Le Carignan de Maris 2012 (about $12)

About the Wine: Carignan is a relatively obscure varietal that does well in the Rhone region of France and also in Israel.  This wine is from the Cotes du Peyriac, a very obscure region in the far south of France.  Some of the best values in French wine come from the hinterlands of the south, so I am optimistic.

About THIS Wine:  Very dark in the glass, just about opaque.  There is a lot of dark fruit on the nose, especially blackberry.  The palate is full and chewy.  It is very hearty but not especially alcoholic.  The finish does not go on as long I would like.

Drinking This Wine:  Steak or a hearty stew would make a good companion.  This is a big wine and it needs big food.

Overall Impression:  For twelve bucks, it's hard to beat.  This wine is good for the price.

Le Redini 2010 (About $20)

About the Wine:  A fun fact about Italian wine is that there are something like 4,000 varietals actively cultivated there.  That means that is a practically infinite number of blends and combinations possible with native grapes, not even including whatever varietals are imported.  This wine is 90% Merlot and 10% Alicante.  It is an international wine with a regional accent.

About THIS Wine:  The bottles was actually substantially better the second night I had it open and tasted like it could have gone a little longer.  In the glass it is dark purple with a violet rim.  The nose is very smoky with a curious undercurrent of red fruit.  The palate is soft but not too soft with firm tannin in the finish.

Drinking This Wine:  This is not quite a steak wine but it definitely wants food.  I'm going to say pasta with meat sauce because it's hard to go wrong with that with an Italian red.

Overall Impression:  Wines of this style normally go for a lot more, at least $30.  So this is a good value.

Some Thoughts On Zinfandel

Zinfandel is famous or infamous as the pink summer wine enjoyed by people who are not aficionados.  Thinking about it brings me back to my early days in wine, when an elderly, scraggly man walked into the shop where I worked and the following exchange occurred.
"Do you all have that White Zinfandel?"
"Yep.  Right here.  The big bottle is $10.99."
"Oh, good.  She can't get in the bed without it."
I am not really sure what he was babbling about, but I suspect it's horrible.  Despite its reputation as pink swill, Zinfandel is a red grape.  Most red wines get their color from contact with the grape skins, the maceration process.  Shorter contact makes lighter wine.  The Provence region of Southern France is known for making excellent dry rosé wines.  California Zinfandel is known for making rosé wines that are less dry and substantially less excellent.
Zinfandel has historically been something of a mystery.  The grapes tend to be higher in sugar than other red varietals and for a long time, no one really knew where it had originated, only that it was successful in California.  Genetic testing eventually proved that Zinfandel is a descendant of Primitivo, an Italian Red varietal known to produce semi sweet red wine.
Red Zinfandel wine has been a thing for as long as there has been Zinfandel but it never gained the popularity of the pink version.  What this says about the majority of consumers' tastes is almost depressing enough to make me drink White Zinfandel.
Seriously, those of us in the business find the product cringe worthy to a degree that is difficult to express here.
Red Zin has been a good introductory wine for those who are not ready to jump right into something like a big, dry Bordeaux Blend and who find Pinot Noir too weak.  The fact that the highest end Zinfadels don't usually top $100 and that they start at about $10 also helps its accessibility.
Yeast typically starts to die at the point in fermentation when the wine reaches 14% alcohol.  This has traditionally posed a problem for producers in hot climates trying to make dry wine.  One option was to harvest a little early.  The grapes would then have less sugar, thus make a drier wine.  Production from under ripe grapes can result in wine with green, unpleasant notes that don't go away and actually can get worse with bottle age.
Another solution has come with yeasts bred to survive in higher alcohol environments.  Now, still wine with alcohol contents upwards of 16% are not that uncommon.  Traditionalist tend to prefer more elegant wines with alcohol in the 12-13% range.  Upon seeing a 17% alcohol monster those drinkers are likely to quote Dr. Malcolm from Jurassic Park, " . . . but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."
The new yeasts have allowed the creation of wine that is nearly as high in alcohol as some Ports and Sherries.  It is a big, rich style of Zinfandel for those who favor the style of wine that Parker used to describe as "Massive in the mouth," until he noticed everyone giggling at him for saying that.
In my own wine journey, Red Zinfandels have gone from entry point to guilty pleasure.  A wine snob is not supposed to like this style but sometimes the occasion calls for something huge, hearty and easy to drink.  A good Red Zin does not need decanting, does not need to be paired any particular meal (the wine is the meal), and is just generally not that cerebral of an experience.  It is a wine that is meant to be drunk rather tasted, enjoyed rather than analyzed.  In an odd way, it is the highest expression of New World wine.

Simplified Guide to Buying Wine

There are a few things most people don't seem to know about buying wine.  Allow me to enlighten you:
First and foremost, storage matters.  The ideal temperature to cellar wine is somewhere in the range of fifty to sixty degrees F.  That means that if you walk into a wine shop and it is eighty-five degrees in the store, any wine that has been on the shelf for more than a few weeks is likely to be totally F'd.  I honestly think that the reason a lot of people don't like wine is because they have had only wine that was improperly stored.  If wine has a natural cork, it is best to have it laying down to keep the cork moist.  That is not a concern for screw caps, glass corks, or synthetic corks.    It also takes some time for the cork to dry out, so it is not as immediate of a concern as the temperature.  A dried out cork allows air in faster, causing the wine to turn.  Finally, a lot of shops have bright fluorescent lights.  Ever notice that most wine bottles are tinted?  That's not entirely for looks.  Exposure to light ruins wine over time.  Wine cellars are in basements because they are naturally dark and cold.  I would not wish it on anyone to work in an environment like that all day, especially at retail wages, but it is amazing how many wine shops seem to go out of their way to ruin their product.
If you have to shop in a warm, bright store then the best workaround that I know of is to just ask what sells best.  Assuming the clerk doesn't lie to you, (which in some cases is optimistic, but there are definitely honest wine salesmen in the world) then you will get a wine that has not been sitting as long as the others.
There are too many styles and varietals of wine to get into here, but you can make some generalizations.  Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and Zinfandel are heavier, higher in alcohol, and usually sweeter than Pinot Noir, Tempranillo, or Sangiovese.  Chardonnay from California tends to be full bodied and buttery.  Sauvignon Blanc presents a lot of citrus.  Not all Rieslings are sweet, but the best sellers in this country typically are.  Wines from the Old World (read: Europe) are almost always lighter and more elegant than wines made from the same varietals in the New World.  If a wine merchant describes a wine from California as "Old World Style" or something like that then they are trying to express that, while the wine is from Cali, it was made in a way that was meant to retain some elegance. In this sense , elegant does not necessarily mean better.  A lot of people prefer massive New World style wines and that is fine.  The New World style is often better for drinking without food because the wine is so flavorful and filling.
If you buy something from the Old World the label with often give information about the wine.  But the information is conveyed in a way that you have to be in the know to understand.  Red Burgundy is usually 100% Pinot Noir and White Burgundy is usually 100% Chardonnay.  Rioja is typically a blend that can include Tempranillo and Garnacha, among other things.  If you don't know, ask the salesman.  If they don't know, and they depressingly frequently don't, then Google it.
Most wines have a statement of what year the wine was made.  Old World reds and some whites are meant for aging.  The New World does produce some age worthy wine, but they often drink well younger.  The West Coast of the United States is known for having consistent weather, but there are still some off years.  Most of the information you would need about vintages for a given region is no more than a Google search away.
Finally, wine labels contain alcohol percentages.  A wine that is 14% alcohol may get you lit slightly faster than one that is 12% but that is not the primary function of the label.  Pro tip: if you want to get lit, drink Vodka or Rum.  It's cheaper and it gets the job done faster.  Wines that are higher in alcohol tend to be heartier and more full bodied.  It is that New World style I was mentioning a moment ago.  14% or higher is a big wine.  Some wines at that range actually burn a little bit going down.  Most wine aficionados see that as a flaw, but many drinkers like it.  After all, if you don't want to taste alcohol why not just drink grape juice?  High alcohol wines that are made well often do not taste particularly alcoholic.  It's a matter of the skill and style of the wine maker.  With sweet wine the alcohol is often an indicator of how sweet the wine is.  Yeast converts alcohol to sugar.  So a Riesling at 14% alcohol is likely to be bone dry where one at 9% will be very sweet.
At the end of the day it is about exploration.  You have to try many different wines, preferably not all at one sitting, to get a sense of what suits your palate.  Finding a wine merchant you trust is immeasurably helpful, though it does sometimes mean spending a little extra to find that perfect, and perfectly kept bottle. And no matter what critics, merchants, or your annoying friend who went to Napa say, it is all about finding the wine that you love. Bon Chance!

La Lecciaia Toscana Merlot 2009 (about $16)

About the Wine:  It has been decades now since certain wine entrepreneurs, there are debates about which family, looked at the ill-used land of the subregion of Tuscany known as Bolgheri and decided to plant Bordeaux varietals there.  Tuscany was best known for its Chianti, a Sangiovese based blend, and to a much lesser extent for Brunello di Montalcino, a wine made from 100% Sangiovese Grosso.  The soil of Bolgheri was not suited for Sangiovese but the Bordeaux varietals, primarily Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, did thrive there and produced great wine, known as the Super Tuscans because they fell into no other other existing designation.  Many producers have sought to follow suit with Bordeaux varietals in other parts Tuscany.  The results have been mixed.

About THIS Wine:  It definitely smells like Merlot.  The ripeness of the vintage comes through in really plush notes on the nose.  It tastes like Merlot, too.  The front palate offers nice fruit, then closes in dry, soft tannin.  The finish lingers, but not in profound or inspiring way.

Drinking This Wine:  This is definitely a food wine.  Grilled meat, spaghetti and meat sauce, something hearty is the best choice for a paring.

Overall Impression:  The wine is not bad, but I find myself a little underwhelmed.  I would say that this wine is a bit overpriced.

Penalolen Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 (About $16)

About the Wine:  This wine hails from the Maipo Valley in Central Chile.  I have always found the wines from there to be fruit forward, accessible, and just sort of delicious.  We'll see if this guy measures up.

About THIS Wine:  Currants, tobacco, and cedar are all present on the nose.  The palate has a playful quality.  It gives up a good amount of fruit but not enough to be a fruit bomb.  It has some wood notes and firm tannin, but it is not over oaky nor bracingly tannic.  The 14% alcohol does show in the finish, but not in the "burns going down" way.

Drinking This Wine:  Could be a sipping wine, but really wants some food.  Preferably food that had hooves.  This is really a steak wine.

Overall Impression: I have a lot worse and paid a lot more.  This is a good value for the price.

Thoughts On En Primeur 2014

Today we're changing things up.  Instead of writing about inexpensive wine, I'll be writing about the finest of the fine wines, Bordeaux.  For those who don't know, Bordeaux is one of the most prestigious, perhaps the most prestigious wine growing region in the world.  It's so valuable that some people trade it as a commodity.  The acronym SWAG: silver, wine, art, and gold is used to describe the leading alternative investments.  Essentially what rich people do with their money other than invest in real estate, stocks, and congressmen. 
The En Primeur system is one where merchants and wine critics taste wine that has not even been bottled yet.  The critics give their impressions of the wine and merchants try to sell it.  The sales is part of the futures market.  Customers buy wine that has not arrived yet to secure their allocations, as some things sell out before they ever reach American shores.  Buying early has traditionally been a way to get the best price on the product.  It's good for the merchants because it reduces the risk involved in bringing in large allotments of said product.  The merits of any system that involve judging a wine meant to age for decades before it is even bottled are certainly worth a healthy dose of skepticism.  In fairness, critics do routinely retaste and rerate the wines later on.  Though I do not recall any critic coming out and saying, "I was wrong about that wine I rated 95.  It is absolute plonk."  A critic who did so who likely not be invited back, thereby missing his annual French vacation.
There is a running joke that in Bordeaux they have the vintage of the century every five years.  Part of the mystique of Bordeaux, Burgundy, really anywhere in France that makes great wines is that the weather there is very unpredictable from year to year.  The Bordelaise can go for years at a time without cooperative weather and that hurts the potential of their wine in off years.  When they do have a great vintage, which works out to be about every five years more or less, they and the fans of their wine are jubilant.  And they should be.  A mediocre vintage in Bordeaux makes better wine than most of the world can make in the best of years.  A great Bordeaux vintage makes wine that is transcendent.  Wine from the best vintages can age and improve for decades.  My first really old bottle was a 1970 Mouton Rothschild.  It was one of the best things I have ever tasted, even though it was a few years past its primed.
2009 and 2010 saw a rare occurrence of back to back "vintages of the century."  2009 was a hot year that lent itself to a fruit forward style of wine.  The wines are great but many traditionalists complain that the vintage is in a style more like that of the New World.  That make it very accessible for those who are not necessarily aficionados.  2010 was a much more classic year.  The two vintages showed everything Bordeaux has to offer.  It blew the doors off Bordeaux in terms of demand and pricing.
The Chinese market had already started to show interest in wine as an investment opportunity.  That interest exploded, as did the prices of Bordeaux wine.  Prices spiked to insane levels.  Investors all over the world wanted a piece of the action. 
Bordeaux's winning streak ended in 2011, a year that brought terrible weather and wines of a much lower quality than the previous two vintages.  It did not bring lower prices.  This happened again in 2012 and again in 2013.  The Bordelaise simply refused to price their products according to quality.  The market did not immediately abandon them, though many collectors and merchants did grumble about unfair pricing.  While all of that was going on, some less than scrupulous individuals began to notice that it is not all that hard to make a wine label.  Forgery is a problem in any collectible market and fine wine is no exception.  The highly publicized case of Rudy Kurniawan showed that the problem was worse than most had guessed.  The man produced so many forgeries by so many different methods (sometimes refilling valuable bottles of wine with cheaper wine, sometimes buying older, less expensive wine from the same region and vintage as more valuable wine and forging new labels) that it was actually kind of impressive.  His operation produced an indeterminate number of very good fakes.  It believed that he had accomplices because, and this cannot be stated enough, the sheer volume of fine wine he forged seems to be beyond the capacity.
Going forward, many wineries are now employing methods to make fraud more difficult and any auction house worth dealing with has enacted stronger fraud detection measures.  That is a whole study in and of itself.  Unfortunately, many collectors had already been duped.  The realization that their fine wine cellars were, potentially, filled with worthless fakes turned many an investor off to the fine wine market.
Around this time, the Chinese government started to crack down on corruption.  French wine was seen as part of the culture of corruption there and fell out of fashion
This odd constellation of factors meant that the wine markets essentially collapsed.  A case of 2009 Lafite Rothschild sold for $18000 in 2013 could be had for as little as $12000 earlier this year.  Some retailers began to dump inventory, selling high end wine well below cost rather than wait for buyers to cough up yesteryear's premiums.  Prices seemed to be in free fall.
It did not help that the Bordeaux craze had changed the way people collect wine.  It was no longer a long term investment.  It had become something people expected to flip in a few years.  When the craze died down, those buyers were left with a lot of product that was not hard to get and that would not rapidly increase in value.  The fact that very few people were actually drinking the stuff did not help anything either.  If there is the same amount of something in the world this year as there was last then the value probably will not increase.
2014 brought hope.  It was a good, though not great year in Bordeaux that had the promise to produce affordable wine that would not need to be cellared indefinitely to be drinkable.  The pressure to moderate pricing was strong.  The Western market wouldn't stand for inflated prices anymore and the Chinese were no longer buying like they used to.
Robert Parker, the world's most influential wine critic, announced well ahead of time that he would not be attending En Primeur.  It is difficult to explain the scope of Parker's influence in Bordeaux.  As an up and coming wine critic decades ago, Parker instituted a 100 point rating scale for wine and that scale has become the industry standard.  He emphatically declared that he cared only about what is in the glass, not the prestige or history of the producer.  This was a huge blow to a number of wineries that had been essentially coasting on their prestige.  He also likes big, bold, fruit forward wines of the California style.  Many traditionalists have complained about the Parkerization of Bordeaux as wine makers scramble to adjust their style to meet Parker's tastes.  Parker appointed the wine critic Neil Martin to go to En Primeur in his place.  I don't have any strong opinion about Martin, and that's the problem.  I am sure Martin is a competent wine critic but he does not have the legendary status of Parker.  I don't know that Parker's absence hurt En Primeur, but it surely did not help.
The wines were released with more reasonable pricing than in the past and there were some real success stories.  It is a great time to buy Bordeaux.  Wine from houses like Beychevelle, Smith Haut Lafite, and even Cos d'Estournel can be had at the best prices we have seen in years.  But the thrill is gone.  Lafit Rothschild, one of the most sought after wines, has released only tiny allocations.  It is, I suppose a good marketing tool, creating a lot of scarcity for their brand.  But it has had a cooling effect on Bordeaux as a whole.  Some of the other great houses, namely Cheval Blanc, Petrus, and Le Pin have yet to release, but the allocations are likely to be small and prices high.
Had the the top Chateaux released a little more quickly and a little more cheaply there might have been some real enthusiasm and urgency.  But they didn't.  The slow allocations, the lack of celebrity, and the ambitious pricing of certain houses has left the En Primeur campaign stuck.  The vintage that should have heralded Bordeaux's grand return has largely been greeted with disppointed head shakes and shrugs from potential buyers.
This is, of course, not the end. Bordeaux has been through tough times before.  A string of bad vintages in the 1970s left the region on the ropes and it did recover.  The Bordelaise are a stubborn lot, but they have staying power that few can match and I have no doubt that, between their unparalleled expertise, excellent terroir, and that sheer cussedness peculiar to the French, they will find their way back.  When they do, I will be glad that I put away some 2014s for long-term aging.

Hussonet Cabernet Sauvignon Gran Reserva 2010 (about $15)

About the Wine: Old World wine loyalists are often quick to point out that in places like Italy and Spain a wine can only be labeled as Riserva or Reserva if it meets strict requirements of whatever region it is produced in.  South American wineries have an unfortunate reputation for being willing to slap the Reserva label on anything.  What makes it more confusing is that some South American producers of $15 Reservas actually do have $10 wines that don't carry the label.  As with everything else, it comes down to what's in the glass.

About THIS Wine:  Green pepper is entirely dominant on the nose.  The prominence of the pepper on the nose made me fear some severe flaw, but the palate is fine.  It is tight, almost austere with fairly firm tannins.  With some time it does open up into some very modest dark fruit.  The finish does not go on as long as I would like.  

Drinking This Wine:  This is and can only be a steak wine.

Overall Impression:  Not bad, though a bit one dimensional.  I would have to say that this is fair for the price for those who prefer dry, Old World style wines.  If you are looking for a fruit foward New World wine, look elsewhere.