Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Picked up a bottle of one of my favorite inexpensive wines yesterday — R.H. Phillips Dunnigan Hills Syrah (or Shiraz, as they’ve rechristened it).   The wine is still excellent, but their new packaging stinks… here’s what I wrote to their marketing department.

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Folks,  this is a little not-so-gentle feedback from a longtime customer and fan. I have bought and recommended Phillips, Toasted Head, Kempton Clark, and EXP wines for years, and thoroughly enjoyed them. Your new screwcaps, however, are terrible. 

Please don’t think I am one of those "gotta have a cork" traditionalists. I am not opposed to alternate closures — not in the least.  I buy lots of wine with screw tops, and synthetic corks.  However, the closures you’ve chosen are the worst I have ever seen.

1. Esthetically, they make your wine look cheap.  They look like soda caps, not wine.

2. The thread on the bottle is very deep, and the shoulders of the RH Phillips Shiraz bottle are very high.  As a result, it is NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to pour from this bottle without dribbling wine everywhere.

Speaking of bottle shape, has nobody in your marketing department noticed the resemblance between the Shiraz bottle and the bottle from that old german rotgut called Black Tower?  They’re virtually identical.

Please give me a better closure, a bottle with a longer neck, and less pronounced threads.  Please don’t cheapen the image of your wine with gimmicky closures, and goofy bottle shapes.  The wine can stand on its own merits.

Cheers,

A.

This is the first in a series of "Rotgut Reviews".  I am on a quest to find drinkable, but inexpensive wine.  Last night we pulled the cork on a bottle of Yellowtail Merlot, from Australia’s Casella Wines.  This product of the Australian wine lake is available from the LCBO for just $11.85.  The LCBO marketing material speaks glowingly of berry flavours, and soft tannins, but what was it really like?  Think grape-juice.  Powerfully fruity, even a bit grapey - like a tame Manischewitz, but not as sweet.    Soft tannins?  Nearly non-existant. 

The verdict: drinkable plonk — the sort of thing you would serve to guests who didn’t really like wine.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I’m afraid we were a boring old couple last night.  We took our kids to see National Treasure — a very silly, but fun Disney flick — and then came back and watched other people celebrate on TV. Of course, we don’t live in a totally celebration free zone.  I opened a bottle of 1997 Chatter Creek Blanc de Noir sparkling wine.  This is a 100% Pinot Noir sparkler that I picked up in Washington before we moved in 2001.  It’s a very light, and uncomplicated bottle of wine.  Just the thing to go with the Leonidas Belgian Pralines my brother Matthew sent in our Christmas parcel.  Yum! 

I picked up a bottle of d’Arenberg’s 2003 "The Laughing Magpie" over the weekend. I was quite excited, actually, because I thought the combination of Shiraz and Viognier held great promise.  However, I was disappointed.  Do not buy this wine unless you have a cellar and lots of patience.  It is undrinkable right now. Although there is highly extracted fruit hidden in the wine, it is completely obscured by woody and bitter tannins.  D’Arenberg themselves say to drink the wine in 3 to 15 years, which means that the bottle I tried should have been left until 2006 / 2007.

How to eat sushi.  Encyclopedic in its breadth.