When you think of great wine cultures your mind conjures up provinces of France, rugged struggling vines in Spain, fruit & nut Californians, enterprising Australians, and Carmenere-saving Chileans. Probably the last culture you would associate with viniculture are horn-helmeted raiders from the land of the midnight sun. No great wine has ever come out of Norway aboard a longship. Sure these barbarians named Sven and Ole would plunder a cask or two, but make it? Never.

I know that Washington State is one of those places where Norwegians settled upon emigrating to the USA, but what lunatic thought that melding that with the state’s wine production was a good idea? Somewhere in the Yakima Valley of Washington is a place called Outlook, and though I’ve never been there I’d have to say the Outlook is bleak if this is what comes from there. My dictionary describes the word “raucous” with the following synonyms: harsh, strident, screeching, piercing, shrill, grating, discordant, dissonant; noisy, loud, cacophonous. That pretty much sums up the drinking experience.

I paid $7.99 for this bottle, and that was a deep discount. I can’t imagine how cacophonous my reaction would be had I paid full retail!

The look on Mrs. Barbarian’s face upon her initial tasting of the wine could serve as a dictionary illustration for “grating” or “discordant.” Thankfully I had a funnel handy and the glass you see here went right back in the bottle after I confirmed her suspicions.

I initially thought about saving it for use in cooking, which is my usual response to a bad tasting wine. After further consideration I ended up pouring that $7.99 right down the sink.

…based on his accent and drinking style it very well could be a close relative of Mrs. Barbarian!

Happy New Year, and be aware that my resolution for 2010 is to write at LEAST one post a week here throughout the year.

This wine was on sale at a local wine merchant I occasionally drop into near my office. It is a 2005 Zenato Valpolicella “Superiore”. I know absolutely nothing about Italian wines, so I can not provide you with much data here about the region, grapes, etc. This wine however, is very tasty. I liked it a lot. Very dark and deep. Strong flavors, lots of body. Mrs. Barbarian thought that it overpowered the sauteed chicken and pesto pasta I served with it, so perhaps I should have upped the garlic or switched to beef.

If you like BIG red wines this one is a good pick. It is very inexpensive, I paid $12.99 on sale, but it has the full-body that you would expect from a much more expensive wine. Makes me wish I had an Alfa Romeo to hop into and say “Ciao!” as I roar off, spitting gravel on your shoes from spinning Pirellis. I imagine this is the sort of wine that Il Duce would have liked, as it is big, boastful, and Italian. Too much of it would probably turn your tongue red though.

Horrible photograph of a very nice wine.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately… I came down with the flu a while ago and it utterly destroyed my senses of smell and taste for weeks. I’ve been recovering and along the way I’ve enjoyed a few good wines. This is a fine example, Basel Cellars 2006 Claret. Mrs. Barbarian, her sister, and I enjoyed this at our local favorite restaurant last weekend. “Claret” is a British term for “Bordeaux blend” and this indeed is a blend of mostly Bordeaux varietals, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and the a bit of the Rhone thrown in, in the form of Syrah. Basel Cellars is from that wonderful corner of Washington state that the natives call “Walla Walla”… funny name, great wines.

This bottle retails for right around $20 bucks. You really can’t go wrong at that price. Excellent value, and good enough to be a bit better than an everyday wine.

I recently celebrated a birthday. Mrs. Barbarian arranged a dinner at a local steak place, a chain who sends you a coupon for a free dinner on your birthday. (Have I ever mentioned how frugal Mrs. Barbarian is?) I choose a filet, which they smother in bleu cheese and garlic, along with a twice-baked potato. Mrs. Barbarian selects a New York Strip. Looking for something powerful on the meager wine list I select this Napa blend called “Pazzo.”

It not only stands up to the big food, it is truly wonderful. It is a bit pricey, but as it is from Napa, perhaps it is a bargain at around $30 retail.

This is one of those “can’t miss” buys: Maryhill Winemaker’s Red, in this case a 2006. This wine is consistently excellent and reasonably priced, year after year. Mrs. Barbarian was the one that found it for us, having drank it at a social gathering somewhere. We buy a few bottles every year, and usually drink them within a day or two of purchase. In this recent case it was a friend of Mrs. Barbarian who was spending the night at our house as part of a long journey. We happened to fall on a halfway point for her and we offered the guest room. We may be barbaric, but we do take care of our friends on occasion!

The Mrs and her friend were drinking a (truly awful) wine in the kitchen (don’t worry, my review is coming soon) when I arrived home from my barbaric daily travails. After I tasted and rejected their choice I opened a bottle of the Maryhill and suddenly the evening got just that much more enjoyable!

I have no idea what varietals they use to make this wine, but they are well chosen and excellent. The price is always in the teens, and the stuff is worth twice the price. Go buy some today.

I was stalking through the wine section of the grocery store the other day, when I happened upon this red wine. Honestly what caught my eye was the presence of my favorite grape on the label: Petite Sirah. Given that I’d pillage your village for a mere sip of Petite Sirah I have developed a finely tuned peripheral vision that is able to discern the pattern of letters that say Pxxxxe Sxxxh from a distance of 32 light years away. This grocer is desperately trying to appear upscale, and has devoted a subsection (really just an end of the row) to “Organic Wines”… bleagh. From what I know about winemaking the best wines come from grapes that have been tortured to within an inch of their lives. If we could ship a few vines to Gitmo I’m sure a red worth writing home about would appear! I mentally envision Organic Farmers out having deep conversations about love and emotion to their grapevines to produce this stuff. Hell, I’d be out there menacing the little bastards: “Suffer you miserable grapes! Suffer or we’ll turn you into jelly and you’ll live for nothing but the indignity of a sandwich! With peanut butter!!” … all while brandishing a battle-axe at them.

Anyway, this little section of the grocer’s wine department is where I found my beloved Nuevomundo, so I always give it a glance. Sure enough my pattern recognition systems zeroed in on my favorite varietal like a smart bomb to an Iraqi ventilation shaft. I grabbed the bottle and noted the label:

TRUE EARTH Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot/Petite Sirah Mendocino

I flipped it over and noted the percentages: 52% Cab, 43% Merlot, 5%(!) Petit Sirah.

Damn.

But… like a fish on the hook, or a bird in the hand, here I had a red and it was relatively cheap. This grocer also gives an additional discount if you buy 4 bottles and I already had two, so I decided not to play catch and release with this one… into the basket it went.

Mrs. Barbarian and I drank this with dinner tonight and both of us remarked how good it was. I was ready for another bottle, but alas, we only had the one and the Missus was unwilling to dive into something else (she is so not uncivilized like her mate… sigh.)

You will note this red has no date associated with it. No vintage. I do not know exactly why that is in this case, but I suspect that this blend was a collection of leftovers… sort of like a good chili or stew.

I love a good chili or stew! At $12.99 this is rather high-priced leftovers but to be perfectly honest, it is pretty damn good chili. I’d serve this to a friend in a heartbeat. Tasty. Rich. Excellent grapes. Everything you should and could expect from a good, cheap red. Give it a try.

Of course it could also come in handy for another use in todays hectic society. You know that annoyingly yuppie couple? C’mon… we all know them… the ones who shop at Whole Foods and send their kid to French language day-care? Yeah, I want to decapitate them too, but hey… what can you do? Next time you have to endure a party at their house bring a bottle of this one along. That way they can appreciate all this “organically grown” crap while you can enjoy a reasonable red. If you drink enough of it you’ll lose that urge to decapitate… leave the axe at home though.

Almost twenty years ago when I was still in abject lust with Mrs. Barbarian (and she with me) she & I flew to the East Coast to spend some time with my parents. They were living in Manhattan, as my father had a temporary assignment there. They were living very high at the time… recall those heady days of Gordon Gecko and big M&A… well my dad was doing big M&A. I was just a fresh kid out of college and barely employed. One of the days we were there turned into a field trip out to the countryside of New Jersey or something. We visited an old family friend, also from the West, who was also living high on the late-80s Bull Market. We wandered about their estate and enjoyed some wine, along with cheese, and various goose innards spread on crackers. Mrs. Barbarian comes from Nowhere, Oregon and grew up eating animals her dad killed.. so this experience was a mind blower for her.

In retrospect it is likely why she hasn’t bailed on our marriage in all these years… she sees my lineage and thinks there is hope. I continually disappoint, but she hangs in there. Foolish woman.

To this day however she still recalls fondly that wine we had. Not in detail, just that she liked it. A LOT. Oddly she remembers every embarrassing detail about me, or every mistake I have ever made in her presence (and reminds me at every opportunity!) but could not tell you what wine it was. Me however… I barely recall when my own birthday is, much less anyone else’s! So I can’t even remember what state we were in that day or even what time of year it was, but I do remember that it was Sauternes. Mrs. Barbarian asked our hosts about the wine that day but mentally bailed when she heard the price and never looked back. I should mention that #2 on the list of things I found attractive about my wife when I met her was her frugal nature… she’s even cheaper than me! This sweet Bordeaux was way out of our price range. Way WAY out.

Recently a grocery store chain in my region succumbed to the invasion of all these hoity-toity chains like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, despite the fact that this small local chain pioneered this hoity-toity concept here in this area. I loved their wine selection and shopped there often as there was one of their stores very close to my office. As they swirled the bowl, staring Chapter 7 right in the eye like that closing scene in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, I pillaged my way through the wine section every evening after the poor slob who ran the place sadly marked down the remaining stock. My head nearly snapped off my neck when I spotted this bottle sporting a price tag in low single digits. The entire (small) remaining stock of French dessert wines were being sold for pennies on the Euro. I looked around and sure enough, the shelves were thin on stock, but all for a song. I started filling my grocery basket with bargains as it was obvious to me that the falling axe was already part way through the condemned neck on its way to the block. I bought probably $1500 worth of wine for maybe $135. It was borderline criminal, but I giggled all the way to the checkout. Sure enough they closed their doors for good the very next day. Among the treasures found that night was this bottle that started the shopping spree… and it was bought with a specific purpose.

Mrs. Barbarian’s birthday was not too long ago, so I pulled this one out of the cellar** with some fanfare. I said, “remember that wine we had back in 1988 on that trip to see my folks? Well here it is.” Mind you, it wasn’t the EXACT same wine. It was at least twenty-four years younger for one, and it came from a different winery. But for her it may has well been the same. It was French. It was Sauternes. It was very good.

So I continue to pull the wool over Mrs. Barbarian’s eyes. Mission Accomplished.

If you can find this wine for the price of Two Buck Chuck, then I applaud you. Otherwise I bet you’ll be paying 10X more.

**My “cellar” is made up of some Costco Baker’s Racks and some cardboard boxes in an unfinished part of our basement. Functionally it is awesome, as it remains at ideal temps year-round. It, like so much of my being, just lacks class.