Saturday, January 3, 2009

Lost Vineyards should stay that way

We always want to find nice, cheap wines. Sometimes, though, that quest leads only to sadness and disaster. Especially when Rachel Ray is involved.

A few weeks ago at Harris Teeter, there was a display of mediocre-looking wines listed at 3/$10. That's a steal! These were Trader Joe prices at the Teeter. The Lost Vineyards collection features wines from Portugal, Brazil, and Argentina. They're all blends - two reds and a white - and I think the thought behind it is that these growers took all their left-over grapes and blended them together to create these three.

The radical blending worried me, I think that Trader Joe's delicious wines follow a similar protocol for blending excess grapes from California, so that put me at ease a bit. Plus, there was a sign above the shoddily put-together display case showing how Rachel Ray endorsed them. Why would she lead us astray? After all, her reputation is on the line, right? She makes a living by telling people what's delicious. Clearly, this was delicious.

Rachel Ray was wrong, and so was I to believe her. The white has all the character of that creepy guy you don't want to sit next to on the bus. The one red I did open - the one from Argentina - was bad on day one, not awful on day two after a little air had hit it, and on day four had turned to vinegar and left me sprinting to the sink to spit it out.

Recommendation: do not buy Lost Vineyards, and don't believe anything Rachel Ray says.

2 comments:

Allan said...

Lost Vineyards showed up in Marietta more than a year ago at Kroger. It was, of course, cheap, but had a following.
The red wine was a decent blend, but the Chardonnay could strip paint off a wall at 10 yards.
Of course, it probably depends on the vintage. One year's wine is another year's goat spit.

tknight2 said...

Don't drink Lost Vineyards/Argentina. It is a great taste of nail polish remover, it's disgusting, nasty -- stay away. Rachel Ray, I will never take her advice seriously ever again. Gross, don't waste your $ on it....nasty!