Let me begin this week's column with a word on sale wines. Now I am a sale shopper, but there are times when the money saved is not at all worth the money you spent. So how do you tell if the wine on sale is on sale and good or if it's on sale because the proprietor couldn't get rid of it?
This is what I've learned: Provisions and other stores in our area offer wine tastings at which the wines tasted that night only are sold at a discount. The nice thing about this is that you can try the wine before you buy it. Clearly, in situations like these, you should take a chance on the sale wines.
Now, as to the other occasions where you can't try the wine, such as when you're at Shaw's and they have some "new" wines for sale at prices just above those for box wine: the prices give you a moment of "why is this so cheap" before you stick it in your cart anyway and hope for the best. I did this three times this week and I must say, in circumstances such as these, it's best to be wary.
1. Our Daily Red 2003 Organic Sulfite-free Red Wine
Now, I had heard some good things about this wine although I can't remember where. Therefore, I shook off my qualms about the low price and happily thought that my first foray into organic wines would be a good one. Boy was I wrong. The wine was appallingly bad from the first sip. It had high tannin content and a disturbingly viscous quality; I felt like I was drinking leftover wine sludge.
As to taste, it was very grapey with a sort of berry flavor coming out as we kept drinking. After the second glass, we thought that it was beginning to grow on us and might be nice with duck and wild rice. The third glass proved that we were sadly wrong; nothing would make this wine a drink of choice. $6.99 poorly spent at Shaw's.
2. Orleans Hill 2003 Cote Zero Organic Sulfite-free Red Wine
After the Daily Red debacle, I was unwilling to try another organic wine, but I didn't want to discount the whole group because of one bad bottle, so I tried again. It was the color of the squishy stuff in a lava lamp. This set off alarm bells in my head, because that's not what a wine should look like.
It was very thin but with a pronounced oak taste. As we drank it we noticed a barely-there fruity taste. One of my tasters hated it from the first sip although he amended his opinion after drinking the wine with some gingerbread. The other tasters agreed that it was good with gingerbread but not very good at all alone. In all the best things to be said about it are that is has a very neat looking label and (judging from the dead fly in my glass) worked well as a pest killer. $6.99 at Shaw's.