Color

Very pale for a Chardonnay. A little…too pale. Almost looks like a Pinot Gris with these grey tints I’m seeing.

Nose

Asparagus. Raw, cut asparagus. Some citrus and a shot of almond.

Taste

Great acidity. That’s what hits first. The wine is firm but not overpowering. Expected more oak from a Sonoma Chard, but not bad. A nice 1-2-3 structure: Acid on the attack, good fruity fig, then almond, then the vegetables, crisp finish. Some oaky vanilla on the tail. A solid wine.

With Food

Honestly, vegetables. This is a veggie wine. Put some type of protein in your dish if you must, but go low on salt. Stick with vegetables as the centerpiece and you won’t regret it. If you remember our Pebble Beach Grand Tasting menu, thinly-sliced raw asparagus with olive oil, lemon and parmesan was one of the best things we ate. Asparagus Carpaccio, they called it.

Where to Buy

Gets difficult here because I found this at a local Ralph’s supermarket for $11.99. Outside of California I believe there is Kroger and Food 4 Less. I have yet to see it anywhere else, so I’d stick with those stores if you can. If someone is able to find it online anywhere, please let me know in the comments below!

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That’s right, it’s Valentine’s Day, folks. The reasoning behind this week’s wine and food pairing suggestion should be obvious to everyone out there. If it’s not, well, just buy a box of chocolates and whatever wine we tell you to because it seems like you will need all the help you can get. We’re asking you to step it up this year when it comes to choosing your gifts for Valentine’s Day. Leave the cards on the shelf and flowers in the…ground? Stick with wine and chocolate and possibly a reservation at Denny’s someplace fancy. Try a decent  bottle this year. Lift your gaze to that second or third shelf and pull out an extra five bucks. Strange advice for a site that looks for the best wine deals under $20, but we don’t want to see you sleeping on the couch come Sunday night. Do you hear me you schlubs (i’m including women in that insult, btw)?

Here are some cheap suggestions (Note: You may want to prevent your significant other from reading this, because then they will know just how much of a cheap b****** you really are, despite all three of these being delicious and under $20):

Fonseca 2003 Late Bottled Vintage Port (Dark Chocolate)

Whether Tawny or Ruby, Port might have been made for chocolate and cigars. This one will be a sure winner because of it’s rich fig, dark cocoa and leathery flavors. The sweetness and high alcohol content don’t hurt either. We’ve done a couple of other Port reviews in the past, and the Fonseca is another good one for under twenty bones.

Found in most stores

or

$16.89 at LowestWinePrices.com

$17.98 at WineLibrary.com (they can get it to you with 1-day shipping)

Altosur 2008 Merlot (Milk Chocolate)

Merlot is a great match with chocolate and fruit. The well-made Merlots (not Bordeauxs, we’re trying to stick under $20 here) tend to have a great shot of chocolate in the mid-palate. Unfortunately, a lot of the under-$20 California Merlots are lacking in the chocolate and cocoa aspects. You would want to hit up some smaller California wineries instead. No, we’re looking abroad for the chocolate flavors in Merlot. Specifically the Mendoza region of Argentina. The Altosur has awesome fruit (blackberry and cherry) with a nice punch of cocoa that should beat your tongue into submission. Great long finish and good tannin structure. A very focused wine that will easily impress even the snootiest woman.

Found in most stores

or

$9.99 at SaluteWineMarket.com

Sebastiani Zinfandel

A popular producer, the Sebastiani is a dark beast in looks but very smooth in taste. Great chocolate-covered cherries, some vanilla and very silky overall. It’s rare to have something this elegant from a producer this large. Also, though popular, odds are your partner has never seen the label and so might think you splurged on a pricier vino. Fools!

Found in most stores

or

$10.99 at WineLibrary.com (they can get it to you with 1-day shipping)

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One of the fondest memories I have is of watching my grandfather eat chili. He loved a good chili the way most men love a good steak. It was one of his two favorite foods, the other being peanut butter. Needless to say, he never could find a way to combine his two favorites, but he certainly was able to ingest ridiculous quantities of each, separately. Many times when he would watch me during summer days or whenever my parents went out for a Saturday night dinner and a movie I would go to the pantry in his house (which was really a makeshift closet) and stare and shelf upon shelf of canned Hormel chili. There would literally be thirty to fifty cans at a time in there, next to which would most likely be a jar of Jiff Peanut Butter. Point is, whether it was a can of Hormel at home, or a homemade pot of bubbling goodness, when you have a favorite food, it should be indulged whenever—and however—you damn well please.

So it’s still winter time for much of the world (despite the 80-degree weather here in Los Angeles), and that means it’s one of the best times for that most American of dishes: Chili. There’s nothing like a hot bowl of tomato sauce, beef, pork, beans and spices all mixed together to warm you up on a freezing 60-degree night. There are three wine reviews today, and all of these go great with with this after-dinner-room-clearing classic. Sorry, but that had to be said.

Cardinal Zin Zinfandel – $11.69 at LowestWinePrices.com

Besides the kick-ass label created by the immortal Ralph Steadman (just think of Hunter S. Thompson), this wine brings serious fruit and kick with it. Chili, depending on who’s involved in the cooking, can be either wild or mild. This wine is equipped to handle both with big fat plums, fig, and syrupy black pepper, if that makes any sense.

San Simeon Syrah 2006 – $14.98 at FineWineHouse.com

With a sissy-ass label denoting the former regional home of overweight publishing maniac William Randolph Hearst the San Simeon Syrah packs enough of fruit punch to handle the spicier, Texas-style, four-alarm, melt your teeth, pants-dropping, blah blah blah my jaw is falling off-type of chilis with ease. Good acid that is surprisingly enjoyable after a mouthful of kidney beans and ground pork. Also, I have to point out how good this wine tastes with the flavor of onions.

Orfila Malbec 2006 – $4.99 at Hell If I Know

I’ve had this wine on multiple occasions at one of my favorite restaurants in Southern California, Inka Trails: a Peruvian restaurant located in the extremely dull town of La Verne. Just go eat there and leave quickly. Anyway, they always have this Malbec that I eat with my “Bisteak a la Pobre”, but I’ve never been able to find it anywhere else. I’ve seen other Orfila varietals, and I know that it is an extremely cheap wine (we’re talking like $4.99 here), but when I asked the owner of the restaurant about his distributor and how I could get my hands on some, he shrugged me off like I had just complemented the glass of water he handed me. Basically, the wine tastes like the perfect mixture of olives, spice, raisin, green pepper and gorgeous blackberry. This is a wine that was born for chili (insert lame “Chile the country” quip here). So we know it’s unorthodox to not give a link to where to find the wine, but it works so well with chili that we figured we’d mention it anyway. If you do find it, please let me know ASAP, as my life is not complete without it.

Check out our other Zinfandel wine reviews.

Check out our other Syrah wine reviews.

Check out our other Malbec wine reviews.

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Cline is a popular producer in the Sonoma region of California. Their Zinfandel is one of their most popular varietals and it’s definitely worth a bottle at this price.

Color

Rich, dark cherry juice. Still thin, but it’s only an ’07.

Nose

Peppery with a nice clear shot of vanilla. The fruit is not coming through very much, making the nose a bit lackluster.

Taste

Here’s some of the fruit: black cherries, blackberries, and a touch of–if you can believe this–rhubarb. The rhubarb i’s what provides the sour and bitter, and it’s rather off-putting. Vanilla on the mid-palate, which gets a bit heavy-handed. Finally, pepper is back with a vengeance and takes a comfy seat in the finish. Overall, not a bad effort, but far too young for drinking now. Leave it in the closet for a year at least.

With Food

Nothing right now, but when the time is right, grilled steak or lamb. Steak au poivre would be perfect, along with some stinky cheeses.

$7.99 at GarysWine.com!

Check out our other Zinfandel review.

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It’s Not On The Bottom Shelf For a Reason

This is a brand and winery that has been in the public view for quite awhile, though it is often seen as the “Oooooh, that’s a tad too much for tonight. Where’s an $8 bottle?” – type of wine. In other words, whenever you are at the store (most regular grocery stores carry this) or a restaurant, odds are you will see a bottle of La Crema Chardonnay, but the price point is always a bit too much for most pocketbooks.

This is the unfortunate downfall of many wines like La Crema.They have crested that $10.99 and left it behind by a few dollars, turning a lot of potential buyers off. But we’re here to tell you that even if you are picking up a ready-to-eat rotissiere chicken, some salad, and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, the La Crema Chardonnay is well worth the extra few bucks.

So be brave, pull out a couple of singles, and try something new.

Color

Beautiful pale gold. Not too oily or apple-juicey. Looks light, crisp and refreshing.

Nose

Sliced green apple, lemon and orange zest, some butterscotch (we thought Werther’s Originals).

Taste

More of those apples, only this time they are in a pie with nice hints of cinnamon and nutmeg. Crisp and refreshing with little oak, if any. The butter is there, but it floats in and out pretty quickly, which means that if this was oaked, it probably wasn’t in there for too long. Good finish with the crunchy, tart fruits hanging on for a good while.

With Food

This might be the best seafood Chardonnay we’ve seen yet. Since the butter is barely there, but the acidity is in full force and tongue-tingling, this will cut through rich shellfish dipped in butter, lobster bisques, and even heavy cream sauces with pasta, mussels, shrimp, scallops, squid, etc.

$15.99 at WineLibrary.com!

La Crema Winery

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Rodney Strong 2008 Sauvignon Blanc

After getting some feedback from some of our readers, we’re going to try a slightly different format here. In a word:

Shorter.

Color

Good pale with green hues; viscous; thick.

Nose

Manure, green and unripe fruit; hard plums; acidic honeydew; tart lime; thyme; basil. There is no grass or herbaceous notes here as with many popular New Zealand Sauv. Blancs. There even seemed to be a bit of oak, God help us.

Taste

Bright, but not so crisp. No metal, but there is some minerality and very flamboyant acid. Creamy lime from the oak after only 1 year is pretty amazing. Viscous, in fact a bit too thick for a Sauvignon Blanc. Good fruit and good balance of alcohol. Once the wine warms a bit, you will taste some good tropicals (coconut, pineapple, mango). Honestly, once it was less chilled, we thought it was Chardonnay.

With Food

Great as a starter wine, with cheeses, nuts and fruits. This would also work with fish and, surprisingly, with shellfish and butter as well.

$9.99 at PassionVines.com.

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You’re Recommending a Non-Chardonnay Kendall-Jackson?

Indeed we are. Kendall Jackson Chardonnay is how a lot of people first started drinking that was higher quality than the jug wines or White Zinfandels they were used to. Kendall Jackson still makes a killing with their Chardonnay in every vintage, and is one of the best-selling Chardonnays in history. They practically mailed samples of the stuff to suburban homes back in the nineties as a requirement to drink. So because of this, we feel like we don’t really have to say anything. To us, it would be like recommending gasoline for your car.

Therefore, without further or do, we bring you the Kendall Jackson Meritage 2003. This is a plush blended wine (“Meritage” means “Blend”) in the Bordeaux style. Remember, a Bordeaux wine can only consist of the following five grape varietals: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Frank, Merlot, Malbec and Petit Verdot. The Kendall Jackson Meritage contains three out of the five: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot.

Bad News First

The wine tastes fake. That’s as bluntly as we can put it. Kendall Jackson has been around for so long and has to bottle such large amounts of their wine to get them into thousands of grocery stores, that some of their wines taste “rushed.”

There were flavors in this juice at some point in time, but we’re guessing that they ran out of time and so had to fake a few tastes to make the wine more tasty, palatable and pleasing to the public. One such method would be to over-oak the wine, as this certainly is. If you are not into the super-California-style wines or vanilla oak elements in red wine, stay away.

Basically, there are better, hearty red wines available for less money. the Hahn Syrah for one.

Good News

Color: Rich, red garnet. The color is pleasing and makes you want to get to drinking.

Nose: Very dark cherries and oaken vanilla. The oak really does bash you right in the face here. You might also pick up hints of earth; wet earth. Rainy mornings on a redwood deck.

Taste: We have the oak again, and man oh man is it in the front. It dominates every other flavor, turning this wine into a bowl of vanilla ice cream topped off with some cedar chips and some vanilla extract. Did we mention vanilla? The deep, dark cherries complete themselves from nose to taste here, it’s virtually the only fruit you will get, depending on what you might be eating. Weak tannins, so there is the slightest hint of dryness, but given the varietals blended here, there should be much much more. So if you are into New World styles, and especially California New World, you might want to give this a whirl.

With Food

Strong cheeses or fruit, perhaps red berries or cherries. Normally, blends such as these work well with red meats or even red sauces, but given the weak structure and tannins, it just won’t hold up. Take it easy with this one.

Only $12 at Winerz.com! (Yes, we know it is slightly cheaper on other sites, but this one looked like they could actually ship it to you rather than tying it to a pigeon and hoping for the best. We’re always looking out for you.)

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We have no clue when the BevMo 5¢ Wine Sale ends, but the sooner you get out to one, the better. We are assuming that it will last another week (4th of July is a big booze holiday) but still, get out there and check out this Elena Syrah 2007.

Good News: A nice fruity nose, showing very ripe berries with a small amount of soil (dirt, essentially). There are not too many California wines that smell of soil, so this is a good find. IHOP blueberry syrup plops right onto your tongue and makes up the bulk of this full-mouthed Syrah. There is oak here, but not too much, which adds a touch of added sweetness and vanilla. The wine focuses more on the fruit than on any kind of acid or tannins, which leaves it somewhat lopsided and off-balance, but if you like a big, fruity red, this will definitely work for you. The finish is a bit weak and fades rather quickly, but nothing abrupt.

With Food: Normally Syrah is good for barbecue due to smokey notes often being present, but since the Elena Syrah focuses mostly on the fruit, there may be better foods to pair with it. Red sauces and non-grilled meats will work, even chicken! Otherwise, break open a container of blueberries or strawberries and throw in some pieces of mild cheese (Jarlsburg or even a white cheddar) and enjoy.

$15.04 for 2 bottles at the BevMo 5¢ Wine Sale!

Check out our reviews of some other Syrahs:

Smoking Loon Syrah

2006 Hahn California Syrah – Santa Lucia Highlands

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Hallelujah, the BevMo 5¢ Wine Sale is back! While the sale is on, you might see one or two wines posted on here that are close to $40 a bottle because (we’re terrible at math so we could be wrong here) you can buy one bottle at regular price and the second one is 5-freaking-cents. You can even get these same deals online!

So, let’s get it on here with some serious, bruising, magnificent wines. Every review of wines from the sale will be positive. We’re not going to waste time talking about bad wines when other ones are this cheap. You won’t see many of these again until the next BevMo 5¢ Wine Sale, so take advantage.

Good News: The 2005 Kenwood Merlot from the Jack London Vineyard is nearly perfect. This is a hefty Merlot that conveys the classic flavors, but with a little more punch. Dark, dark fruit. In particular, blackberry, boysenberry  and dark dark cherry. Normally Merlot has more blueberry floating around, but they are benched in this bottle. The middle of the wine is pure mint-chocolate (yes, we said mint). To be clear, not mint leaves, not peppermint candies, not spearmint gum…mint. chocolate. Think those Andes mints that they give you at the Olive Garden: little wafers that are half chocolate and half green mint. Tail end is black pepper.

With Food: Can’t you guess? Hit the steak with this one, definitely, but also keep in mind that with the mint aspect, a tomato sauce with basil will also do the trick. Caprese salad or appetizer would also work. Don’t season the steak too much, just a little pepper to match.

$29.99 at—no, no, no…wait for it…..2 for $30.04 at the BevMo 5¢ Wine Sale!

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Cellar No. 8 Cabernet

Bad News First: 2007 was not a good year for this popular discounted wine, so avoid that vintage if you can. This is not a standard fruit-forward California Cabernet. It has the “linger-in-the-back-of-your-throat-slightly” cheap wine feel to it.

Now the Good: Lots of leather for all of you bondage fans out there. This makes the wine chewy and full, which is rare for this price point. Cherries are the dominant fruit in this, and they come across as tart, and they are not in the front. Give the wine a moment and you will find some plum and even a bit of smoke on the finish. The wine is very well balanced, which surprised me in something for less than $10.

With Food: As usual, red sauce would work, but I have my doubts about whether this could stand up to a steak. If anything, try a salad with some kind of bitter lettuce/greens, dried cherries and some kind of pungent cheese (goats, feta, etc.).

ON SALE for $7.99 from Wine Library

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Bad News First: Not much of a finish, but we’re talking affordable, sweet wine here, so what you really want is the flavor, the sugar and low alcohol heat.

Now The Good: This stuff was only about $9 bucks, but it was wonderful. Slightly dry in the Mosel-style with enough sweetness to warrant nothing but desserts. There was some light orange on the nose, but be warned, this should really only be enjoyed with dessert or at the end of a drunken evening, of course. I have yet to find it anywhere else or see it online so if you can find it at BevMo, grab some. A great deal.

With Food: Mild white cheese, fruit desserts or a light chocolate cake.

$8.99 at BevMo

Alexander Valley Vineyards

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