Sutter Home White Zinfandel 2007 (GUEST REVIEW)

Our blog is turning my brother-in-law into a wino. Enjoy his latest guest review. Please remember that if you feel inclined to post on our blog as well, you can contact us at wineforthecheap@gmail.com. There's a lot of cheap wine out there to be sampled!

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Sutter Home White Zinfandel 2007

This blog is about bargains, but it is not really about being cheap. We recognize fully, in fact, that cheap is not necessarily a good thing, but that it is stupid to spend a lot of money for something just because it has a fancy name and comes in a shapely package decorated with fashionable colors and sporting curves in all the right places. Money truly doesn’t rule the world, and we all know that appearances can be deceiving. It’s what’s on the inside that counts.

Never was that lesson brought home more clearly than it was tonight. I walked in to my neighborhood Bloom intent on delivering on my threat to review the Sutter Home White Zinfandel in the 1.5 Liter bottle, currently selling for a mere $8.99 a bottle.

That, my friends, is a bargain! We are willing to drive out of our way to get huge quantities of peanut butter and mayonnaise at the local Wholesale Club, and yet when we get there we find that the wine is still sold in the same old 750 milliliter bottles.

How does that make sense? Bigger is better, right?

But wait, there’s more!! These gargantuan bottles had the added touch of bearing a small label around their necks advertising a “Build a Better Burger” contest – my chance to win $50,000 -- and that same label included $8.85 worth of coupons, meaning (assuming the coupons were useful), the wine – all 1.5 liters of it – was selling for a mere fourteen cents!

And the coupons were useful. At least, they appeared to be. One was for $2 off on beef. Any beef. Which made my dinner plans suddenly crystal clear. Another was for avocadoes, another for Italian sausage, and yet another for potato chips, the perfect compliment to a dinner where the main course is burgers and Italian sausages.

Of course, the other three coupons, worth $4.75, weren’t really all that useful to me, the beef “coupon” turned out to be a less-than-user-friendly “mail-in rebate,” and when you come right down to it, potato chips don’t really go with guacamole. In spite of all of that, though, I still saved $1.55 in coupons and got myself dinner for the next two nights, assuming my wife is willing to let me serve her nothing but fatty meat and potato chips.

All because of one gargantuan, blocky, overbearing bottle of very reasonably priced white zinfandel.

Which, once opened and consumed, made both my wife and I really wish we were drinking better wine. I was grateful, at first, that there was nothing objectionable here – no vinegar-like “pear tasters,” no plums. But, all things considered, I would almost rather have a wine give me something I dislike than give me nothing at all. Usually, even when we purchase a wine we dislike, we at least discuss the possibility of having a second glass. Tonight, my wife switched to water – WATER - after only half a glass. Me? I finished my glass, wondering all the while what it is that actually makes a wine enjoyable and why this particular wine should seem to have so little going for it.


3 out of 10


Bloom, $8.99

Funky Llama Malbec 2008

Tonight's selection is consumed in honor of my new neighborhood. Mike praised our new hometown in a recent post and I'd like to offer my own praise, more specifically to the great people who live on our street. I raise this third glass of mine to all those who have invited us over for backyard drinks and afternoon happy hours. To my supreme delight and Mike's hilarious despair, it hasn't just been one household on the block extending these delicious invites; it seems like the entire block partakes of the bubbly on a regular basis. Wine For The Cheap has found a perfect home!

Did I say third glass? Because I really meant fourth. This is one seriously fantastic malbec. A woman I work with in my pay-the-bills job recommended it to me a while back and I confess that it didn't really appeal to me at first. It's a brand that I see in a lot of grocery stores and I confess to have turned my nose up to its common-ness. Is that a word? (Mike will kill me for blogging when I'm this drunk. Good lord I can barely type!) Well, any sense of superiority went out the window at the grocery store today when I found myself searching for that aisle of free products and free wines. Needless to say, I didn't find that aisle and I didn't purchase a bottle. The Funky Llama had caught my eye at $6.99 but that was still too steep a price for me. I decided to use the $15 left in my checking account (yes, $15--I just purchased a house dammit) for actual food and nourishment. Surprised? Yeah, me too. Damn those maternal instincts. If it wasn't for my daughter, I would have just come home with a couple bottles of wine and considered that dinner. Luckily, there are two bank accounts in this relationship. I knew Mike would make a wine run when I came home empty-handed. Thanks Dear! This was the best malbec I've tasted in a long time!

If you haven't been a fan of malbecs but are willing to give it another shot, pick up this Funky Llama. I never considered myself a fan prior to this bottle. It's a sharp red wine but it doesn't leave that aftertaste that I have found most malbecs to have. Normally I prefer to have a beer (gasp!) when we grill, but this malbec was well-suited to the grilled chicken and vegetables we had for dinner tonight. This is probably the best summer wine I've tasted all season. Suits the atmosphere. I'll have to bring it to the next neighborhood Happy Hour!


9 out of 10.


Bloom, $6.99

Candoni Pinot Noir 2007

Are you nostalgic for the days of the Etruscans? Well, Candoni wine company "wants to recall the Etruscan joy of life by offering our Pinot Noir." Pinot Noir has never really made me think of Etruscans, and frankly I've always associated it with France what with how Pinot Noir is, you know, a French term, but what the Hell. If they want to evoke the ancient Etruscans, than we shall evoke the Etruscans. Can you say toga party? Excellent! Toga! Toga! Toga!

Of course, we are evoking the collegiate joy of life more than the Etruscan, but I can live with that. And really, it's not my collegiate joy of life so much as John Belushi's, but whatever. Just drink and, for God's sake, be sure to pull down your toga before you sit down. Thanks.

Who were the Etruscans anyway? Well, they were a pre-Roman civilization living in parts of what is now Italy who are best known for their art, some of which was really, really dirty. And that's fine. But when I look at the label on my bottle of Candoni wines Pinot Noir 2007, and I see this guy in a blue toga delicately caressing the neck of a horse, I can't help but think of this and wonder . . . what in the Hell am I drinking?

All of that aside, the Pinot Noir is quite good. It's spicy with a touch of anise and just a slight essence of latex on the nose. Yes, you read that correct. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but is somewhat evocative of blowing up a beach ball. I recommend serving it at your next toga party.

6 out of 10

Harris Teeter, $9.99

I vigneti di Albino Armani Pinot Grigio 2008 (GUEST REVIEW)

My brother-in-law spoils us. Thanks for the guest review, Tom!

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My first assumption about this wine was that Albino Armani somehow translated to “overpriced white suit.” It doesn’t. I don’t know what it means, but it doesn’t mean that.

That faulty assumption, coupled with the reasonable price, led to another faulty assumption, which was that this wine had to be Californian, because only a Californian would stick a name like “Armani” on a white wine and couple it with the word “albino.” It just seemed too cutesy to be legitimately Italian.

But it is legitimately Italian. Apparently, these Armani’s make wine and have no direct relationship with Giorgio Armani, who makes suits. And they don’t speak English any better than I speak Italian, judging from the back of the bottle, which says the wine is “crisp and clean with apple and pear taster.”

All of which leads to an interesting problem. See, if this was a cutesy California winery’s attempt at pretending to be Italian, the $8.99 price tag would indicate they were at least turning out a decent product; otherwise, their Albino Armani wine, which isn’t actually named for Giorgio Armani or his suits, would be on the $4 rack with the Matthew Fox wines, which aren’t actually named for Matthew Fox, and beside the 1.5 liter bottles of Sutter Home wines that sell for eight bucks (which I am feeling a strong urge to review in the not too distant future if Mike and Joy don’t fire me first).

This, however, is a genuine “Product of Italy.” It says so on the bottle. And generally, Italians know how to make wine, which means this wine should cost a lot more, unless it really isn’t all that great.

Which it isn’t. The apple taster I recognize, but I think the pear is a mistranslation. The wine tends to be somewhat sweetish on first sip, which is where the apples come in, but it quickly gives way to a tartness that is less than pleasing and leaves me with a sense that I have just finished eating a salad smothered in way too much Italian dressing. So, I have to assume that by “pear,” these crazy Italians actually mean “vinegar,” which is nowhere near as good.

Which is too bad, because a really good underpriced white wine named after a really showy overpriced white Italian suit would have been a really good find, no matter where it actually came from.

3 out of 10

Bloom, $8.99

Concha Y Toro Frontera Cabernet/Merlot

Do you know how I know we've been away too long? My brother sent me another guest review. He just gets all twitchy when he doesn't get his fix of Wine for the Cheap and has to fill the gap himself. But that's just fine, since his reviews are funny as Hell. Stay tuned later this week for his "overpriced white suit" review. It's hysterical.

As for me and Joy, we are back. This week we packed up and moved to a new home and, as a result, had little computer access. We have been checking e-mail and playing around on Facebook, but to sit down and savor a cheap-ass wine while writing poopy jokes? Well, that just takes a bit more of a commitment. So the blog has been idle all week. I did start a review of Middle Sister "Rebel Red" awhile back, but I had too much on my mind and had to scrap it. I'll try again soon with that one.

Tonight I'm reviewing Concha Y Toro's Frontera Cabernet/Merlot, a wine which me and Joy had the pleasure of sampling, in bulk, on Friday. All day we'd been moving; I'd met the movers around 8 am and by afternoon we were getting unpacked and arranging our furniture in our new home. We now live on the outer edge of Washington DC's vast suburbs in a planned community called South Riding. It is characteristic of the new face of Northern Virginia; the sort of place that turned Virginia into a blue state. It's diverse, well-educated, and upper middle class. It's severely oriented towards families. And the traffic sucks.

It's also a place so excited by the 4th of July that they have to celebrate it on July 3rd. So, around about six o'clock we headed down to see our new town get down. I love the 4th of July because it's always slightly embarrassing. I'm not sure if our international readers can relate, but anybody who has ever been to a 4th of July celebration in the States knows what I'm talking about. Uncle Sam on stilts. American flag t-shirts. Fat old men singing the female vocals from Love Shack. Proud to be an American by Lee Greenwood then blasting over the loud-speaker as the fireworks begin. It's a holiday I've always felt to be slightly corny until this year, when I suddenly realized how awesome South Riding, Virginia, and by extension America really are. I mean, seriously, I'm a bookstore manager by day, but I own an awesome new home by night. Life is good.

And the South Riding 3rd of July celebration had wine! Unfortunately, I had no money. But I did have a credit card! But the food stands didn't take credit cards. But the drink stands did! Yay! God damnit I would've killed for some kettle corn. Concha Y Toro Frontera Cabernet-Merlot! Who needs kettle corn? Me. Or funnel cake. Drink and forget! Wow! Those red, white and blue light sabers were awesome. Somebody get me a light saber! I swear to God I think I demanded, quite loudly, that Joy go kick the crap out of some guy wearing a Sidney Crosby jersey. And why I never managed to score some kettle corn is a mystery, since I damned near prostituted myself to get some.

Anyway, the wine was good, too. Fruity and very smooth, with a hint of chocolate. Yeah, I was paying attention. It pairs quite nicely with Blue Moon lager, but I only say that because I was drinking Blue Moon lager as well. I'll bet it also pairs spectacularly with kettle corn, but I guess now I'll never know. I loved this wine but I was loving, frankly, everything, so take this review for what it is.

7 out of 10.

Saw it on-line for $5.99, but it was sold out. Check around.