First off, let me say hello to all the folks who are coming in via the PC Magazine Top 100 Blogs story. I am glad that you either got all the way to the end of the list of blogs to find my contribution, or that you actually had an interest in the blogs of PC Magazine staffers. Hi! I’m a lush.

Anyway, it’s red wine time! Red red wiiiiine. I’ve been vaguely plotting going out to California again sometime soon, so I picked up a Sonoma wine tonight. The Seghesio Zinfandel has such a powerful aroma that I can smell it strongly while the glass is sitting three feet behind me on my dresser. Up directly under the nose, it’s a serious powerhouse of heavy, spicy red scents.

And the taste? This is one of the few wines that has made me immediately say “Wow!” after the first sip. This really knocks my socks off. It gives an immediate strong hit of flavor, sweet and fruity on the tip of the tongue, spicy throughout, and with a bit of smokiness on the finish. Goddamn, this is making me really wish I had a bigass steak to go with this wine right now. This just begs to go with meat.

Okay, that’s it, it’s time to book a flight out to California. And keep drinking this wine, which–no exaggeration here–gives me shivers down my back. And will probably lay me out on my back, due to the 15.2% alcohol content. For a $20 wine? Just outstanding. Words won’t really do it justice… this one, you need to try.

BUY IT AGAIN?: Oh, mama, yes.

Weather has blissfully, beautifully cooled in New York City, and we’re rolling into my favorite time of year, which also means my favorite foods and beverages. I can put the whites away and get to enjoying red wine again without it making me sweat! (I am a fat Southerner, you see, so hot food and red wine make me break into a sweat.) Central Italian wines were on sale today, and I’m making tomato sauce, so off I went!

I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually had a chianti before, but this is definitely a good starting point. The back of the bottle recommended letting this open up some, so I poured a glass and then worked on prepping dinner. Coming back to it a half hour later, I’m finding it incredibly enjoyable. It’s got a rich, red scent that reminds me of a lot of other amazing wines I’ve had, and the scent automatically takes me back to good memories of being with my wine fiend friends in San Francisco. It’s rich in the mouth, tannic without being overwhelming, to make for a very smooth feel. On the tongue it has a nice acidity without too much sweetness, and my favorite part is the finish, which has a woody, smokey taste. Lovely for this weather, and it should go well with tomatoes.

BUY IT AGAIN: Quite possibly!

I’m not going to lie; I appreciate wine that comes in a box, or in other non-bottle forms. And there really are pretty decent forms of box wine out there these days. My mom just about always keeps a box or two of the classier box brands in her pantry for easy access to the occasional glass. They’re a great low-pressure way to have wine… you don’t have to worry about drinking it in any set amount of time, you can just sip away glasses night after night until you’re squeezing the last out of the weird little bag.

But this all is tangential to the wine at hand, which is not in a box at all… it’s more like a juice box. I’ve been drinking French Rabbit wines for quite a long time, because I find everything about them delightful. They’re all inexpensive, but quite pleasing, and you get 250 milliliters more in their tetra pack than you would in a standard bottle. I love grabbing one of the reds for cooking, since I can use a little and then spin the cap back on and put it in the fridge for later without worrying it’ll go to waste. The whites (I’ve actually only had the chardonnay, which is fine, but I’m dead sick of chardonnays in general) are good for nursing over a few summer days and nights.

But, let’s focus on the Pinot Noir in particular. This is absolutely perfect to go in food or with food. It gave great character to my tomato sauce tonight, and did well in a glass next to it, too. Alone, it’s very drinkable and easy; it’s tannic, but still smooth and light. This actually works well as a chilled red, an idea that I’m warming up to (har har) more and more. It’s a little acidic on the tip of the tongue, with some sweetness in the aftermath.

French Rabbit wines make a great simple drinking wine, when you don’t want to think or worry much about what you’re drinking, but still want to have something good.

BUY IT AGAIN: Yep!

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.

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.

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.

I first had Cline wine when I went on my whirlwind (okay, less whirlwind and more drunken tumbleweed) tour of Sonoma with my dearest friends Martha and Stephen. It was the last stop on our visit, and most of the reason was specifically to buy this wine, which is Stephen’s father’s favorite wine in the whole wide world, or so I’m told.

I’m pretty sure I had some of this that day, but it was the end of a day of many sips and pours, so I can hardly remember. The ‘ancient vines’ in the name means that the wine is made from what you would call in the food whore circles, heirloom grapes. I’ve had another of the Cline ancient vines wines, in that case a carignane (mmm, I loves me some carignane), and I tell ya, those old grapes make for some tasty stuff.

This zinfandel (and let me tell you, before my last trip to California, I did not know zinfandel outside of that godawful pink stuff my stepmother drinks) is delightful; I can see why Stephen’s dad, who is a gentleman of refined taste, would love it. The aroma is very rich… my first thought was leather when I was swirling it around, and then cinnamon, and eventually some berry and chocolate. The taste doesn’t have much of the tannic problem that often turns me off of red wine—instead it’s just rich on the tongue and all the way down.

If this wine were a man, it would be one of them dudes in pornographic Japanese manga. Like, a good one, with the broad shoulders and strong jawline and well-cut suits, not the kind that rapes you and makes you like it. I have definitely had wines that have raped me and made me like it, though. Those are mostly whites, though, I think.

BUY IT AGAIN: Yes, though the price makes me want to save it for special occasions.