Bottle Schlock: A Movie Review

Everyone, not just wine lovers, should see Bottle Shock for the same reason that everyone, not just Republicans, should have listened to John McCain’s acceptance speech last night. That’s because the film lit a similarly patriotic flame in my heart (me, a shameless liberal elite whose New Year’s resolution was to buy more French wine and who has never voted GOP). But after Bottle Shock, the new feature film based on the infamous 1976 blind tasting in Paris when a handful of upstart California reds and whites bested their French counterparts, I walked out of the theater with a big heart of love for the Napa vintners who believed, against all ideological odds, that they could make fine wine to rival the greats of Bordeaux and Burgundy. (I also left with a burning thirst for a decent glass of homegrown Amurican cabernet sauvignon.)
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Tasting Kit, Tested It

There are a number of wine tasting party kits on the market, all of them having the advantage that a wine tasting event, no matter how poorly organized or equipped, is kind of hard to torpedo. A pretty table, delicious snacks, good friends, ten bottles of wine … what possibly could sink this ship? So I had my doubts when I received an email from Time to Wine asking if I’d test their kit for Wine Girl Online. My pessimism deepened when I took the bonus quiz ahead of time and discovered an ill-posed question and an ugly typo.

For how this kit soon cured of my crabbiness, click here: Read the story »

An Evening of Malbec

Malbec, the signature varietal of Argentina, isn’t a red wine that most people reach for as a rule. Its South American provenance has only been on fine wine drinkers’ radar for a couple of decades, and the vine itself — with its sensitivity to frost and disease, plus its tendency to make ham-handed, tannic wines — just hasn’t been able to achieve the kind of profile of, say, cabernet sauvignon or merlot.

And that’s a crying shame. Or at least that was the conclusion of the Ladies Tasting Society after blind-sampling our way through nine delicious malbecs last week. Overall, we thought these wines were expertly crafted, surprisingly drinkable (even “silky” and “juicy” by some ladies’ estimation), and attractively priced (our average expenditure was $24 per bottle, even though we set ourselves a limit of $45). Not one struck us as clunky or flawed. All of them underlined our mental note-to-self to buy, pop, and enjoy more malbec in our lives.

For the results of our tasting, including a delish best value: click here: Read the story »