Three Thieves Pinot Noir: $9.99, Rainbow Grocery

I reviewed the Three Thieves Zinfandel a few months back. It was great. Loved it. It was ten bucks, you got a liter instead of 75 cl, and it was a big, fruit-forward Zin. Mm mm good. Nice for a picnic, and I even didn’t mind the screw top. It was, after all wine in a jug.
So I was pretty excited when, while shopping for over $10 bottles of Alsatian whites for a crab feast, I looked down at the Three Thieves display, thinking “Hey, I’ve got room in my saddlebags, why don’t I get a bottle of that big fruity Zin?” What did I spy with my little eye but a Pinot Noir.
I had to get it. And drink it. And tell you all about it.
So it sat while I went through all the whites. Then it sat for another couple of days while I finished a fantastic three day weekend. And finally, I cracked it open. It was one of those “I could really use a glass of wine” days.
It’s got a nice nose. Smells like wine. It’s only 13% alcohol, which isn’t too bad, especially when you’re trying to keep your wits about you. It has almost no tannins, few legs in the glass. It’s a beautiful color– clear rubies through any light.
And the taste… It’s fine. It’s even kind of good, but there’s just not much to the taste. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s fine table wine. It’s just Pinot Noir without any of the hidden subtlety, the care in growing, the secret little flavors that sneak out each day.
Don’t get me wrong: I like this wine. I just think that it could be a little more… well, just a little more. I think that plain jane works out a little bit better with a Zin than with a Pinot Noir. I’d drink it again– but I’d probably open it after a couple of bottles of Heron, Echelon, or, better yet, David Bruce Pinot Noir.

Yellow Tail. It’s everywhere. it’s cheap. This one came from Safeway for six bucks. It’s not bad. It’s 60% Shiraz and 40% Cab, but it tastes more Cab-like than Shiraz-like.
A little heaviness to the tannins is apparent. The wine doesn’t seem to benefit too much from airing. This is a totally fine wine to bring to a house party. It’d probably be a fine wine to bring for dinner, but Yellow Tail has gotten so big that everyone knows they’re wines for the under-$10 set. Which is fine, depending on your friends.
You won’t be having any of those moments with your hostess which end with “it’s great, and you wouldn’t believe it, but I got it for six bucks.”
None of that.
This is a nice unwinding wine. It would go OK with food. It doesn’t have much smell or taste. A little sharp, a little strong, a little… just plain, really. There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with it. It’s assertive, tanniny, and would hold up to, say, a lamb shawerma. Or a carne asada burrito, but at that point, why wouldn’t you be drinking a Negra Modelo?
I do try to pick lesser known wines to review, but you all know I’m a cheap bastard. My roommate came home with this from Safeway. It was there. It was open. I’d just finished a very hectic 2 1/2 weeks where I hadn’t really had time to drink or be very social. I’d work from 8 until past 10, and by then I wasn’t in any mood do think clearly.
It’s only six bucks, and it’s totally decent. Have at it. I’m not sad I’m drinking it, and would even pay, say, seven bucks for it and be perfectly OK. But I’d really rather spend a few more dollars and have a Bogle Shiraz, or even a Pepperwood Grove Pinot.

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.

Another excellent eminently drinkable Pinot Noir.. Man, do I like me some Pinot, Sideways’ annoying commentary notwithstanding. It’s apparently a very tough grape to grow. Takes care, attention, the right soil, drainage, sun, moon, wind, rain. Too much or too little of anything and the year’s crop is down the drain, spat freely by tasters who can’t be bothered to drink the stuff. The two-buck-chuck guys buy it all up for a song and add sugar and make a decent, but not that great wine. Or else it turns into airline wine.

I don’t really care, though: If I can get a good bottle of wine for ten bucks, I figure I’m all set.

I’m in Atlanta for work. The trip might be a waste of time, but I get to see my friend Em. She pulls this wine out and tells me it’s 8 bucks at Kroger. Kroger is Safeway Peachtreeland. Her roommate Sudesh asked why we always talk about wine by price, not grape or region or whatever. What could we say? We’re cheap bastards and we like to drink wine. You can drink twice as much 10 dollar wine as you can 20 dollar wine, with the added bonus that it’s like going on a quest.

That’s why I do it, after all: The quest. I want to find the perfect ten dollar wine to suck down to my heart’s content. I think I may be at this for a while.

I think I had earlier incarnation a couple of years ago from Trader Joe’s. You still might be able to get it there, I’m honestly not really sure. I did visit this Kroger place, and it was there for $7.99. And they had an empty spot on the shelf which said “Pepperwood Grove Syrah, $6.59.” If there’s one thing I like more than a tasty Pinot for 8 bucks, it’s a decent Syrah for under 7.

I’m a cheap bastard, after all. Plus, I like Syrah. Stands up to more food. Pinot is a wine for drinking with friends, maybe some light food, but it tends to lose out when it starts to battle strong flavors in your mouth. At least the ones I buy do. Just a little bit, mind you. It’s still enchanting and delicious and all fermented grape juicy.

It goes down smooth-like It has some legs, but not a whole lot of legs. It smells a little thin, and when you get it in your mouth, you just swish it around a little before you swallow it and then reach for the glass again. It might be a little thin, a danger that Pinot Noir dances with. That’s OK. You’ll still want to drink it down until you run out of wine and throw your friends out and fall in bed with your lover. It has hardly any tannins at all which strikes me as odd, however, it means that you can feel just fine about cracking this 2004 wine open right now and drinking it down. It might develop a little bit in the bottle, but it’s really ready to suck down right now. I may try to lay in a few bottles for drinking later, but what’ll happen is that Katawin will come over and then we’ll just drink it down.

This might be the best value I’ve had in Pinot Noir in quite some time. Either that, or else I should start writing the reviews before I’m at the end of the bottle. I dunno. At eight dollars and easy to drink, you’re not going to go wrong.

La Playa Merlot, little liquor store at 14th/Churth, $7.99.
Yes, Merlot is the white zin of the mid-to-late 90s. It’s not great, it’s not bad, it’s easy to grow and easy to make totally decent wine out of. On the other hand, it often doesn’t add anything to food, nor does food do anything particularly to a glass of Merlot. It’s the Vin Ordinaire of California’s post-cabernet boom. Lambasted by wine aficionados and Sideways and everything under the sun, it’s really not that bad. Usually.

La Playa 2004. It’s around. I think I’ve maybe seen it in Trader Joe’s. I think I’ve even bought it before, but couldn’t remember it, which means it was one of those “Shit, we’re out of wine, let’s get something cheap, but not too cheap” wines.

That’s the kind of wine I like.

This time, I found it at this little corner store by the Church and Market Safeway in San Francisco. It was marked $6.99, but I think the corner store guy charged me $7.99 for it after razoring off the price tag. Whatever– it’s only a dollar, and I had Ms. Yoyo with me, and we were full of pretty good food and giggling. Full disclosure: I’d also just gotten off a 11 hour flight from London to see The Pyper for his 40th. I was in a good mood and it might have been my mistake.

The price isn’t important, though. Although, a $6.99 wine is way cheaper than a $7.99 wine, but sometimes a buck is just a dollar. Not worth arguing about. And the wine was worth the extra buck.

Just so you know.

This stuff isn’t bad. Not great, not bad. I dug it up at Trader Joe’s for $4.99. It quaffs OK. It’s french. It’s maybe a little sharp, with hardly any tannins. This is a very drinkable light French table wine– or that’s what I’d use it for. A blend of Grenache and Syrah, it benefits a bit from contact with the air: I thought, after the first glass, “Mmm.. not too bad.” The second glass brought out “Damn, that’s kind of nice.” There’s a little alcoholic sharpness that I’ve come to associate with french wines that unfortunately overpowers some of the subtler flavors.
How does it go with food? I ate some leftover green curried lamb with the second “kind of nice” glass. Now, this food is kind of an unfair pair with the wine: It’s bold and spicy. It goes well with a sharp lager like Tsingtao or Cobra. The wine stood up, helped by its sharpness, and did a decent job. It slithered over the spice burn and cooled it.
It didn’t enhance the curry itself, just held its own, but when I had it with a few spicy bites of lamb it shone through. They got together and did a little dance in my mouth, accentuating the alcoholic sharpness.
Overall, this wasn’t bad. At $5, you really can’t beat it.

Three Thieves Zinfandel, $9.99, Bi-Rite, San Francisco

I’m sort of cheating here: Bi-Rite is sort of like a specialty store, but it’s right by the park by my house. It’s got all kinds of organic foods at ridiculous prices, and then some specialty cheeses at pretty special prices. But it’s the place that’s close to your hood that you go to when you need some seriously good chocolate, or if you suddenly need capers or something. They have loads of wines that people who buy $23.99-a-pound pre-marinated beef buy in the $20-$30 range and higher.

I’ve discovered that they also have a lot of really good wine in the $8-$10 range. This can be seen as a good thing. I’ve had some stinkers from there that the marketing would suggest would be good. The marketing? Someone drinks the wine and writes up a little card. Things like “what more can you ask for in a $7.99 Cotes du Rhone?” Maybe they are, to someone else. You might find these in your corner store, if you live in San Francisco. Or if you’re lucky. Lots of wine from Chile and Argentina, most of which comes pretty cheap. Which is, after all, why we’re here.

The Three Thieves Zin: I hear that these three guys started their own winery a few years back. They basically buy up a bunch of already-made Zin that other wineries can’t use because it doesn’t fit in with their flavor profile. The thieves blend it, pour it into modern-day jugs, and sell it. All I know is: It’s a big fruity Zin. It’s big and bold and tasty. Plus, for $9.99, you get a whole liter. that’s an extra 1/3 of a bottle of wine, or else it makes the bottle about 5 and three-quarters glasses instead of four-plus-a-little. It’s got a screw top. It goes down real easy. I had it once before we went out to dinner, and it lubricated society nicely. It’s a great wine for bumming around in the park on a beautiful sunny day. Or a grey cloudy day. Or for having friends over before you go to dinner. Or for a party. Or for anything really.

I took it to Mary’s unseasonably cold and blustery birthday in Dolores Park. It was a big hit.

This stuff is great: Goes down easy, memorable, but not too memorable. Eat most anything with it, particularly lamb. It’ll hold up to other meats, too. I’m sort of itching to get some curried goat to go with it. It’ll go down well with, say, roast vegetables or a portabella steak: It won’t overpower either. It’ll make you feel all warm inside and put a smile on your face for when you go out into the February chill wind to go to a nice meal with your guest from out of town.

Get some. You won’t be disappointed.

Heron Pinot Noir, $9.99, Bi-Rite, San Francisco

Heron Pinot Noir: This stuff is regularly $10.99, on sale right now for $9.99 at BevMo, but Bi-rite always has it for $9.99. Don’t ask me why. BevMo is annoying, Bi-Rite is local. BevMo is run by investors, Bi-Rite is run by cute funky people with tattoos and facial piercings who do things like pre-marinate legs of lamb with pomegranates and then sell it to you for $23.99 a pound.

This Pinot stands up next to just about anything. It’s eminently drinkable, and tastes like a $20 Pinot at $9.99.

It’s round and flavorful. It goes down easy. It’s so good, you’ll read the bottle after you drink it. If you’re me, at lest. It’s a little fruity without being overpowering. You can drink it with food. You can drink it alone. You can drink it with your lover before you make wild passionate love to her. This is a great wine for eating with that marinated leg of lamb. It’ll stand up to a nice tri-tip, cool and bloody in the center (just don’t forget about the resting time). At the same time, it won’t overpower, say, a roast chicken dinner. I’ve had it with good strong Salmon. Basically, it’s light enough to go with anything and strong enough to sneak in and work with everything. it’s versatile. Have your friends over for dinner, and drink it down. Take a bottle do bed with you and that lover.

You bought two, right?

You should have. You should have bought a case.

Like I say, I’m cheating. You might not find this at your corner store, but if you do buy it. Buy it all. They might not have it next week.