I haven't been wine blogging recently because I haven't been drinking. Wine is for when my life is calm and relaxed and I have an hour to sit and read and appreciate a good wine. Tonight, after a stressful week, since I had an hour, I forced myself to sit down and take a break and try a new wine.


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Falling Star 2005 (51% Merlot, 49% Malbec) is a blend of two varietals of grapes grown in Argetina. Merlot is a fine old variety; I'm not sure where Malbec comes from. This wine is very inexpensive; I picked up a bottle from Trader Joe's for $3.99. I love it that wine is about the same price as Pepsi ( Read more... )

Last Friday, the wine was Wyndham Estate Bin 555 Shiraz 2003. This was the wine I characterized as "trying very hard to offend nobody." It was a very soft wine, mildly oaky, with nothing much at all to recommend it other than that it is utterly unchallenging. You can easily drink the whole bottle, not that I recommend this. And at $5.99 a ( Read more... )

Last Friday, fallenpegasus and I opened a bottle of Fat Llama Shiraz, 2004 vintage, and were simply unimpressed. It was heavy, oaky, and not at all sophisticated. It wasn't the worst wine we'd ever served, but it certainly didn't rank as a repeat buy ( Read more... )

So, the wine of the week is Menage a Trois Red, a little wine produced by the Folie a Deux Winery (har har) in, where else, California. It was hardly a challenging or interesting wine. I found it in the Syrah section although it says it's a blend of Syrah, Gwurtzmuller, Reisling, and a few other flavors, but I guess Syrah was the best place to ( Read more... )

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It has been a quiet weekend so far here at the Sternberg Villa. We watched Teenagers From Outer Space, a charming little cheeseball from 1959 with no budget and very little script. The aliens wore mechanics' jumpers highlighted with duct tape and aimed rayguns that they bought from the local 5&dime. The hero was a softspoken young man who had ( Read more... )

I had previously tried the Little Penguin '03 Shiraz and found it to be pleasant, but unremarkable. Since the price is right, $6.99, I decided to give the '03 Merlot a go. Little Penguin has adopted an emerging industry practice of color-coding the wrappers on their bottles: red, yellow, blue, green and so on. The Shiraz is coded a dark red, the ( Read more... )