Crack the cork. Splash it as I pour– can’t really hurt to get a little oxygen to the wine. Swirl. Taste.
Big fruity Zin.Not too bad.
Wait… what’s that? Some kind of sweet cloying aftertaste. Weird. Let’s try that one again.
Sniff.
Smells like… red wine. A teensy bit of a sour note, like a big French Burgundy. That’s OK. A little maybe off.
Sip again. Do it with that slurpy sound that I learned when I learned to cup coffee and taste wine. Big Fruity Zin. Tannins… none, really, to speak of. Hardly any, anyway.
But there it is again. It’s all cloying on the back side. Like there’s some too-sweet wine trying to hide a slightly sour taste. It’s not bad, but it’s just sort of annoying. To me. Some people might like it. I’m not so sure. Without it, the wine is a plain old big fruity zin. It’s fine, but nothing to speak of. With this cloying taste, the wine does have a sense of mystery. Unfortunately, the mystery is more along the lines of “what are you trying to hide?” or “what do we have to blend with this 2000 gallons to make it drinkable?” rather than, say, “do I serve this with that anchovy and garlic stuffed Olive Tapenade roasted Leg of Lamb, or the pepper-crusted pork tenderloin?” (the tenderloin, definitley), or “what will my lover’s kisses taste like with all these flavors in her mouth?”
I don’t want to say that this wine is bad, exactly. In fact, it’s just not quite sure what it is. It’s perfectly acceptable. But it does look a little cheap and Trader Joe’s-y, what with the pink pastels on the label. They don’t really work with the deep green of the trees. And it’s really not bad, this wine. It works pretty well with food, at least if the food is half a carne asada burrito and slices of that ham that you really need to cook with spicy red salsa cooked with eggs. Like a French student’s dinner.
Trader Joe’s has led me much further astray at times, though usually for under five bucks. It’s OK, this wine, but it’s kind of like two buck chuck for nine bucks. Which isn’t really all that great of a deal.
Get it here.