Jug-gling savings and satisfaction: Carlo Rossi burgundy offers viticultural utilitarianism

Bottom of the Barrel: When the wine looks: 19 Crimes provides gustatory, if not visual, pleasure

Bottom of the Barrel: The spice must flow: mulling unshackles Liberty Creek from tasteless oppression

As part of their recovery from Rossi’s Burgundy blunder, your esteemed critics looked for rejuvenation grounded in traditional American values. What better way to satisfy this yen than Liberty Creek’s Cabernet Sauvignon, located in the bulk shelf at Hannaford? The cracked Liberty Bell on the label pealed glad tidings that resonated in our marrow, promising fulfillment of our founder’s wishes for “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” (LibertyCreekWine.com, 2015). Inspired by our forebears’ own zeal for cheap and/or untaxed beverages, we utilized the Powers of Hamilton’s dependable tender to acquire this revolutionary rotgut.
Once installed in Yellow House, we quickly realized the errors of our patriotic passion. While Liberty Creek boasted a great wine smell, this proved to be merely an obfuscating veil. Our quaffs exposed a faint fruit-flavored serum. Despite its invocation of American exceptionalism, Liberty Creek was far from noteworthy. Indeed, subsequent examination of our tasting notes revealed that we drafted only a cursory description of the wine.
Hoping to rectify our situation, we looked abroad to Martin’s semester in Europe. Fond memories of Christkindlmarkts drifted upon the wintry winds that buffeted 75 Harpswell Road. Remembering how the autochthonous glühwein had warmed his spirits in Berlin last year, Martin hit upon a way to salvage this week’s installment of BotB and simultaneously indulge our latent Teutonic tendencies.
Cobbled together from various Internet sources, our Orient-approved mulled wine recipe— listed in our additional notes and perfect for any celebration secular, Judeo-Christian, or otherwise—metaphorically hit the proverbial spot. And despite the characterization of cinnamon as the “bane of American cuisine” by Kritika Oberoi, Cornell ’16, we channeled House Atreides and let the spice flow.
In what was Martin’s inaugural use of his home’s two kitchens, we began by creating a mélange of sugar, water, cinnamon sticks, oranges, and cloves. After evaporating most of the water to create a concentrated syrup, we poured in a quarter of our remaining Liberty Creek, and the resulting mixture could only be described as a “wine-flavored energy drink.” To amend this botheration, we emptied the rest of our bottle into our mulling vessel, throwing in an extra handful of cloves because as college seniors, we love nothing more than living dangerously.We kept a watchful eye on the contents of the pot in order to ensure that our wine was heated without evaporating the Liberty Creek’s greatest and only asset — its 12% alcohol content. After a sufficient period of mulling, our concoction was ready to consume. In order to protect our supple and well-moisturized hands, we substituted ceramic mugs for our usual Libby stemware.
The glühwein turned out to be just what we were hoping to cook up on this blustery winter’s eve. The mulling process imbued the wine with a comforting, nostalgic aroma and a vivifying warmth, and it is safe to say that Liberty Creek has never been so enjoyable. In short, it tasted like the love your esteemed critics had been searching for their entire collegiate careers.Liberty Creek’s wallet-friendly price was certainly alluring, but it was only through culinary transmutation that we—like the Yuletide alchemists of yore—were able to harness the true potential of this Cabernet Sauvignon and turn viticultural lead into gold.

Bottom of the Barrel

Jug-gling savings and satisfaction: Carlo Rossi burgundy offers viticultural utilitarianism

This piece represents the opinion of the authors:

November 11, 2015

Though Thomas Wolfe once famously said, “You can’t go home again,” he said nothing about going back to Hannaford. And so we have returned, Bildungsroman-ed by Bertani, to the familiar embrace of Maine’s favorite grocery chain. After our extended hiatus, we knew we had to think big. Our eyes instantly lit upon a vessel of prodigious heft, one which Robo Tavel ’16 would later describe as “looking like the kind of bottle you’d find at the bottom of a shipwreck.” Carlo Rossi Burgundy, nestled unassumingly on the bottom shelf of the wine aisle, dared us to investigate whether or not quality and quantity are always mutually exclusive.

Let’s first crunch the numbers. Measuring a sizable 4 L, the Burgundy was far and away the largest bottle either of your esteemed critics have ever purchased. While total jug cost (TJC) exceeded our usual cap of $10, when adjusting for cost per bottle (CPB), the $15 we spent left us with an adjusted cost of $2.81 per 750 mL, the average volume of a standard wine bottle. Furthermore, when accounting for the cost per drink (assuming a bottle contains five standard drinks), Carlo Rossi delivers an unprecedented value of $0.56 per drink and is bested only by Franzia’s offering of 5 L at the same $15 price point. When converted into real dollars, adjusted for inflation over time, the overwhelming value of Carlo Rossi fosters true wine democratization, portending Bernie Sanders’ socialist utopia.

In light of our spectacular savings, we treated ourselves to proper drinking vessels. We are proud to announce Libbey wine glasses as the unofficial stemware of Bowdoin wine criticism. Truly, Libbey offers the rare combination of style, grace, and budget-consciousness that would appeal to all college students. [Note: representatives of Libbey seeking official sponsorship may contact Will or Martin directly.]

After pouring our Burgundy into these new chalices, we realized that, in heretofore using Mason jars, we had seriously hindered our ability to evaluate that most crucial facet of a wine’s quality, the legs. With our new, greatly enhanced powers of leg deduction, we took our first sips.

What should we have expected of a wine named after a region in France, yet developed in California by a man with an Italian name? A wine that has no visible vintage, yet guarantees a 40-year history of consistent quality? This geographic and temporal potpourri alienated us from our previously held conceptions of what constitutes a wine. Curious for more information about our Burgundy, we embarked upon a quick YouTube search, which unearthed an antiquated advertisement for the wine, in which the man himself claimed, “I like talking about Carlo Rossi Burgundy, but I’d rather drink it."

Even as Carlo continues to lurk in the shadows of our collective unconscious, we must regretfully disagree with his appraisal. Burgundy’s parodic “wine taste” left us torn between our desire to spread the gospel of value and our moral aversion to actually calling this a wine. Initial flavors were strong enough, but quickly dissipated into a mist that made us forget—by the time we finished our quaffs—what we were drinking. We felt as if we were drowning in a small ocean of tasteless, indistinct liquid. Clearly the appeal of Carlo Rossi lay more in the sui generis spectacle of drinking from an oversized receptacle, rather than in any inherent gustatory merit. Despite our best efforts, at time of writing we find ourselves still saddled with a remaining three liters to dispose of responsibly.

Additional Notes:

Tonight’s Soundtrack: Hall & Oates

Will: “Let’s play Moneyball with this wine.”

Martin: “It looks like you are swaddling a baby when you carry this jug.”

Nose: 1.75/5

Body: 3/5

Mouthfeel: 2/5

Legs: 3.5/5

Taste: 1.5/5

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