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The way I think about Cabernet Sauvignon is that you should choose a Cabernet Sauvignon wine when you don’t have time to enjoy it. To explain that cryptic statement, I’ll give a few examples of times when I’ve poured Cabernet Sauvignon, and how much I spent on the bottle/the region I chose:

• A bunch of friends are coming over to cheer my friend, Matt, up… all I want the wine to do is to be BIG, CREAMY, and OBVIOUSLY YUMMY. No need for discussions of terroir or subtlety- I want them to taste midnight-dark fruit and roasted vanilla bean oak. We’re going to sniff once, sip once, say our thanks for the wine, and then gulp all night. I went for a $19 Russian River Valley California Cabernet called Hook and Ladder.
  
• The weekly game of Scrabble at a friend’s house*…. Bor-f*cking-deaux. Left bank. Pauillac AOC. 1.5L bottle from when most of us were still in college. Brie on the table and two Qs and no U in my hands. Black currant, cedar, pencil shaving, celery seeds, and the dust on the box of that old 007 game I found in my grandparents’ attic. $40 down the drain for the best bottle of wine I tasted that week as opposed to $100 for dinner, appetizers, and one wine by the glass at a nice, but not fantastic, restaurant in Manhattan. A bargain if you ask me.
  
• I have a date on their way, and a steak in the oven… all they care about with the wine is that it is obviously good, and I, myself, am even not all that worried about if the wine is memorable. What I really want is a well-aged Amarone, but that would be a waste since I’ll be more worried about catching all of her references to season 3 of Arrested Development, than whether or not the wine should have been cellared another year or decanted an hour longer. I went with a $15 bottle of Heartland Cabernet Sauvignon made by Ben Glaetzer that just screams, “I’m twice as good as the bottle of wine your last b/f kept in the safe of his million dollar Williamsburg loft.”
  

Cabernet Sauvignon, California | No Comments

Be it “Right Bank” Bordeaux US-grown clones, Merlot goes great with lamb. Tonight I’m enjoying a glass of Shinn Estates’ “Red” (which is so very obviously at least 60% Merlot… wait, let’s look it up… 75% Merlot!); the glass of wine by itself is forgettable, but the same glass of wine paired with a lamb stew, is fantastic!

Merlot can taste like a ridiculous number of fruits, but its claim to fame in my mouth is that it covers your mouth with flavor without covering your mouth with meal-disrupting tannin. Yes, it *can* age for 50 years when done “right,” or you can mistake its burliest examples for a well-made Cabernet. No, you can not count it out when you make something that needs wine paired with it.

Merlot comes in as a meal-savior when Cabernet presents its more-usual-than-I-would-like-it-to-be problem of being so often made for point scores and not for enjoyment. Cabernet gets covered in oak and tannin to impress critis, and Merlot quietly scoots by with a slick and creamy, yet still uplifting, palate of black and red fruits dusted in chocolate, bacon fat, and even green olives and tobacco.

Unless it’s December and you own a Kobe beef ranch, you should probably look to Merlot for your dinner parties before you look to Cabernet… if only so that you don’t get embarrassed when that’s what, I, your wine-snob friend brings for you!

California, France, Merlot | No Comments

One of my favorite wine reps (wine rep = person who works for a distributor going shop to shop and restaurant to restaurant trying to get people to start carrying their company’s wines)… showed me nine wines today- Italian, French, Austrian, et. al… but the one that made me say, “Wow, people should try that- we’re definitely not going to carry it,” was the Bonny Doon California Sangiovese….

It was a perfect example of what happens when you take an old-timey Eurpean grape like Sangiovese- that’s usually used to make piney, sour plum and cherry style Tuscan wines - and you plop down in sunny California where the grape eats up the heat, gets uber-ripe, and produces a new world style wine that bears no resemblance to Italian wine.

The California Sangiovese was also a great reminder that, if you want your wine to taste like fruit and not just dirty socks, you might just want to look for the sunniest place you can find on the wine list or the shelves of your local wine shop.

California, New World, Sangiovese | No Comments

… and see why a great California Chardonnay has a place in your glass.

Click here to watch:

California, Chardonnay, T.B. Ackerson Wines, Wine Reviews | No Comments

Click here to watch a review of Chalk Hill Winery’s four best bottles: Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Both fruit and earth drive these wines. Each bottle is a product of both the California sunshine and the winery’s 60 different terroirs. Every bottle is shipped ready-to-drink; the winemaker’s goal is to make sure that the wine leaves her winery ready for you to enjoy. Pop these bottles over the next two years and impress your family, your friends, and your palate.

Cabernet Sauvignon, California, Chardonnay, Merlot, New World, Wine Reviews, Wine Videos | No Comments