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.

Discount Shopping Cart

Do our grocery stores have something in common? Does yours occasionally have a shopping cart or two filled with discounted wines, thrown into the cart all cattywompus and disorganized? Have you ever rooted around in one of those carts to see what was cheapest?


We did the other day and found a nice South African wine with a sub-continent-sounding name. Indaba Chardonnay (2005, reg. $7.49, discounted $5.24) was the cheapest white wine I found in the cart. We brought it home and were pleasantly surprised. It was nice and smooth, not too dry but not too sweet.


Was it in the shopping cart because no one else liked it? Is the winery going under? I don't know. But if you do see it, grab one - especially if it's marked down, but it's still good enough to pay full price. (note: I recently saw it at World Market as well, for regular price)

As simple as you get

If you're deciding between restaurants and the decision comes down to where you can get the most straight-up, normal-but-good wine to go with your dinner, head to the Cheesecake Factory. Their Cheesecake Factory Chardonnay (~$6.25/glass) and Cheesecake Factory Merlot (~$6.50/glass) are the most straight-forward, "This is what wine tastes like" wines we've ever had. This is not meant to be a bad thing - it's actually quite nice. Nothing complex about it, it doesn't make you throw out words like "buttery" or "oaky." It just makes you say, Wow, that's wine.

So if you need to teach your wine neophyte friend what a basic chard or merlot tastes like, Cheesecake Factory has what you need. They also make the best pot sticker I've ever had and a mean tiramisu cheesecake, for what it's worth.

yum

Tonight we opened a bottle of blue fish pinot grigio. It was surprisingly sparkly and light and I really am enjoying it.

It has a screw-top which makes it appear cheap (which it was, that's why we bought it), but according to my wine-savvy brother, screw tops are actually better for the aging and storing process of the wine.

It doesn't matter much since I'm not too much of a wine snob about such things, but now if I want to be snooty about it I can.

Pizza and Wine

When people think pizza, they tend to think beer. But what if you want a white wine to cool down a long day? We tried a couple over a nice warm Freschetta pizza the other day. Our competitors for best white with pizza: Barrio La Boca 2005 chardonnay (Trader Joe’s, $4.99) vs. Stone Cellars by Beringer 2004 sauvignon blanc (Harris Teeter, $8.99).

We usually are not big on sauvignon blancs. We tend to find them too dry and oaky – more like licking a tree than a refreshing beverage. Beringer’s sauv blanc, however, tends to be more palatable than others, and for pizza the dryness really helps. Love the La Boca, but with pizza, the Beringer wins.