2003 Wild Bunch California Red

The 2003 Wild Bunch California Red is another crazy Cali $10 red blend like my last single wine post... This one is made by Montevina, which is now owned by Trinchero. According to one article:

The screw cap brand is touting, for example, that its winemaker Chris Leamy has purple hair and its label design is "more Harley than Hamptons."

So it's part Zinfandel, Syrah, and Barbera. Zinfandel is really the dominant flavor here, although it doesn't have a Zin finish. I've been drinking it with some cheap pizza, which is probably appropriate. Not a bad wine. I enjoyed the Fess Parker blend better--this one is off balance, but at the same time could stand as the house wine of any neighborhood Italian/pizza joint here in the States, and that's an honest compliment/suggestion. Cheap Chianti tastes like crap, and at least this has some residual sweetness that would appeal to the American palate.

A brief word on the label design... My grastronomic curiosity was greater than my aesthetic taste. If I had a nickel for ever time that I've seen that general design as a tattoo on the exposed bosom of an aging biker woman, I'd have... several dollars. Ah, the joys of life in the south. But, once again, it's liable to bring previously wine-scared folks into the fold, and that's not a bad thing. As an editorial once posited, Yellowtail might not be great wine, but it succeeded in putting bottles of wine on the tables of people that would have never enjoyed wine otherwise. And heck, if the Wild Bunch tastes better with a gas station hot dog and the scent of 89 octane in the air, then more power to them.