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Independence Day Wines

© Alan Boehmer

You're in the mood for celebration. It's warm, maybe even downright hot, and you're planning a picnic or barbeque. The food's simple fare: barbecued steaks, burgers, hot dogs. Traditional accompaniments will include corn on the cob, potato salad and baked beans. It's the Fourth of July.

This is a perfect occasion to try some of those lighter styled red wines that often get upstaged by their brawnier brothers - the Cabernets, Merlots, and Syrahs.

Pinot Noir is not usually classed among the brawny, but it's far too complex and elegant to pair up with a hot dog. We're looking for something simple, unpretentious, delicious, and inexpensive. That usually means passing on all the varietals you've actually heard of, since the price of wine seems to be inexorably linked to name recognition.

A Quote from a (Female) Member of Our Mailing List: "Men are like a fine wine. They all start out like grapes, and it's our job to stomp on them and keep them in the dark until they mature into something you'd want to have dinner with."

You want something simple, tasty and cheap; and you don't care what it's called, right? Well, how about Valdiguie (val-di-GEE)? Bet you hadn't even considered it. Name recognition? Almost zero. Price? Very cheap. You've never seen it? Take heart. It's not always called that. It used to be called Gamay before the B.A.T.F. (yes, the guys who bombed Waco - they're also into screwing up the wine industry) decided that the name Gamay was inappropriate for California wines. Remember Gamay Beaujolais? When the current crop is sold, you'll have to start looking for Valdiguie.

Some nice ones include J. Lohr Monterey County Valdiguie and Wild Horse San Luis Obispo County Valdiguie - both under $10.

Also very nice with burgers and hot dogs is Grenache. Remember those old, old commercials that asked you to "put a rose in your glass?" That was Grenache. Grenache is actually a red grape whose skin color fades when grown in hot conditions. On its home turf, the southern Rhône Valley in France, it produces delicious medium bodied red wines. Our friends at Gallo made massive plantings of it in the San Joaquin Valley many decades ago and -guess what? -ah, you guessed it: it wasn't colorfast. So California Grenache Rosé was born to rescue the thousands of acres planted to this then little understood varietal.

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