Flaco Tempranillo 2014 serves as second-best option to Flamin’ Hot Cheetos

Bottom of the Barrel: Smooth Sicilian serves a superb summer swan song

Old World grapes always conjure up images of summer nights on the Continent. Tender evenings spent with a loved one in a petite café. Bulls dodged in narrow alleys. Verses writ.Your dear columnists, once the College’s most prominent Ladd-campus-wide-couch-stander-onners, are now seeking to live the good life. This year we will be sampling the finest wines purveyed by our fair town’s finest purveyor of groceries: Hannaford grocery. By finest wines purveyed by our fair town’s finest purveyor of groceries, Hannaford grocery, we mean the finest wines 10 American dollars can buy.
Will—whose notions of wine and wine-drinking have been most unfortunately informed by his reading of Hemingway while too young —initially balked at the idea of buying wine not corked. But as we made our way down the vino aisle, it was almost as if we heard a faint whisper of a Sicilian ciaramedda in the distance when we came across the 2014 Belmondo. The bottle was unassuming with “Terre Siciliane” emblazoned on the front, indicating its origin from the island’s wine region. Overcome with excitement we made our way home to begin the drinking process. In the hallowed halls of our happy home, 17 Cleaveland Street, amidst clouds of man’s best friends —fruit flies—we began our tasting.
The initial opening of the bottle had Justin questioning whether he lacked a sense of smell, but after pouring into our surprisingly adequate stemware (thanks Old Cleave), an aroma arose.
Half the taste of wine comes from its smell, or so we’ve been told. Needless to say, it’s a lot of fun to swirl the wine in the glass before taking a wee sniff. This particular vintage smells of scratch-and-sniff, generic, what’s-the-first-thing-that-comes-to-mind-when-you-think-of-white-wine white wine. This is not a bad thing. The wine smells like white Concord grape juice poured over playground wood chips. This is not a bad thing. The initial taste matches the nose. Flavor comes seconds after the sip. Slightly sweet like a crisp, October apple. Eminently palatable, this 2014 Grigio is more than just a little reminiscent of elementary school cafeterias and Juicy Juice 100% Juice. Vague notions of apricot kick around in the back. Dry, but who doesn’t like their Grigio dry? Against a dark background the wine is clear. Don’t be deterred by the screw top. This beverage is worth buying for those who want to dip their toes into drinking wine, but don’t want to mess up their pedicures.
As the wine flows, our conversation turns inward. It’s weird being a senior. Don’t recommend it. It’s easy to sit in your kitchen and feel weird about your past, present and future while your friends play NBA 2K16 in the living room. Wine pairs well with nostalgia.

Bottom of the Barrel: Myx Moscato and calamari is our summer diet

The hip-hop hot takes expressed in this column do not reflect the opinions of the Bowdoin Orient or Bowdoin College. However, hopefully, they do coincidentally coincide with those of President Clayton Rose.
Hip-hop and grapes are inexorably linked. Rappers have been discussing wine in their tracks for decades—from Drake’s tweet on October 1, 2012: “Dropped my phone in a glass of wine…just to give you an idea of where my life is at these days,”—to Drake’s line from 2013’s Pound Cake/Paris Morton Music 2: “Afterhours at Il Mulino/Or Sotto Sotto, just talkin’ women and vino.” Heck, rappers (one in particular, it seems) even cite their love of wine in print publications. Take Claire Hoffman’s April 2012 profile on Drake for GQ Magazine as a prime example: “At the ready are a bottle of chilled white wine and a pitcher of ice, for tonight we shall drink wine spritzers, his favorite beverage and also mine.”
Your intrepid columnists do indeed love wine. They also do indeed love hip-hop. Therefore, it is not without coincidence that the wine that they choose to review this week is doubly inexorably linked to hip-hop. Myx Moscato is Nicki Minaj’s wine. She raps about it. She appears in advertisements for it. She co-owns the company that produces it. The wine does not come packaged in a traditional, 750-milliliter wine bottle. Rather, it is sold as a four-pack of 11.2-ounce, capped bottles. Stylized like a curvier, sleeker bottle of Bud Light Platinum, complete with twist-off bottle cap, Myx Moscato promises to be a treat. This was not a wine selected on a whim. This was a wine pursued.
Poured into a standard 18-ounce wine glass, Myx Moscato is clear and lightly effervescent. It looks like water and smells like sugar water. Butterflies would try and drink Myx Moscato if you placed an open bottle in a meadow. Justin immediately thought of his summer evenings spent at the esteemed NYC institution, La Marina. Myx Moscato tastes like fruit juice, perhaps because it is wine mixed quite literally with fruit juice. Myx Moscato will—full guarantee—be the only moscato that these two wine reviewers will ever consume on nightclub couches. Myx Moscato is smooth. Myx Moscato is tasty. Myx Moscato comes in four small bottles. This is pretty cool. Porsche Panameras have four doors. This is pretty cool.
Perhaps our only complaint is that Myx Moscato does not come in a larger bottle. The size of the Myx Moscato bottle prevents it from being shared with friends at table. Myx Moscato is worth purchasing. Myx Moscato is worth bragging about purchasing.
Additional Notes:
Tonight's Soundtrack: "Truffle Butter" (2014) by Nicki Minaj feat. Drake and Lil Wayne (as if it could be anything else)
Justin: "This is a Socratic wine."
Will: "This is a moscato that would inspire me to write favorable comments on this column's online edition."
Nose: 0/5
Legs: 0/5
Body: 0/5
Taste: 0/5
Overall: 6/5

Bottom of the Barrel

Flaco Tempranillo 2014 serves as second-best option to Flamin’ Hot Cheetos

This piece represents the opinion of the authors:

September 23, 2016

Rough estimates suggest that there is a great variety of wine available to a curious, of-age Bowdoin student. A quick trip to the Hannaford snack aisle to buy Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (which all seasoned Hannaford patrons know the store fails to stock), and one can see wines of all colors, prices and brands. This breadth of options, when paired with the shocking disappointment derived from a lack of red-powdered, spicy snacks is dizzying. The wrong purchase—a bad bottle of wine—can lead to a particularly sour night. Choose the right wine, however, and the evening’s proceedings can be magical.

It’s oft best to rely on the advice of others. Hell, even the Orient’s most seasoned wine-reviewers need help. This week, we looked to the wizened Somms of Hannaford’s Limited Reserve. Justin knew what to get the moment he saw it: The Flaco Tempranillo 2014. Doubly enticing were the wine’s association to hip-hop legend and pioneer, A$AP Rocky a.k.a. Lord FLACkO Jodye. Will was hooked as soon as he saw a cork.

Before starting the tasting, we let the Tempranillo breathe for an hour. In the meantime, we prepared accordingly—decorating the table with a fresh ball of mozz and letting 1997 Diddy aerate the room.

The only way to describe the nose of this Spanish red is “boozy.” Red fruits dominate initial taste—a touch of spice. Will detects hints of dates and brown sugar. Thin mouthfeel, kinda light but not Natty Light. We want to drink this in a red velvet chair in a fur coat.

This wine is like a fake Rolex.

This wine makes you wish it was 10 degrees warmer.

This wine pairs well with fresh mozzarella.

This wine complains about taxes.

This wine thinks Dean Martin is better than Frankie.

This wine stays draped in Vines.

As with all research, it turned out as we set about writing our review that our esteemed predecessors at “Bottom of the Barrel,” Bryce Ervin ’15 and Brandon Oullette ’15 had already reviewed an earlier vintage of this wine on September 12, 2014. In their words: “This wine would be excellent if you wanted boxed-wine quality at a bottle-wine price.” It appears we drank a very different wine.

Highly recommend you snag the pretty Flaco while it’s around. Highly recommend you write positive things in the online comments of this article.

Additional Notes:

Tonight's Soundtrack: "No Way Out" by Puff Dadd & the Family (1997).

Justin: "Anytime I drink red wine I would rather be wearing a khaki linen suit."

Will: "I'm strictly trying to cop those colassal sized Picasso's."

Nose: 3 out of 5 stars

Body: 1 out of 5 stars

Taste: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Overall: 3 out of 5 stars

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