"Jack's Blend": McWilliams Hanwood Estate ($13)

"Red Wine."

A few weeks ago, as C. and I were bravely making our way through a particularly terrible bottle of red wine, I remembered about this blog (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, baby you know I love you) and quickly snatched up the bottle to look at exactly what kind of unholy grape we were drinking.

Quick aside -- I know this is a wine blog, but you guys know a thing or two about whiskey, right? You know, probably, that a lot of the time it comes from Ireland or Scotland or Kentucky or Tennessee; you know and love/hate its burn; you know that people put ice in it, to "open up the flavor." You may also know that sometimes they are called "single malt" and sometimes they are called "blended malt" and sometimes they are just called "blended," and probably you know from firsthand experience that single malt whiskey is, like, way expensive omg. The reason for this -- stay with me, guys -- is that single malt whiskey is made from only one kind of grain and only at one distillery, which makes it more pure, and makes it taste better, et cetera.

Blends, on the other hand, are made by blending -- that is, blending different distilleries' whiskies or even different kinds of whiskey altogether. Throw everything together, and it's still alcoholic, right? Cheaper for them, cheaper for you, just try to make sure you get that shot in the back of your mouth so it doesn't hit your taste buds.

So: whiskey can be blended. That's fine. That's a fine thing. God knows I've had enough blended whiskey to be able to start a second blog. But wine, though? Wine is something different. Wine is sophisticated. Classy. Traditional. Pure.

This is what I learned from our terrible, terrible wine that night: blended wine exists!

"Jack's Blend," the label declared, and then, on the line below, by way of explanation: "Red Wine." Nothing else.

Of course, we finished the bottle. But we weren't happy about it.



VERDICT: DO NOT BUY.

Chardonnay: X Winery 2012 ($20)

Mmm!

Obviously, I got this on sale. Twenty dollars! Absurd.

However, my thrifty wine aficionados, it is with a heavy heart that I must break this news to you: this wine was, actually, pretty good! I know it does nothing to further the search for the best-tasting, cheapest wine -- any wine more than fifteen bucks had better taste good -- but, hey, if you ever see it on sale, grab it. It was sweet, but not too sweet; it was fruity, but not in a gross way at all.

If anything, it was much better than the label would have us believe; on the back of the bottle, X Winery claimed "a supple, fleshy mouth-feel."


VERDICT: Buy!

Cabernet Sauvignon: Máscara de Fuego, 2011 ($15)

Bad, yet compulsively drinkable.

God, this is actually kind of bad. And yet compulsively drinkable -- I wonder if it's more alcoholic than wine normally is, for after each sip I feel that pleasant sort of immediate fuzziness...

"I don't really drink wine," says our friend, JM. "But I like it better than most red wines I've had. So I assume it's pretty good."

Also, this wine's name means "mask of fire."



VERDICT: Oh, it'll do.

Sauvignon Blanc: Steelhead 2011 ($14)

"aggressively grassy"

This wine is a little over my normal price range -- it's fourteen dollars! -- so my expectations are high. Nevertheless, Steelhead's sauvignon blanc disappoints: it is too sour, and too dry. At this point, I wish I could say something knowledgeable, like, "Like most sauvignon blancs, its dryness is counterbalanced by a grape-ish finish," but I know actually nothing about wine. What is sauvignon blanc, anyway?

Wikipedia tells me that it is a green grape from France. Good! Also, "the flavor can range from aggressively grassy to sweetly tropical."

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THIS WINE IS.

IT IS "AGGRESSIVELY GRASSY"!!!!!!!

It's getting me tipsy, though. I've almost finished the bottle! Time to finish Arrested Development!

love,
Maia



VERDICT: Enh, you could get a better wine for cheaper, probably. Definitely not worth the fourteen bucks.

Pinot Grigio: Flipflop 2012 ($8)

A few weeks ago, my friend L and I went out to dinner to celebrate her college graduation. We chose a Thai restaurant that was BYOB; L said that she would bring some leftover wine that she wasn't planning on drinking. This was the wine:

"Drinkable."

The name of the manufacturer, as you can see, is "flipflop." Those are "Hawaiian"-patterned flipflops depicted on the label, because this brand is relaxed and refreshing. Please check out their website.

Just like the one in the picture, our bottle of wine had a yellow "Best Buy 2011" sticker from Wine Enthusiast Magazine, so we had very high hopes.

Before we tasted the wine, I realized that I didn't have anything to take notes on. I looked through my bag. The only thing I had was my planner, which had no blank pages at all. So, in order to preserve our thoughts, ideas, and feelings, I took notes in the planner's back pages. Specifically, my notes are scrawled on top of "Guide for Evaluating Web Sites," a handy guide to deciding whether or not you should use, say, "1001factsaboutdolphins.geocities.com" for your research paper.

So: the wine! L, confessing a bias towards white wine, because she "likes cold beverages," had a sip first. "Drinkable," she pronounced. According to my notes, I thought much the same: "bland in a good way," "not sour," "pleasant enough."

Our food came. We ate; we talked; we laughed; we talked about Taylor Swift's "22." Being in more of a beer mood that night, L declined any more of the wine, and focused on her beer, leaving me to the wine, all by myself. Eventually, I said, "I'm kind of tipsy."

"I don't mean to pressure you into drinking," she said.

This shocked me. "I don't think anyone has ever said that to me," I said. "Like literally. No one."

We were at the restaurant for three hours. At one point, the couple next to us moved tables. "Am I talking really loudly?" I asked.

"Whatever, you're saying a lot of really great things," L reassured me.

"You're so smart," I said.

"I am smart," L agreed. "I'm graduating."


---


At the bottom of my notes, this quote (for I enclosed it in quotation marks) is written, with no attribution. I'm not sure who said it, or when, or why. But here it is:

"I'm sitting here with my arms crossed and holding this glass of wine and like, I don't know. I don't know."



VERDICT: Not too sour or two sweet. Buy!

Chardonnay: Liberty Creek ($7.99)

This is a momentous occasion. Joe, my former blog partner, is back from his year-long government-mandated exile in Latin America, and we are about to write a review together. We are sitting on my porch in West Philadelphia, watching the cars noisily race by. A perfect May afternoon. Earlier, we saw a horse!

It tastes like a floral pattern on a sofa.

FIRST GLASS

"How long do you have to let the wine breathe?"

"I don't know. I don't care, really."

"I like your general approach."

(Joe here, taking a turn narrating: This is a NICE wine drinking set up.  Sitting on the balcony, beautiful weather, glorious friendship restored, hunky men playing volleyball...but it is possible this wine is really bad.  It is definitely too warm.  So we have placed it in the refrigerator.)

Joe's right -- the wine is either very bad, or too warm, or possibly both. I guess we'll have to wait until the second glass to find out!



SECOND GLASS

Our friend JG has arrived! He says, "Very pleasant, goes down smoothly." (He is drinking out of the martini glass.)

Okay, my second glass. In my opinion, it's a little too fruity, a little too sweet, but then again, I don't really like sweet wine.

It tastes, I think, like a floral pattern on a sofa.

"This wine," Joe says, "is like the green light in the Great Gatsby. Semicolon. Let's... What does the green light stand for? It's kind of like Daisy. No, don't -- don't -- no, don't type -- it... Brings out a sense of longing. You see an ideal, so in the Great Gatsby that is Daisy, but in here it is a good fruity wine--"

"-- the platonic form of a good fruity wine --" says JG.

"Yeah!" says Joe.



THIRD GLASS

It's still not very good.



FOURTH GLASS

Maia" I would rather raise children with you than Alex."






VERDICT: Do not buy!

Malbec: Trivento 2012 ($12)

Okay, guys, so I have some exciting news. Tonight, I'm going to try something new! It's called: "drinking in moderation."(*) Instead of drinking the entire bottle of wine, I'm just going to have a glass with dinner, because I'm sort of in the mood for it, and then I'm going to use my fancy new vacuum wine stopper, and save the rest for another day. Am I an adult now? Is this what adulthood means?

* Seriously, I have never actually not finished an opened bottle of wine in my entire life. (**) While I was on the phone with C in the liquor store, I asked him if this was sad. He said I should be proud. I'm not so sure.
** My father can never, ever find this blog.

DAY ONE: Growing Up

Whoa, this smells good.

Hey, you know, I actually like this one! It's very, like, well-balanced -- it isn't too sweet, it isn't too sour. It's... nice, actually.

I guess if I had a complaint, I would maybe say that it's not, like, "full-bodied"? Do you know what I mean? Do I sound like an asshole? Do you ever read something in a wine review and think, "What does that even mean, this person is an asshole," but then you're drinking wine yourself and the term just pops into your head and suddenly you understand it? Whatever.

I'm not drunk, but I still feel nice! Glowing and mellow. I'm going to curl up in my soft girly curly white bed and pull up the comforters and read a magazine. I like life.

Glasses of wine: 1



DAY TWO: Tragedy Strikes

OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS, IT'S SOUR.

!!!!!

Or is it? Did I just eat something sweeter for dinner and it tastes more sour? Is this in my head? But I used my new Vacu Vin wine stoppers that I bought at the wine store!

A quick search for "what the fuck is the right way to use vacu vin wine stoppers" reveals that I have not, in fact, managed to use the stoppers correctly. Having ignored the incomprehensible directions (see below), I simply shoved the stopper in my bottle, figuring that'd do'er.

This is what I was supposed to do. Please click on this so you can see it better.

These directions make much more sense now that I've figured out that I'm supposed to buy a pump! So here I am, home alone, drinking sour wine and looking at Amazon with my credit card out. Aaaand there goes! Vacu Vin pump bought! (I got the stainless steel "gift" edition, because I'm worth it.) Will it work?! STAY TUNED TO FIND OUT.

Isn't this blog useful?

Glasses of wine: 1

DAY THREE: The End

okay, the pump hasn't come yet, but i finished the bottle

Glasses of wine: 4