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Saturday, March 17, 2012

Groce-Out/Gross-Out Wine!!

Our plan to taste mystery wines and review them online never really turned into anything. So - next project (suggested by Iain) is to start a Groce-Out Wine Review section of my otherwise not so interesting blog. Ok - the story: There's a grocery shop in Davis (part of a chain) which is called Grocery Outlet. It sells discounted groceries and various household items that for various reasons have not sold well other places (for example the product was over stocked or there simply wasn't a market for it in the town or country where it was shipped to in the first place). Grocery Outlet, like other supermarkets, has a wine section and now we are getting to the point. The wine in Grocery Outlet is very often heavily reduced and presumably there are a million reasons why they end up in Grocery Outlet (and many of these reasons are not good reasons).  Often, however, the wine is just about to reach its peak age and so has to be sold quickly. Some of these wines are excellent wines - it's all about identifying them and getting hold of them before they've been bought up by other people who share this wonderful secret with Iain and I... 

So far we've tried a lot of more or less interesting stuff from Groce-Out. In the start we were so puzzled to see that they were selling, amongst other things, over 10 years old Chardonnays. Ok - we may not be wine experts, but even I know that Chardonnay tend not to last that long... So we though: let's get one and see what actually happens to wine when it has been aged beyond its potential. Verdict? Looked and smelt like wee. It was absolutely terrible.

The last six months we've decided to stay away from the wine that we know is going to be bad (enough with the experimenting!) and we've put a lot of effort into finding out what wines are in fact good value. We have come across a lot of delicious stuff, some by recommendation by other bloggers who have specialized in Groce-Out wine too (e.g. https://grossoutwine.wordpress.com/). These blogs have turned out quite popular, and the wines that receive favourable reviews are likely to be sold out in a matter of days. At the moment our fridge is full of Argentinian Torrontes, French Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley Barbera, Spanish Temperanillo... We have a lot of testing to do!!


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