Cheap Wine Chronicles Chapter 4

This time around we review a nice little Italian table wine with a goddamn basket attached to it!

CHEAP WINE CHRONICLES CHAPTER 4

Opici Chianti 2010

Cost : $11 (bonus basket)

This unassuming table wine is a light bodied, semi sweet Chianti with almost no finish and pretty light tannins. For some reason I was enthralled when I saw this at the local liquor store. I went in there to find a new wine to review and fatefully decided on this smooth criminal of a wine. I took my wife's last name (Gerard) so I'm Italian now, and I guess it stands to reason that I'd be excited about Chianti.

                                                                   Drunk Italian Elvis


I love red wine, especially red wine that pairs well with Italian food. I also love cheap red wine, cheap red wine that gets me drunk. This wine is "young" as hell and like, you could "cellar" it for a while, but what's the point, it's cheap, it's easy drinking, and it makes you see ghosts and speak different languages.

                                                                   This is a book!

Drinking this wine has given me the patience and courage to finally watch "Stephen King's IT." That alone makes me wish I didn't drink this wine. Wait, forget I said that.

Wine.

Summertime White Wine Round Up REMIX

A smooth summertime white wine that will get you feeling so fresh, and so clean.

Citra Pinot Grigio

Price : $6.99, generally

 Do you need white wine? Is it hot outside? Drink this stuff, baby.

I love Citra Pinot Grigio, I drink it when I'm eating granola because I'm earthy as fuck. I want some right now. This wine has a really citrusy taste to it, like Lemon Wine. There should be a band named "Lemon Wine".

This wine is good because it's cold. Other than that, it gets you drunk, so it fulfills the basic needs of summertime drinking, right?

You can drink it in the pool!

                                                (was this painting on a Snoop Dogg album?)

Try it, srsly. It's soo hot out.

Happy Summer.

Summertime White Wine Round-Up!

Here's some cheap wine ideas for those hot summer months when you are already bored of swimming (PROTIP: include wine WITH swimming, then sing "A Whole New World" from Disney's Aladdin). Crane Lake Down Under Chardonnay Price : about $6 This is a super fruity chardonnay that is inexpensive and tastes like it has a learning disability (nothing against people with learning disabilities, but this wine is in need of extra tutoring, whatever that means.) I bought this wine because it was cheap and I needed wine. My friend told me it smelled like wet hairy coconut, which I guess is an actual aromatic descriptor, but holy fuck I don't want to hear that when I am about to consume wine. To me it was just too darn fruity, but if you are having a party and need some buffer bottles to put out (I like that term, "buffer bottles") then by all means rock this business. The cute little Koala on the label lets you know that this is serious stuff, and the pee-yellow color lets you know that you might be drinking pee. Australian pee. Charles Smith Wines Kung-Fu Girl Riesling  Price : $12 Charles Smith is a talented winemaker from Washington state and he looks like the lead singer of the Melvins.  ( He is not, as I originally thought, the talented but soft Small Forward with knee issues that the Knicks had in the mid 90's  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRFKhpMKX0E ) Kung Fu Girl Riesling is a very tasty (but sweet) riesling with strong lime flavor, and a cool label. Having a cool label is important when it comes to impressing people with wine, because you can tell people what flavors they're tasting in wine (almost like a hypnotic suggestion), but a cool label that everyone can see really puts it over the top. This is one of my favorites, even though I routinely tell people that I have a strong dislike for sweet riesling. This is a tasty, cheap, cool wine that will Kung Fu punch you with flavor. In the face. Shaolin Style. Thank you for Wine Time.

Cheap Wine Chronicles #3

In this entry, we take it back to the old school, cause I'm an old fool. We are going to talk about the first wine I can remember having, which, given my selective memory, may not be the first wine I actually had, go figure.

The Cheap Wine Chronicles Volume 1 Chapter 3

Fortissimo California Grape Wine (Magnum)

Price : $8.99

                                                   "This wine exhibits high slammability."

I fondly remember my grandpa bringing magnums of Fortissimo to family events when I was much younger. Gramps had a pretty straight forward wine palette, as this is a basic red table wine that's heavy on the tannins and exhibits high teeth-staining power. Nobody in my family drank red wine, so when it was politely stashed away in our food-closet, I would pounce on this stuff and quaff it in high quantity and with glorious force.

                           Joni Mitchell bathes in Fortissimo wine in order to keep her youthful glow.

The greatest thing about this wine is that I can't find shit about it on the internet, which makes me think it's mostly reserved for the restaurant distribution crowd. I love how they have to specify that it is, in fact, "California Grape Wine", and not like, asparagus wine or something. As a side note, when I first started working at a winery, I had this dude ask me "You're a wine expert or something, right? So... what's in wine?" To which I confidently replied, "Grapes."

This wine is great, and I truthfully miss it. I am very close to ordering a case of it since it's cheap as fuck and I need more inexpensive Cabernet Sauvignon in my life. Also, it's like a trip down memory lane for me, if only I had a functioning memory portion of my brain.

CHECK THIS OUT a 6 bottle case is only $57.54.

http://www.winechateau.com/sku1036514_CR-CELLARS-FORTISSIMO-1.50L

That's cool!

Thanks again!

-Derek-

The first circle of Beer Hell: Limbo

Let's do a beer review. Some Miami Heat fan is blasting off mortars and I got tailed tonight by some dude who looked like Shawn Michaels on a motorcycle so like, why the fuck not?

The First Circle of Beer Hell : Limbo

So, Stewart's is the company that makes those delicious Key Lime Pie and Creamsicle sodas, I think.

They felt like branching out and started making beer, and in upstate New York at a Stewart's Gas Station, you can get this mountain light ice beer for about $2.99 a six pack.

                                                               "TELL ME MORE"

So this beer will get you drunk, and it's cheap. As a bonus, it almost tastes like beer. It's the beer you want to drink when you're completely devoid of good sense and are looking to rehydrate and catch a buzz simultaneously. That being said, there's NOTHING wrong with that! It's okay, it's almost vintage kitsch, and on a good day it almost tastes like a maltier Natural Ice. I am not hating, this is a decent cheap beer and for some reason it beckons me to listen to the Wu Tang Clan, C.R.E.A.M. 36 Chambers, I'd even listen to some solo Ghostface just to get my weekly Wu Tang Fix.

                                                         "How High" was a good movie.

THANKS                                  

                                                             

Beer! If you can find this beer, buy it because it's pretty rare where I live.

Series continues with : The 2nd Circle of Beer Hell : Lust

The Cheap Wine Chronicles Volume Two

In this entry, we get all sexy with a variety of red wine that you should get to know, intimately. The Cheap Wine Chronicles Volume 1 Chapter 2 Alamos Malbec 2008 Price: $12 Well hello there, my new friend. What is Malbec? Why am I here? Where is my shoe? All these questions can and will be answered by consuming a bottle of Alamos Malbec. I was ignorant of wines up until a few years ago and had never heard of Malbec, (neither has my computer, which keeps trying to correct "Malbec" to "malice"). I knew about Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, all that business, but I had no idea what I had in store for myself when I first consumed this delicious treat. This semi-erotic Argentinian wine is in-your-face with serious fruit flavor and while somewhat medium bodied, is really easy to drink, with a high slammability factor.                                   Because cast iron grills are where it's at as far as comfort. Since Malbec is relatively unknown in America when compared to say, Cabernet Franc, you can buy this cheap as shit wine and really impress someone, if needed, by removing the price sticker. It doesn't have the negative stigma associated with it like Merlot has (thanks, Sideways) and is much more palatable to someone who normally would not drink red wine. It is a sexy wine, but remember to constantly check your mouth in the mirror so that you don't get sexy red teeth and sexy grape lip liner. This is a fun, cheap wine, that my dog and Mandy Patinkin both love equally.                      "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you drank my Malbec, prepare to die." Thank you and enjoy!