Unfussy Wine Enthusiasts | Wine Reviews & Articles

The chart below represents table wine sales by brand in the US.  Cupcake was deemed the Number 1 in the US for the second year in a row.  It is amazing to see a few things: 1) That Cupcake is such a high volume and widely marketed table wine and is really pretty good quality/value.  See our previous comments on the Cab here and the Merlot here . 2)  The consolidation in that spectrum of the US Market (see E&J Gallo and Ste. Michelle Wines). 3) We have tried a significant portion of that list (21 out of 30 by our count). It seems that there is definitely a marketplace around these high volume wines that we as consumers are not aware of.  When you think about it how is it they are able to produce enough volume to cover the entire spectrum of Grocery Chains, Drug Stores, Liquor Stores in the US and still have volume for shelf space in Joggins, NS or Paradise, NL.  That friends is a s#!tload of wine.  When you think of the snoot factor, you co...

Ok, so we might be getting a little carried away with the whole blind tasting thing, but bottom line it is fun.  So, this time we also went back to the Cupcake Vineyards well again.  This time it was their 2009 Merlot.  We tried the Cab and loved it so we thought, we want to try more Merlot, so let's start there.  At $14.99 (on sale) it seemed like a good value.  So, Shannon was the guinea pig for blind tasting and right off the bat she found it to be a familiar wine and it led her away from Old World and over to New World (check).  She then went through the look of the wine which was dark, very dark.  This pushed her in the Cab, Zinfandel, Merlot direction and she narrowed it down to Cab and Merlot (pretty good so far).  She said, that it smelled and tasted like a California wine once she ruled out Argentinean Malbec (check).  After that she made the call, California Cabernet Sauvignon (oh so close).  She did a great job.  She kic...

Cupcake Vineyards Tonight we enjoyed a 2009 Cab Sauv from California 's Cupcake Vineyards . We had originally tried it a couple of years ago at the local wine show.  It happened to be on sale this week at the NSLC for $13.99 and it got us talking about whether you start to get a preference for wines from a specific region after a while or especially after visiting that region.  Having lived in Florida and tasted many California wines (since they are so prevalent) and also touring the Sonoma Valley, we find California wines as a group very enjoyable. Sometimes when opening a bottle from a region that we have visited you can almost smell the familiarity in the wine.  It brings you back to that place and the smells of the wineries you visited while touring the region. Back to the Cab Sauv, it may not have been the best wine we have ever tasted but it absolutely had the nose and flavours to put those memories to the front and centre and that makes it more e...