Never would I have imagined this when going through NY times this weekend. Eric wants you to try Meiomi, Gallo; with food or on their own.
Jokes apart, scroll through the comments section…they make for a fun/ interesting reading!
It’s not a recommendation. It is a suggestion that people should taste the wines and provide their opinion.
Well…I guess I have no problem w/ Eric’s recs. Not the kind of wines I would buy, but they are wines that have plenty
of flavor & fruit…unlike 2$Chuck.
Tom
The idea was to read through the comments section, some of these are interesting:
“I love wine. I’ve had very expensive wine and cheap wine. In a blindfold test I don’t think I could tell the difference. My favorite $10 go-to red is Bogle Essential Red. Fruit forward but not too sweet. Delicious.”
“I like Apothic Red. It goes well with almost anything (except seafood). It’s bright red and jammy (can I call it sweet?), and the price is right. Just for fun, I like to call it Apathetic when I go to the store.”
“As I write this I have two bottles of Meiomi pinot noir in my kitchen and an empty in recycling. I had no idea I had jumped onto a national bandwagon. My mother introduced it to me several months ago and I have found it consistently yummy. What more do you want than that from a wine?”
fun!
Eric Asimov is dead to me now.
I love the fact that he covered these wines - and I think he will gain greater ‘respect’ from the general NYT readership.
This is not about ‘you or I’ - this is about the ‘other’ 99% of the wine drinking community that really does enjoy these wines, and no, I do not think it’s because they do not have ‘refined’ palates. Some folks just dig these wines - period. And many in our industry ‘laugh’ at these wines and those who enjoy them . . . why?
The only way our industry will grow is to continue to embrace ALL palates and tastes - and not ‘judge’ based on wines like these. Period . . .
Cheers!
“I like Apothic Red. It goes well with almost anything (except seafood). It’s bright red and jammy (can I call it sweet?), and the price is right. Just for fun, I like to call it Apathetic when I go to the store.”
His wit is as developed as his palate.
Larry - you are entirely right. People in the US, and elsewhere, love brands. They eat Dunkin Donuts and MacDonald’s and drink Coke because those things taste the same everywhere in the world. They’re predictable and on the sweet side. We’ve evolved to appreciate sweet things and the manufacturers are putting out plenty of product to satisfy that apreciation.
I’m not on the “natural wine” bandwagon but wine that’s made to spec as a standardized product is of little interest to me. However, that’s what rules in the supermarket and elsewhere so I suppose the best one can do is educate people. And we don’t have to drink it, any more than we need to pay attention to the Khardashians or whatever seems so appealing to the masses!
I hear you Larry. My concern is whats exactly in these wines? Is it really Pinot as the label says? Mega Purple, fish bladders, Velcorin etc. Whats the RS, is it really dry? Is it safe?
I suppose everyone and Eric are well informed to avoid these wines. It’s not even about the price, Meiomi is well over $20 and another wine was over $40. Hence, I was shocked these got a national audience in NY times.
Anyway, I was more interested in the comments…
Very bottom line is that wine is a business, and that producers are here to make money. Just like any other industry. Most producers are trying to make wines with mass appeal so they can amass income. I can’t find what’s wrong with that, even if the wines are not to our tastes. I think it gets really easy to look down on wines like these that speak to the other 99%, and then go watch another episode of CSI or whatever and not realize you’re doing the exact same thing as a Meomi consumer, just in another medium. Being kings of a niche within a niche is wildly fun but your conquered territory is quite tiny and utterly irrelevant to most.
That said, Apothic sucks balls and I prefer my pinot noir without a dosage, Meomi.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to leave work early to go drink a couple Coors Lights with a buddy before I pop my Lanson Extra Age Brut this evening.
A few drifting thoughts . . .
I know nothing of the winemaking do’s/don’ts that go into Meiomi PN, but for a few years, maybe more, my wife and I both really liked that wine. It did not come across as a “sweetish” wine, but as fully-ripe-fruity, dryish, well balanced, enjoyable by itself or with food, and a friendly, unpretentious wine to “bring” when you needed one. The last few years, maybe due in part to change in ownership/winemaking and/or tremendous demand, the wine has changed for the worse. It has lost a lot of its earlier appeal for us. I don’t think this has anything to do with our tastes in wine changing; I think the product itself had changed. Maybe it is back to where it was and we should give it another look?
And I drift further . . .
On a first time visit to the Willamette Valley in September, we bumped into (and up against) the grape delivery and pressing activities taking place during our winery visits. Something that surprised me at one of the wineries was seeing enormous bags of sugar being opened and dumped into large containers of the freshly pressed grape juice. I have done a little follow up “learning” to understand the need for the practice, but seeing it was a little unsettling, like pulling back the curtain on the “Wizard” of Oz (Thanks a lot Toto!)
Why are you asking “Is it safe”? Wine is a highly-regulated food product. Are you suggesting otherwise?
Just because it’s not your palate doesn’t make it unsafe, let alone bad.
+1
But I really do enjoy having a tiny irrelevant territory. The best thing about being a tiny deserted island dictator is that I get to make the wines that I like, and then quietly serve them to the few guests that take the time to make their way to my mini-fiefdom. No one will confuse my domain with Monaco, but as long as the mortgage and payroll get met, it’s a happy life.
Enjoyed the comment of I’d like to know how sweet the wines are as they dont think they are that sweet. Quick check of LCBO says…
Prisoner 8g/L
Meiomi 9g/L
Apothic 17g/L
All well into the range of tastable RS.
Isn’t .08% or 8g/L right at the level of perception?
0.8% not 0.08%. 10g/L = 1% rs.
I really don’t get the article, it seems like a soft advertisement vs. anything relevant.
There’s no opinions being offered, no tasting notes only a brief slice of product info and a ‘I’m interested in your comments’…
Is this a troll by as Asimov?
Right, but 3g/l or 0.3% is roughly the point where RS becomes detectable.