The first thing you notice about this wine is its aroma. Even as the wine is poured, and even if it’s not decanted, you can catch a whiff of what’s to come when you get to immerse your nose in the glass: a fresh bouquet of charred wood, tar, violets, pepper, and the alluring perfume of cherry liqueur. Sometimes called the Burgundy of its particular region, this type of wine has a reputation for combining depth with “feminine” finesse. This example is no exception. Its beautiful nose is followed by a brick red color of medium opacity. On the palate, you’re struck by the wine’s exceptional balance — it’s got a clean, velvety mouthfeel that’s held together by ripe, soft tannins and a perfect, delicious wash of acidity. Intense cherry flavors come touched with coffee and cocoa notes. Somewhere there’s something distantly smoky and herbal, like basil on a BBQ. Quintessentially a food wine, this bottle was the perfect mate to a bowl of penne with a red sauce flavored by lamb sausage and chard. By law, this wine spends five years in new and neutral oak and then bottles before release. So although we drank it “young,” it was from a great, ripe, vintage, and we had no problem approaching it and getting a warm, sumptuous welcome.

Email me with your guess, or click here for the answer to the mystery: More

A reader alerted me to the recent triumph at the California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition of the $1.99 per bottle 2005 Chardonnay made by Charles Shaw, affectionately known as Two Buck Chuck. The wine has already made a name for itself and Fred Franzia (head of Bronco Wines, which owns the label) by proving to be an entirely drinkable, even agreeable byproduct of the California wine grape glut — as well as a nose-thumb to an industry Franzia calls egotistical, greedy, and bloated. (The colorful CEO insists, for example, that no bottle of wine can cost more than $15 to make; the rest, he says, is hype.) Now Two Buck Chuck can claim bragging rights to quality, too, after it bested 350 other wines in a blind tasting of California chardonnays from a range of prices, a couple of them costing more than $100.

How could this happen, one might ask – especially one who has tasted the Shaw line and found it, as I have, to be inoffensive indeed, but also forgettable? Click here for my two cents: More