A particularly gruelling day, albeit week. If I feel I've been treated poorly, especially by marginally talented, dramatic people (enough with their post 8Os
me me me backwash, please), it ignites my worst antisocial mitherings. But, on a budget conscious night such as this, a glass of plain red cab Charles Shaw (
two buck chuck), is enough to restore some natural color to the world, and also reminds me that it's a holiday weekend. So, go ahead and ease me back into society. "Two buck" is made by the immense
Bronco Wine Co. in Ceres, California. Bronco's CEO, Fred Franzia, (of the Coca-Cola owned box-wine family) distributes it in California through Trader Joe's at a shelf price of $1.99 a bottle. Somewhere, in the background, cue Laura Nyro singing
Sweet Blindness..."Let's go down by the grapevine, drink my Daddy's wine, get happy..." .
When money is not such an obstacle, finer wines are the choice. We have government sanctioned
appellations here in the U.S. now, known as
AVAs, just like
La France's AOCs, and many of them are close to my home, notably those in Santa Barbara County and the
Paso Robles AVA. My good friend and sometime workmate, Tony, e-mailed a recommendation for the
Dornfelder from Huber Cellars , Lompoc, in the
Santa Rita Hills Appelation, Santa Barbara County. He has a smart palette, I'll search that one out.

As it turns out I was just up in Lompoc on the way to San Luis Obispo, recently. It wasn't a wine tasting trip per se but I did visit
Wild Horse in
The Edna Valley Appelation (see pic) and came back with their famed Pinot Noir (2005), and a recent Zinfandel, a sentimental favorite, not least because the "California grape", as it has come to be known, originated in the
Dalmatian province of Croatia, a land I am particularly fond of, and of their wines, particularly from the islands of Hvar and Korcula. On this Edna Valley stop I was tempted to leave with Iron Horse's good Mourvèdre, available only at the winery, but it was at that time , a little too tannic for my tastes. Probably a good buy for laying down but I'm not in that league, yet.
Not a huge fan of true Rhône wines since they seem to stir my temperament up a bit, but I was interested in Iron Horse's Mourvèdre only because the grape has become my one to watch since tasting of
Terre Rouge Easton Winery's superb and amazing take on this Rhône varietal. In fact, the wines of the
Shenandoah Valley Fiddletown appellation in Amador County, up north in Gold Rush California, which lies between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, are currently worth checking out thanks to the efforts of talented vintners such as Bill Easton, (never met him but the pic on the site makes him seem familiar). Plus, the countryside there is also fabulous, the setting for TV's Bonanza. I cannot commend Easton's wines enough. Picnicking en famille, at lunch under the vined ramada in October 2006, every wine we tasted or drank on site was dreamy, red or white. One always tastes in a kind of linear context on such a crawl, and we stopped there between visits to other wineries, but I must say their 2001 Terre Rouge Mourvèdre is my personal favorite, perfectly balanced, medium bodied red varietal wine of the last couple of years, French included, Pinot or Pin-yes. It tasted good at the winery in Fiddletown at lunch, and better still here, in LA at dinner a couple of months later, when the finish from the earlier bottle was only just barely wearing off in my mind! Can't describe its complexity offhand 'til I get another bottle and by that time it should taste even better. I have kept the empty bottle as a memory of that lunch and of the wine.
Wish I could buy lots now and you can too!Sadly, nationalistic oenological snobbery seems pervasive. It's true that I will always try to buy a California wine over any other to support the economy in which I live, but I'm not going to buy a syrupy California wine when a comparable foreign wine is less "jarred and canned" and more balanced and the price is more or less the same. Sadly the magnificent breadth and range of American winemaking is not available to those of us who want to spend less than ten dollars for a bottle. Like TV, Film and News marketers in our country, wine producers in that price range take us for sugar freaks seeking a universal mouthfeel and little, if any bouquet. And maybe most of us are good with that, but, include me out of the bunch.