a wine snobtastic weekend

I added the nectarines to make two girls throwing back a bottle and watching a full season of Big Love look klassy-in-a-still-life-way.

I've been drinking some really bad wine lately. My usual "try something new" strategy is to treat the shop like a bookstore and browse, taking time to chat up the owner, read labels*, and glance at the reviews. Friday night, however, I decided to deliberately pick out two bottles I would never otherwise buy.

First: One.6, marketed as a low-carb Chardonnay.

Generally, I buy wines to see how good they are. I bought One.6 - a 2003 Chardonnay - to see how bad it was. I left my unrepentant wine snob friends out of this tasting and brought in my sweet friend Marie. (I lost the tribute to her, but she's the newlywed and lucky recipient of two Snuggies). Going in to this little experiment, I was skeptical. Maybe a little too much wine snobbery has rubbed off on me, but I still retain enough basic high school chemistry. Wine is made from grapes. Grapes are a fruit. Fruit contains sugar. Sugar = carbs. To be sure, sweeter wines contain much more sugar than dry wines and dry wines are already low-carb, but still: the idea of a super low-carb wine struck me as silly as a low-dairy cheese.

It is palatable. Almost no fruit, which is kinda what happens when you have almost no residual sugars. There is a bright, citrus start and a crisp, acidic finish. Hint of oak. I really can't say anymore about it because there simply isn't anything more to say. Bland. Pedestrian. Just not very good. There are tons of great wines in One.6's $10 price range. Don't waste your money on this one.

If you want your strict low-carb diet to include alcohol, stick to zero-carb unflavored vodka or gin. If you want to keep carb counts down while enjoying wine, stick to a very dry variety. Most wines are low in carbs anyway.

And then, the red**...

Pure Merlot 2006 (Lake County, CA)

I believe that certain food or beverage labels are to be avoided, particularly those that include descriptions of what should be patently obvious. Sushi Land. Tasty Kake. Fresh Grocer. And anything with "pure" in its name. But since it is Opposite Day in these parts, Pure Merlot it was.

The first important thing to know about this bottle is not that it is a Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot blend (i.e. not pure Merlot?), but that it packs a 15.3% alcohol content. Marie calls this stuff "water" but the rest of us should take heed lest we go rear-end-over-teakettle with the first glass.

Balanced oak-fruit blend. Definitely some blackberries and black cherries and figs. Marie noted cranberries; I did not. Then again, I'd already knocked back a glass of One.6 at this point. On the spice side, lots of pepper with a little bit of chocolate and tobacco. But otherwise kinda eh. Not unpleasant, but lots to be desired.

And with that little foray, I'm done exploring for now and sticking to my regular summer Gewürztraminers, Rieslings, and Vinho Verdes. The best part about these wines? They're usually cheap (under $10) and almost always very good. Vinho Verde (Portugal, literally "green wine") is new-ish to the US, but most large stores and Trader Joe's carry it. (While I'm on the subject of Trader Joe's, I've never had anything bad there, ever. Joe has excellent taste! Is he single?)

Care to share your favorite bottles?

* Fun fact: recent studies show that women like animals on their labels, explaining the proliferation of labels with kangaroos, pigs, goats, etc. Which doesn't mean that such wines are bad - just that they have a savvy marketing team.

** Who remembers that movie where the daughter took some hallucinogen then explained to her mother that her resulting illness mixing red and white? This is one rule you might want to follow. An hour between red and white is fine, assuming you drink one glass per hour.

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Usefulness of the day: Have tons of plastic grocery bags? Give them to a dog owner. Don't know any? Either drop them off at a shelter or the bag dispenser at a local dog park. (And before someone starts with me on the plastic bags, I am not paying $5 for 15 biodegradable doggie waste bags).

Also, Big Love is addicting. It is basically The Sopranos: just swap Jersey for Utah and mobsters for various FLDS compounds. I still steadfastly maintain that HBO should have picked up The Black Donnellys (you might still be able to watch for free here), but until that petition is met, Big Love is a fine consolation prize.