Robert Mondavi passed away this morning.

We have previously reviewed the entry level “Hard Yards” Shiraz from Sylvan Springs here on Winetastic and found it to be most agreeable. As you can imagine when a bottle of their premium Sylvan Springs Cyril’s Reserve Shiraz 2006 arrived unannounced, I was somewhat excited. It is fair to say that Sylvan Springs are currently doing a lot right at both the budget and super-premium level.

Showing a vibrant crimson hue, the aromas are currently subdued with a little vanilla oak, blackberry and cherry showing. Full flavoured but refined and impeccably balanced, the juicy Shiraz fruit glides across the palate and is well supported by spices and a hint of oak. The finish is very long, mouthwatering and leaves you wanting more. This is a Shiraz to put to sleep in the cellar for several years.

Straight after opening the aromas were a bit muted, however this is not to be unexpected from a recently bottled premium red. My reaction to the first sip was something along the lines of “wow, this is the best young red wine I have tasted this year”. After a couple of hours, the flavours became even more intense with loads of ripe blackberry fruit coming to the fore.

Score: 93/100
Price: $40
Closure: Stelvin Lux (Fancy Screwcap)
Alcohol: 15%
Other Opinions: Winorama
Would I buy this wine?
Yes, At $40 per bottle, I feel it does represent decent value for money. Squashedgrape have it for $35 if buying a case.

Are you the Mac-daddy/-mommie when it comes to creativity? 

Have you ever looked at all the blasé wine labels out there and thought, "I could do so much better."? 

Well, here's a chance to explore your creative side and score a case of a soon-to-be classic red wine - Juice Crew Red.

So far, the J.Crew has nicknamed our maturing vino, "The Mighty Brick."  I think we'd like the label to reflect her personality (perhaps listening to a little Rick James could inspire potential label designers out there):

"So all and all, the blend has resulted in what we wanted - a rich rhone style wine with some backbone. The different varietals playing nicely in the sandbox. Great dark color, long sexy legs and built to party"

Here's the deal - submit a label design, which reflects our sexy Rhone brickhouse and you could win...1 case of JC Red.  Now that's what I call a case for creativity!

Details: Submit* your design entry by November 15, 2007.  The editor will select 3 designs to be voted on by Juice Crew members and Basic Juice readers.  The winning designer will receive the case of Juice Crew Red when it's released (we award no wine before its time).

*by submitting a design, designer retains no rights to design, but will be credited by name

Gentlepeople, start your creative engines..

By Campbell Mattinson
Publisher, The Wine Front

Torbreck’s top shiraz – the Run Rig Shiraz, priced at well over $200 per bottle – is probably Australia ’s most hedonistic wine. It leaps out of the bottle like a rattlesnake, all fanfare and bite. It is, always, dangerously drinkable. It is thick with flavour and accented by sweetness, its spicy, gravelly, smoky complexity ramping its class through the roof. There’s always been a question mark though: this tastes so bloody good the day it is released – what happens if you stick it in the cellar? Is it Australia ’s best early-drinking wine, or will it develop and evolve if given time? A tasting in the Barossa Valley recently of every vintage yet made of Torbreck Run Rig Shiraz (including the just-released 2005) threw a crust of clear answers.

The full article is available to subscribers only. Click here for the full article. 

Why does so much food writing neglect wine? A lot of restaurant reviewers gladly discuss the decor but don’t discuss the wine program even though wine can easily account for a third or more of the diners’ final bill. Most food blogs don’t look to include a discussion about wine either even when they are writing for home cooks who can escape the exorbitant mark-ups of wine in restaurants. Many wine blogs, by contrast, have shifted the discussion about wine away from simply tasting notes of berries and leather and the concomitant scores to talk about pairing food and wine. Why no wine love from the foodies?

I put the question to Ed Levine who runs the food juggernaut SeriousEats.com. Ed is friends with such wine luminaries as Josh Wesson of Best Cellars and Daniel Johnnes of Daniel Boulud’s restaurants who have poured him many great wines, trying to convert him to wine’s pleasures. To no avail. With good humor, Ed told me “I’ve never had a wine that takes food to the next level. I’ve never had a wine that impresses me like a great hamburger.” He also cited cutting wine as a good way to cut calories.

While Ed just doesn’t like wine, which is fair enough, he suggested that other food writers might be intimidated by it. That may be true since there are a lot of details about wine, from the producer name, to the vintage, to the grapes and where they were grown. But that shouldn’t stop an thumbs up or thumbs down for a certain wine and why it did or didn’t work with a certain dish. A lot of food writers are all too happy to have an opinion about a hamburger and if they don’t like it, then it’s a bad hamburger. By contrast, if they don’t like a wine, I fear they think it reflects badly on them as if they should know more about it. That’s too bad.

At least food writers aren’t alone: wine is woefully underrepresented in food TV shows, and, as we’ve discussed before, it’s not likely to change on the Food Network. How about the Travel Channel? When Tony Bourdain advises his viewers about which wine goes with still-beating snake heart, then we’ll know a page has been turned in the way foodies think about wine.

What makes food writers neglect the cork in favor of the fork: a lack of interest? Price? Intimidation/lack of confidence? Rampant teetotalerism?

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When people find out that I enjoy cheap wine enough to devote a website to it, they usually ask me if I have been to Trader Joe’s. My response, until last week, has always been “No, not yet”.

Well, I finally caved and took a trip to Detroit, the nearest Trader Joe’s location for me here in Lansing. Ann Arbor might actually be closer, but as an MSU Spartan, I try to stay out of there.

I’d like to preface this review of Charles Shaw Cabernet with a synopsis of Trader Joe’s. If you have one near you, go there. If not for the wine, then for the thousands of food items that pack the small market. I spent 80 dollars, which sounds like a bit much especially for me. I ended up leaving with 2 cases of wine and enough food for a week. Fresh mozzarella, fresh gnocchi, fresh salsa (notice a pattern?), Guacamole chips, Trader Joe’s Marinara, soups, veggies…. I was in heaven. They have got all kinds of cheeses, breads, meats, micro-brewed beers, and their wine selection was out of this world. What a great store!

Trader Joe’s is the exclusive retailer of Charles Shaw Wines, better known to most as “Two-buck Chuck”. In California these wines sell for $1.99, which is just amazing. Here in Michigan, though, the price was $2.99.

Did we like it? Was it worth the trip?

Hell yes it was! For 3 dollars, I don’t think it could have been any better. The Cabernet was great. At first, I found it to be a little sweet, but looking back, I was actually enjoying the salsa with the wine, which probably wasn’t a great combination. Along with the Cab, I also purchased some of the Shiraz, Merlot, and Chardonnay (reviews coming soon).

Congrats to Two-Buck-Chuck and Trader Joe’s for achieving the highest rating available here on Cheap Wine Reviews. Hats off to you!

Rating: 10/10
Price: $2.99
Place of Purchase Trader Joe’s

(a salad to die for) Scott Wilson, a practical-joking, golf-loving college buddy of mine, was an unlikely cooking teacher. Scott had no apparent interest in the culinary arts. He was, however, putting himself through business school by preparing Caesar salads tableside at a swish restaurant. One Saturday, in my quest to live beyond my means and impress a dinner date, I woke him up at two in the afternoon and begged for a tutorial. The heady aroma, pungent dressing and built-in theatrics had hooked me instantly. Twenty years, hundreds of salads and several truckloads of romaine lettuce later, I've fine-tuned the ingredients and learned to articulate the nuances that'll make or break a Caesar. I'm so obsessed with the ritual that I carry my well-worn salad bowl with me in a snare drum case when I take my show on the road. Pool sharks travel with their own cues; the concept is the same (and it doesn't hurt that flight attendants mistake me for a drummer). Most Caesar aficionados know where to find the best salad and are usually willing to trek miles across town to satisfy their craving. But few ever attempt to make one from scratch. Contrary to what anyone in a chef's hat might want you to believe, there are no secret ingredients or difficult techniques. However, a quintessential Caesar requires the harmonic convergence of several high-quality ingredients and some focus. In order to demystify the process, and make you the mac daddy of garlicky greens, I've isolated the most essential components. Since the recipe was published in my first book, The Surreal Gourmet: real food for pretend chefs, I've received dozens of letters from readers who've mastered the dressing and been deified by their friends. The ultimate compliment came from a waitress in Toronto who took me aside and whispered, "Every time I make your Caesar salad for a date, I get laid." I should be so lucky. 1) the bowl Most restaurants, and many home cooks, commit their first faux pas by selecting the wrong tool for the job. By using a blender or food processor to mix the dressing, they whip the yolk, giving the dressing an undesirable mayonnaise-like texture. The definitive salad begins with a large unfinished wooden bowl (i.e., not coated with a shiny lacquer). The rough interior wall of the bowl provides the perfect surface for blending ingredients. The best bowls are usually bored out of one solid slab of Vermont maple. (Martha would probably chop down the tree and chisel it out herself. But we have better ways to spend our time.) 2) the grind Once the aforementioned bowl's in hand, facilitating the successful marriage of the ingredients becomes an intensely physical activity worthy of Olympic designation. Use the back of a soup spoon and a healthy amount of pressure to grind the ingredients one at a time in a repetitive circular motion against the entire interior wall of the bowl. It should take approximately 20 seconds for each new ingredient to blend with the existing ingredients and form a smooth paste. 3) the garlic Accept no substitute. Use only fresh garlic. When buying garlic, look for a firm bulb. As it gets older and moves past its prime, the bulb loses firmness and green sprouts appear in each clove. At all costs, avoid dried, powdered garlic, the runt of the garlic family. And be wary of elephant garlic, a much blander version of the regular-size bulb. 4) the lettuce Pret-a-manger designer salad greens may be gracing fashionable plates everywhere, but Romaine remains the accessory of choice for Caesars because it wears the heavy dressing so well. If you must substitute, use another hearty lettuce. After washing the lettuce, use a lettuce spinner or towel to remove all water. For maximum crispness, return the lettuce to the refrigerator until just before serving. If you're preparing the lettuce several hours in advance, you can avoid browning edges by cutting the leaves with a sharp knife instead of tearing them. 5) the cheese This is probably the single most important element of a great Caesar. Imported Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano is produced exclusively in a small region of northern Italy. Its distinctive taste and grainy texture are unmistakable. Cheesemakers from this region adhere to a stringent code of rules regarding what the cows are fed and how long the cheese is aged (at least two years). A food writer at The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Once you get a taste of the real stuff -- crumbly, earthy and rich as wine -- there's no turning back: Everything else is sawdust." After you've added Parmigiano-Reggiano to your cooking repertoire, you'll be forced to adopt guerilla defense tactics to protect the ungrated cheese. Roaming dinner guests tend to circle the wedge like hungry sharks and will devour it the second you turn to spin-dry the lettuce. 6) the anchovy Don't be intimidated by the sight and taste of anchovies. When blended along with the other ingredients into a paste, the distinctive anchovy taste is unidentifiable. So why use it? Because along with the garlic and Dijon mustard, the anchovy provides the essence of the Caesar dressing, which all of the remaining ingredients serve to enhance. Modern technology has graced us with fish in a tube. Anchovy paste blends well and provides the perfect solution to the old problem of using one anchovy and tossing out the rest of the school. 7) the croutons Nothing's more anticlimactic than topping a finely tuned Caesar with store-bought croutons that were destined for turkey stuffing. Homemade croutons, cut from any leftover thickly sliced bread, are the hidden jewels of the salad (see recipe below). "Gourmet-style" croutons made by cottage industry suppliers are a suitable replacement if you have more money than time. 8) the legacy A great Caesar salad should knock you off your chair, then smack you again as you struggle to regain your senses. I can appreciate the fact that not everyone likes to wrestle with a salad, but that's why man created bottled dressing. If you elect to leave out the garlic or use the ingredients sparingly, please don't let anyone know it's my recipe.

Croutons (enough to top one salad) 3 thick slices of slightly stale sourdough or rustic country-style bread cut into 3/4-inch cubes 3 T olive oil 1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 2) Place bread cubes in a large bowl and add olive oil. Toss and squish the bread like a sponge until the oil is evenly absorbed. 3) Place croutons on a baking sheet or aluminum foil and bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Try not to forget about them in the oven as I often do.

Seizure Salad (Serves 6) 1/4 t salt 1 t coarsely ground black pepper 3 garlic cloves, minced 2 anchovies (or 1 t anchovy paste) 2 t Dijon mustard (the real stuff, not the dried stuff) 1 egg yolk, coddled* 1 1/2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice 1 t Worcestershire sauce 1/4 cup safflower oil, or olive oil 1 1/2 t red wine vinegar 1 large head romaine lettuce, outer leaves discarded, remaining leaves washed and thoroughly dried. If lettuce looks anorexic or is in need of a serious trim, buy two heads 1 1/2 cups croutons (see recipe that follows) 1/2 cup grated imported Italian Parmegiano-Reggiano * When I cook for others, the fear of a class-action lawsuit drives me to coddle. Place the eggs, in their shell, in boiling water 40 seconds. Remove, run under cold water 15 seconds to stop the cooking process, then use as directed. 1) Add salt and pepper to the salad bowl (this creates a sandpaper-like base that'll make the next steps easier). Using the back of a soup spoon, grind garlic against the wall of the bowl until it becomes a paste. Then add anchovies, and once again use the back of the spoon to grind it into a paste. Follow the same procedure, adding the Dijon, egg yolk, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce one at a time. Make sure that each ingredient is blended into a smooth paste with the previous ingredients before proceeding. 2) Add oil and vinegar. Blend well. 3) Tear or slice lettuce leaves into bite-sized pieces and add to the salad bowl. Toss thoroughly with dressing. 4) Add croutons and cheese, toss again, then serve immediately. Notes: If you don't have a rough wooden salad bowl, the dressing can be made (with some sacrifice) in a blender. Add salt, pepper, garlic, anchovies, Dijon, lemon juice, Worcestershire and vinegar. Purée. Then add the oil and pulse a few times. Add egg yolk and pulse a couple more times - just enough to blend it without causing the dressing to turn mayonnaisey. The lettuce leaves should be coated, but not soaked, in dressing. Adjust the amount of dressing as necessary to keep salad from becoming too "wet."