Review for Tuesday - 01/24/2006 by Ssezi

2003 - Big House White The second white wine of the Real World Wine Review, or third if you count the Westport Champagne, and it was brought by an avowed red wine drinker. Apparently the motivation for bringing this wine was to incite a race war, even though only one reviewer outright rejected the wine. Otherwise it is a pleasant wine with surprising qualities for a white from California. It drank like a paisan from the old country.

2004 - Abrazo Del Toro One of the ideas for the Real World Wine Review was to sample so called bum wines at some point. However given our collective yuppie snobbery combined with our penny pinching delight in a bargain instead we have embarked on a sampling of Trader Joe's bargain bin. Overall this wine was well liked, scoring the second most drink and buy recommendations for the night. We are still trying to resolve our conflicting desire for race/class warfare with our love of a bargain though, saying we wouldn't buy this wine since it is too cheap, but justifying our earlier rejection of other wines as too costly regardless of quality

2004 DaVinci - Toscana Chianti Unlike its pretentious namesake this wine had little to distinguish it, scoring a whole lot of drink but not buys.

2003 Lo Tengo - Malbec Another of our continuing series of wines on a theme, as with the Trader Joe's wines, are wines with interesting labels. In this case we the label was printed such that viewed from two different angles it looked like a pair of legs dancing the tango. Nowadays this is typically accomplished with a hologram but this label uses the older technique of interlacing the images and using a grating to restrict the viewing angles, like the moving image stickers girls used to collect in the early 80's. I can't remember what the proper name for them is. If the length of my description of the wine label is any clue, the contents of the bottle were far less interesting than the label, so far gimmick wines have fared poorly in our tastings.

2003 Antonio&Julio - Montepulciano D'Abruzzo This wine had the unfortunate distinction of following dinner. Also for this reviewer there was nothing left to do for the night but drink, which probably didn't work in the wine's favor. Oddly enough our resident curmudgeon, Steve gave this wine one of his three buy recommendations for the night, although listening to the review one is left asking why. John also was contrary to the consensus opinion, but at least he could explain why he liked this wine.

2003 Ravenswood - Vintner's Blend Zinfandel In our never ending quest for the appropriate metaphor for the flavor of a wine, Steve has introduced a new category: filial abuse. As with his other gnomic utterances the quality of a wine that make you want to slap your mama goes unexplained, but apparently this wine has it. Not that that's a bad thing. John was left to fall on our old war horse analogies, pronouncing the wine as being both a Harry Potter wine and possessing tats. The review ends in a debate on whether a crowd pleasing wine (5 buy recommendations) can also not be wimpy.

2003 Wolf Blass - Black Opal Shiraz Another crowd pleasing wine that still possesses enough character to prompt different reactions among the reviewers. The nose was difficult to pinpoint, but seemed to possess the slightly fecal or barnyard odor of some wines. Ed placed it as toilet paper, which I suppose in the grand scheme of things is superior to actually being the toilet, but maybe not. Ed also recommended buying this wine, so take that advice as you will. Steve on the other hand called the wine similar to a Polar beverage, neither of which apparently one should buy. And John is exploring the different qualities of smacking as a metaphor, preferring to spank the junior senator from New York rather than his mother. As with our views on the coming race war, the irony of John even contemplating smacking his mother is probably lost on our readers.

Lurgashall Winery - English Mead The last of the developing trends in Real World Wine Tastings is to review alcoholic beverages that are not wine, and frequently are not something we would voluntarily drink. This week's entrant in the aperitifs we'd rather not partake of sweepstakes is English Mead. For those who appreciate historical authenticity, Mead is similar to the beverages commonly drunk before the advent of industrial scale production. Of course people who drink something because it is of ancient provenance rather than how it tastes are also the kind of people who take a month off work to go camping and pretend to be a knight in shining armor. In both cases it's definitely a taste that is acquired, and not necessarily easily so. Hopefully, the next candidate in this series is something that has a hope of appealing to modern American taste buds.