Wines

A blended wine in a cute blue bottle from Italy. Blended? More like cycled through a Cuisinart. Something got lost in translation with this one.

Another decent, if not necessarily spectacular, wine from a local watering hole. It’s worth ordering, if not too expensive.

Whoa! It’s another wine that might be better in a Bunsen burner instead of your palette. I’d expect this from New Zealand or Chile but France? Sacre’ Blue! What where they thinking?

Another JJ Walker wine (Dyn-O-Mite). Not bad for just drinking but probably better with a dinner. Or as a base for Sangria you might be making.

Damn the French! I expected something better than this (Grade: D). Perhaps this was the dregs from a batch they decided to bottle and ship to us unsophisticated Americans. Little do they know. I’ll be taking Silenus’ advice: deglaze a pan with it.

I ran across this wine at an “in store” wine tasting and just in time for Valentine’s Day. It has a cute little cherub that comes with each bottle. And the wine inside isn’t bad either.

Start with good grapes, age them a bit, give it the right price and even with a goofy name – Luna di Luna doesn’t apparently translate into anything understandable in English – you have something worth trying.

It’s another clandestine review from a local watering hole. For price ($2 a glass) a pretty drinkable wine. And that’s mostly because it’s aged 3 years in the bottle before they served it, unlike a recently reviewed Cabernet Sauvignon from the same winery.

Not a bad wine. In fact it’s as good as a $25 bottle of wine I reviewed here earlier. But what is it with this name? At this rate why not a wine named “Lost Horizons”, Zanzibar or Marrakesh? Soon they’ll have to start naming wines after song titles. Anyone for a bottle of “Begin the Beguine?”

Another surreptitious review at a local watering hole. Let’s hope they can’t trace where I drank this back to me. But the price by the glass was right.

Proof that it’s possible to get a great house wine in a bar or restaurant for a cheap price. And I like cheap. This was the $2 happy hour wine at a Johnny Carino’s.

A note: When ordering wine in an establishment, be sure to ask the year as well as the varietal. I didn’t think it was possible to get a 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon – in late 2006, but I did. And the wine review will suffer as a result. How did the Gallo family allow this one slip out early?

It’s nothing to write home about, but might be good with a nice chicken dinner. And for a second I mistook the label (Louis Latour) for Louis L’Amour – the western writer – I had no idea he was involved in wine making.

More expensive than the usual fare I review, but a good wine if you care to pay the price. Note that it’s a blend of several white wines. Hence the name. You could try to figure out which ones, as the label suggests, or just enjoy it.

One of the many new wines I’ve seen lately with a crazy name. Unfortunately I keep thinking of J.J. Walker from Good Times when I read the label. Dyn-O-Mite! But don't let that deter you from trying this one....