Boozy McGuzzles

BOOZE TYPE: Wine
PRICE: $7.99 at (you guessed it) Astor Center
RATING: A

Honestly, I don’t know why I even bother to review vinho verde wines, because I’ve never met one I didn’t like. But today’s trip to the liquor store (as I am on VACATION and will be until next Monday, and thus will spend the whole time drinking and playing video games) revealed that Astor had a new vinho verde in stock! One I had never had before! Naturally, I snapped it up. It’s at a slightly higher price point than the general vinho verde stock, but still under $10.

Casa de Sezim is not nearly as bubbly as many of the other vinho verde wines I’ve tried; I have a suspicion this has something to do with its higher alcohol content. Most vinho verdes run between 9-10% alcohol; this one is 12.5%. But, this lack of effervescence does not make it any less of a wine. It’s a little heavier on the tongue, and doesn’t have the strong lemony, citrusy flavor that a lot of other vinho verdes have. This, instead, has a strong scent of peach! I would call this one a more serious vinho verde, better suited to go with food–it sort of begs for seafood, or something a little spicy–than the usual light sippin’ wine that is other vinho verdes.

I really have no idea what the proper way to pluralize vinho verde is. Forgive me, I don’t speak Portuguese. But if I keep loving Portuguese wines this much, I’m going to have to learn.

BUY IT AGAIN: Of course!

BOOZE TYPE: Wine
PRICE: $4.99 at Astor Center
RATING: A+ between the months of June and August

IT’S SO HOT UGH HELP IT’S SO HOT NEW YORK IN SUMMER IS SO GROSS HELP HELP HELP.

Uh. By which I mean, it has been a while since I have posted, especially with any reviews! Don’t worry, I’m still drinking! Drinking so much I can’t be bothered to write! But time to break the drought with some more vinho verde. I’m sorry, red wines, I love you, but I don’t think I can drink you until like October, because you make me sweat.

Fâmega is, as all vinho verde wines, light and fantastically refreshing. This one is bubblier than most, with a light citrus flavor, and also some hints of actual green flavors… sort of crisp and almost vegetable. Celery? I don’t know, I feel like that sounds like a bad thing to say that wine tastes like, but people say wine tastes like all kind of stupid things. The bubbles are really at the forefront, sharp and pleasing on the tongue, and the wine is only a little sweet. This wine is crisp and refreshing, and perfect for disgusting hot New York nights.

Damn it, I moved up to the north to escape terrible weather! No one told me that New York summers were basically as bad as Nashville summers! Son of a–!

Anyway, Fâmega rosé to follow! Possibly. Depends. You know how it is.

BUY IT AGAIN: ALL SUMMER LONG.

BOOZE TYPE: wine
PRICE: Free, found under the sofa
RATING: C-

My roommate of two years recently moved out under amicable circumstances. She left me with many things. For instance, a fridge full of half-empty, freezerburnt bags of peas; and a giant jug of kimchee in the fridge. She also left me with this dust-covered bottle of merlot, which I pulled out from under the sofa when she was in the process of packing. I am almost never one to turn down free booze, so I cracked it open as the second bottle of the night, with extremely low expectations. And those expectations were met!

This wine was like a punch in the face with a vanilla bean. VANILLA VANILLA VANILLA OAK OAK OAK OAK OAK (the label did say five oaks, so I was sufficiently warned.) A quick googling reveals that there are possibly up to three wineries named “Five Oaks”; this was the Californian variety. I was not crazy about this wine, but it was still drinkable without requiring me to make any faces or unpleasant groans. As it opened up, it took on a raisin-y taste, but not really in a good way, like you’ll find in carignanes. Definitely not the worst wine I’ve ever put in my mouth, but more or less exactly what you’d expect for a wine under the sofa.

BUY FIND IT AGAIN: Well, if I ever find another bottle hiding in my apartment, I’d probably drink it, but I’d do that with a lot of things.

BOOZE TYPE: Wine
PRICE: $9 at Freshdirect.com
RATING: B+

When I looked over at my bedside table and saw it stacked high with four empty wine bottles, I knew this meant one of two things: either I was an alcoholic, or I really just needed to post about some freaking wine already! I’m leaning towards option two. So, clearing out the wine backlog!

This choice was a case of me doing what I do not do often: starting with a food and working backwards to a wine. I was planning on making a pasta with a spicy bean and tomato sauce, and the recipe called for red wine. A little bit of googling things like “wine good with tomato yum” (on this note, man, I am getting weird search hits for this site. I obviously should have never mentioned the word “urine”, and now that I’ve said it twice, it’ll just get weirder.) and crossreferencing those results with the wine selection on Freshdirect, I came out of it with this bottle of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.

It was perfect in tomato sauce. Fairly dry, not too tannic, with a nice blend of acidity and sweetness that complimented the tomato perfectly. And it served quite well in drinking, too! I enjoyed this wine and it matched to my meal very well, but it didn’t otherwise knock my socks off. I think I would find it a little uninteresting just for drinking on its own. It was a little fruity, a little spicy, but lacking in the outstanding character I like in my plain ol’ gettin’ drunk wines. Aces with tomato, though, and I will seek it out again for my sauces, or with pizza.

BUY IT AGAIN: Perfect with tomatoes, so very likely.

BOOZE TYPE: Wine
PRICE: $7.00 from FreshDirect
RATING: A

Discovering vinho verde was basically what kicked me over into being a serious wine drinker. Sometime last summer, I stumbled into the much-spoken-of Astor Center, and saw they had a display of Portuguese wines. Vinho Verde, they were called. “Green wine?!” I thought, and bought the one in a green glass bottle, with a vague hope the liquid inside would actually be green. It was not, but it was delicious.

Here is your required spiel behind vinho verde: it is called “green wine” because they are extremely young wines, aged only a year or less. The word “verde” is pronounced as only one syllable, because this is Portuguese, not Spanish.

I freaking love vinho verde wines. There is no better summer wine. They are across the board light, crisp, and delicious, perfect for a hot summer night. You have to seriously try to find one that costs more than $10. The average price on bottles I have had—bottles of wine that was seriously good— is about $6. Portuguese wines in particular seem to go for pretty cheap. I believe I have read that this is because Portuguese wines (other than port) don’t yet have the importing clout in America yet. So take advantage of this while you can, before people catch on to this fantastic secret.

Ouro Verde is my favorite of all of the many, many vinho verdes I have had, and it makes me sad that I can only find it through the delivery service that brings me my groceries (news flash: living in New York City is incredibly awesome). It is bright and crisp on the tongue, with very clear citrus notes, and just enough sweetness to make me happy. This wine is just slightly effervescent… not enough to be called a true sparkling wine, but with enough bubbles to feel fantastic when going across your tongue. Vinho verdes are lower alcohol wines, this one in particular being only 9.5% alcohol, so you can comfortably drink it and get a pleasing buzz, instead of totally knackered.

It’s not summer weather yet here in NYC at all, and thank God for that, but when it is, I will go back to drinking nothing but these perfections of white, the vinho verdes.

BUY IT AGAIN: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

BOOZE TYPE: Wine
PRICE: $7.99 at Astor Center
RATING: B

I’ve actually bought this wine twice, but only been able to drink it once. For, you see, tragedy struck. When I was home visiting family in Nashville last November, my mom and I swung by her favorite liquor store (where, once, when we were buying several bottles of wine, the clerk said, “Now, y’all want a bag for that or you just wanna drink that here?”) so that I could use my budding wine snobbery to buy a couple of nice things for my family. (My family are more often beer and booze-soaked than wine-drenched, and have taught me respect for cruising the half-off bin and the value of quality box wine.)

I have been working on developing a thing for Spain, so I picked out a mid-priced red (though hell if I can remember the name of it now, which is exactly the reason I started this blog), and also the Gran Feudo Rosado 2005, because it was just so darn pretty. We went home. I put the paper bag with the two bottles in it on the kitchen counter. I turned my back. I heard the crash. Alas, but I had placed the bag down unevenly, and it had toppled over, shattering both bottles on my mother’s very hard kitchen floor. It was a very sad day for wine. We returned to the liquor store and I re-purchased the red.

Gran Feudo got its second chance last week, and this time I did not drop it on the floor. I drank it! As the second bottle of the evening, the memories of it are, uh, not quite so sharp, but it had a nice tart, fruity acidity that went quite well with a vodka sauce pizza. I always expect rosés to be sweet, because, well, they’re just so pretty in pink, but this was fairly sharp and dry.

BUY IT AGAIN: Possibly! A very good under $10 rosé.

BOOZE TYPE: Wine (sparkling!)
PRICE: $6.99 at Astor Center
RATING: B

My best friend and boozing companion, Arielle, was not feeling too chipper, and had wanted to drink Sofia Coppola Champagne, with a straw, out of a little metal can. Because, as you might agree, this is a perfect recipe for making yourself feel better. But alas, that day Astor Center was sold out of the canned version of Sofia, and only had the bottle, which is just so not even nearly as fun. So it was a dejected roam through other sparkly things for us, looking for an intersection of cheap and bubbly. I won’t lie to you, if they sold Cold Duck there, we probably would have bought three bottles.

We ended up peering at the cava section, which I believe was new. I was intrigued, because I thought that word meant some kind of rodent or maybe was Spanish for “rabbit”. I realize now I was thinking of “cavy”, which is another word for guinea pig, and is far less sparkling, and usually not corked (guinea pigs are most often sealed with screw caps.) We had been dawdling in the store for a while, so I pointed at a bottle that hit the center of that Venn diagram that decides most of my alcohol purchases:

This non-guinea pig sparkling wine had little impact on first taste. Arielle and I both took a drink, looked at each other, then said, “Huh.” It was mostly mouthfeel, and little flavor on first blush. Further sips proved it to be nicely dry and crisp, the sort of bubbly that you’d want to drink outside on the Fourth of July while watching fireworks. It gave me a very nostalgic feel for exactly that sort of thing. It had little character or complexity, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, and suspect I will use it as a variation on an old trick I used to do: mixing cheap box chardonnay with nice pear liqueur or framboise. I think this will make a good medium for bubbling up a sweeter, thicker liqueur.

BUY IT AGAIN: Yes!

BOOZE TYPE: Wine (debatably)
PRICE: $5.99 at Astor Center
RATING: B (for bees!)

I have no shame in saying that I like a sweet drink now and then, and quite enjoy meads and honey wines. For a while I was really enjoying tej, the Ethiopian answer to honey wine, which I found less cloying-sweet and more true to the flavor of honey than some other meads I had tried.

But the last time I went looking for tej, I found none. Astor Center was out of it, and it has not returned. In its place was Herr Dürer’s gluüweins, available in both weiss and, uh, whatever is german for red. The giant liter bottle is decorated with a lot of German words, and a picture of a scenic snow-covered German village. It was also only $6. I bought it on a goof. I bought it in December on a goof.

It sat on the liquor shelf for months. I kept threatening that I would drink it. I think this sort of beverage is often consumed hot, so I kept saying I would simmer me up a pot come the first snow, which came very late this year. But I didn’t. And I didn’t drink it, and didn’t drink it, and didn’t drink it, until a few nights ago, when I threatened that I would for REALZ this time, and put it in the fridge. And then later, put it in the freezer. I was expecting ill humors, indeed, and the colder the better.

The smell is powerfully sweet, almost exactly like getting a fat snootful of honey. My first reaction on taking a sip was “This tastes like bee pee! Or diabetic fairy urine! It’s just what I expected!” But as I kept drinking it (of course I kept drinking it!) it revealed itself to not be quite as terrible as I thought. Yes, it is very sweet. But it has a strong, true taste of honey, and a bit of nice spice to it, too. …It’s still an utterly ridiculous bottle of alcohol, but not one I should have been afraid of for three and a half months.

BUY IT AGAIN: Geez, probably, I’m prone to fits of madness and fugue states like that.

BOOZE TYPE: Wine
PRICE: $6.99 at Astor Center
RATING: C+

It’s Friday night! I want a bottle of wine! I know I shouldn’t listen to the voice in my head that’s all HEY LET’S BUY A $35 BOTTLE OF SAKE HUH HUH ISN’T THAT A GOOD IDEA? even though it’s got this other friend, a little whispery voice that says, and on top of that it’s payday you know or you could use your credit card. So after a lap around Astor Center and a jaunt once or twice through the aisle, I decide, man, screw it! Let’s get some stuff from GREECE.

I had actually been planning on hunting up a decent Greek red wine sometime in the near future, to be partially mixed into a olive-based pasta sauce, and partially poured down my gullet. But I was feeling a little tired of red wine mouth stain, and also my groceries from FreshDirect won’t be here until tomorrow, so white wine it is!

I went for the Kourtaki because it was white, $7, and had a picture of a bull on the label. I played God of War II recently, and, I don’t know, it spoke to me in some mythological way. (Note to self: wine pairings for video games? could work.) The stuff is drinkable, but really not very thrilling. There are couple of nice fruity notes in the scent of it, but nothing that stands out heavily; it does have a nice mineral quality, which is something I always find very interesting. In the end, though, it just sort of leaves the “hello! I’m a generic white wine!” taste. Hmmm, I seem to be having this problem with wines that cost less than $10… could this mean something?!

BUY IT AGAIN: Nope. Let’s try something nicer from Greece, and not be fooled by bulls again.

BOOZE TYPE: Wine
PRICE: $7.99 at Astor Center
RATING: B-

I’ve been trying to do Spanish wines lately, because I think I like them… at least, I know I like a bunch of Portuguese stuff, and they’re like totally right next to each other? So I fussed over the Spanish selections in my wine shop and picked out this one, which met at the vertex of ‘price’ and ‘interesting blurb on the name card.’

When I poured this one out and stuck my nose in the glass, I thought, ‘Ah! This has the aroma of… wine! Yes, this definitely smells like wine! Red wine, even! Oh, by jove! It tastes like red wine, too!” …This is just sort of run-of-the-mill, one of the ones folk’ll call “drinkable” and not mean it as an insult. I tossed a glass into the pasta sauce I was making to great effect. This is kind of the perfect wine to cook with: good enough to drink on its own, but not so full of character as to overpower your dish.

This one definitely improved as it sat around in my bedroom and opened up more. When I didn’t have tomato sauce confusing my palate (though it went very well in and with the tomato sauce), I got some nice mineraly, chalky hints in the scent, and a spicy, kind of coffee flavor. The back of the label says it has hints of “licorice mint” and honestly that is just nonsense. Seriously, wine people, that is just nonsense. And if it weren’t nonsense, it would probably taste nasty. Dang!

BUY IT AGAIN: Probably not. It’s decent, but it didn’t wow me, and I’d rather explore more. It’s basically exactly what you’d expect from an $8 wine.