Big House Red 2005

I am a sucker for marketing. I mean, seriously, when you go to the store to buy wine (or anything, for that matter) what do you typically choose? Do you go for the wine in the plain white label, or the one that catches your eye? When picking wines for this blog we may use user recommendations, or reviews, or some other criteria, but typically we're just looking for something to catch our eye. And so it is that on our recent browse through Wine.com I selected Big House Red. I thought the label looked cute.

And, you know, "big house." Like prison? Get it?

Clever.

Anyway, I didn't realize it at the time but Big House Red, and Big House wines overall, are part of a large marketing campaign gone completely out of control. I went to their web site at http://www.bighousewines.com/ to learn more before my review only to find that the entire prison motif embodies some ideological obsession with screw top caps that borders on the insane. "Yadda yadda yadda, Warden! Break outta the confines of stuffy tradition with the Stelvin(tm)" it says on the bottle, as if calling the cap Stelvin gives it some kind of grandeur, like calling your leather Corinthian. And then the web site leads you through a caricatured prison rather impossible to navigate for somebody like me, who has the attention span of a gnat and only wants to know if the wine tastes good with spinach.

Big House Red claims to be a blend of Sangiovese, Corignone, Syrah, Barbera, Mourvèdre, Petite Verdot, Montepulciano, Zinfandel, Tannat, Aglionico and Charbono. Or basically all the leftover, used-up, resquashed remains from other, higher-priced wines. It's a perfect wine for somebody like me, who seeks out a good bargain and refers to his wine as "wine," but it is kind of like finding out your girlfriend dated everybody else at the frat house before she finally got around to you. I mean, you still like her, I guess. But you brush your teeth after you kiss.

A decent red. Not great, but not terrible. 5 out of 10.

Wine.com, $8.49