too! Actually, Zinfandel is traditionally a red wine but it was made commercially famous in the white (or, more technically, pink) version. How does a red grape make a white wine? It’s all in the skins.

Grape skins give wine its color (among other things). After grapes are picked and the juice is squeezed out of them, the winemaker decides whether to toss away the skins that are left behind or let the skins hang out in the juice for a while. When making white wines, the green skins are tossed away almost immediately. When making red wines, the red skins may linger with the juice for several weeks. So what about these pink wines like White Zinfandel or Rosé or White Merlot? The red grapes are pressed and the skins hang out with the juice for less than a day. Just enough time to give some flavor and a hint of reddish color, resulting in that pretty rosy pink.

As promised, Wal-Mart offered a 2006 Beringer White Merlot. How did we like it? We didn’t. But, we need to say we are not big fans of White Zinfandel either. If you like White Zins, you might like White Merlot.

The White Merlot’s color was its best feature; we should have taken a photo before we opened the bottle. It was a pretty, light red color similar to a cough drop. The nose (smell) was sweet and a bit alcohol-y. It reminded us of a drugstore perfume. As for the taste, it was very thin and did not have much of a finish; the taste did not linger at all. The flavor was sweet like a flat wine cooler. And in fact, that might be how we would most enjoy this White Merlot – mixed with 7-Up as a wine cooler or sangria for a patio party. At $5.49 at Wal-Mart it was a fun experiment but we won’t be going back for more.

A bad introduction to Zins

As previously posted, Cost Plus World Market has a new wine gimmick of creatively named varietals at $9.99 each. We reviewed their Chard-on-yeah! on November 8. We recently opened up their Zin-fat-u-a-tion. So far, we’re most impressed by their marketing.

The 2005 Zin-fat-u-a-tion comes from Amador County in California. We have had some great Zins from this area nestled up against the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the northern part of the state. So we were optimistic that Cost Plus had done its homework and found something to adequately represent their label description of “…an intense and irrational passion for Zinfandel.” Unfortunately, we were sadly disappointed.

There wasn’t much to note about the color or smell of Zin-fat-u-a-tion other than we picked up hints of raspberry and alcohol as we swirled the wine before sipping. Similarly, our notes about the taste are all about how little there was to note: “No flavor.” “Very thin.” “Nothing there.” “Very easy to drink since it’s largely watery.” At best, this was a forgettable, bland, boring wine. At worst, we hate to think that folks new to Zinfandel are using this one as an introduction. There was nothing Zinfandel-y about this. No spice, no bell pepper, no rich berry fruit. None of the excitement and fun that should burst from a glass filled with Zinfandel.

We’re a little wary about trying Cost Plus's final entry: a Cabernet Sauvignon. Stay tuned.

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.

A Great “Go To” Zin

Yesterday was a wonderful preview of Spring 2007. We celebrated the sunny, warm air with BBQ’d hot dogs, cheese, crackers, tapanade, and an old stand-by Sonoma Zinfandel. We and our neighbors toasted the arrival of daffodils and riding mowers with a 2004 Murphy-Goode Liar’s Dice Zinfandel. Yum.

We first discovered Liar’s Dice at a Zinfandel festival in San Francisco back in the late 1990s. We then visited the Murphy-Goode winery in Sonoma and bought several bottles of the then hard-to-find Liar’s Dice. These days, you can find this reliable, proud-to-serve (red) Zinfandel at Costco for $14.99.

Murphy-Goode produces some very solid, representative wines. If you want to know what a Zinfandel or a Fumé Blanc (also called Sauvignon Blanc) or a California-style Chardonnay (heavy oak and butter) is supposed to taste like, Murphy-Goode is a great place to start.

In terms of their Zinfandel, Liar’s Dice has a deep, seductive berry nose with a dark cherry, currant, and peppery taste. It is a pleasantly rich Zinfandel that will go nicely with any BBQ’d meal, as well as pizza, pasta dishes, or just a nice kick-back evening on the patio. It feels a tiny bit special to open on a Wednesday night and is great to open with friends when you want a nice bottle without breaking the bank. We’ve been drinking Murphy-Goode’s Liar’s Dice for over ten years and have never been disappointed.

A tasty California Zin!

We tried a new restaurant last night and were very excited to find one of our favorite Zinfandels on the wine list (and by that we mean red Zinfandel, not white). We first discovered Edmeades at an annual Zinfandel festival in San Francisco. It had been awhile since we had had this Mendocino-area Zin. And yum! It didn’t disappoint last night.

The first thing we noticed about the 2003 Edmeades Redwood Valley Zinfandel was its nose. It had a wonderfully lingering nose of dark berry fruit – in other words, it smelled great! Its flavor matched, with a hint of green and black pepper typical of Zinfandels, but also with a touch of black licorice and lots of bright fruit. The back of the bottle describes the wine as a “super-concentrated, thick, scrumptious Zinfandel packed with black cherries and spice.” Sure, we’ll go with that.

The price on the wine list was $28. Typically, a restaurant charges about double the actual price of a bottle of wine (hence the $8-$10 average corkage fee if you bring your own bottle since the restaurant’s cheapest bottles yield them about $8-$10 profit.). So at $14 retail, this wine is a heck of a bargain in our opinion. We’ve seen Edmeades in a variety of wine shops, and a quick search on BevMo (Beverages and More) suggests the 2005 is going for $14.99. If you want a better-than-pizza-wine Zin full of flavor that minimally goes great with steak, brisket, and meatloaf, give this one a try.