Thursday, September 21, 2006

Featured Boxed Wine - Peter Vella White Grenache


Perhaps it's unfair to Peter Vella Wines to start here. I do buy Peter Vella wines for cooking, and I have been known to slurp a little while preparing dinner, and some are not that bad. I'm sure there are people who love White Grenache, but I am not one. As a rule however, I do not present my own opinions here. Perhaps I can do better by Peter Vella Wines in the future, but today, this is what I put before you.

First, the description from the Peter Vella website:

The delicate salmon hue of Peter Vella® White Grenache comes from leaving the juice on its skins for just the right amount of time. Our White Grenache has a lighter body with enticing flavors of fresh, red berry fruit. The clean, crisp finish makes this wine a real winner on hot summer days.

Peter Vella - Our Wines


Now, the only review I have ever seen in the press. In December 2003, Carol Emert of the San Francisco Chronicle tasted 31 boxed wines, including five in 5-liter packaging.

The traditional, 5-liter box wines ranged from surprisingly good to shockingly bad. ... The worst was Peter Vella's white Grenache, a wine that I will not taste again without hazard pay. My tasting notes say it best: "Ick. Skunky odor with port underneath. Cat food and gasoline. Cloying flavors. Oooooh, icky cat food finish. I MUST BRUSH."
The San Francisco Chronicle

Thank you Carol Emert, for all your many excellent boxed wine reviews. Readers, you have been warned. There is nothing more I can add.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

cat food and gasoline? this is wine snob hyperbole. I would give maybe a bit too sweet, but this is nonsense. I have come to the view that wine snobbery is a way to sound sophisticated without having to work toward any real sophistication. Why study science, art, literature and philosophy when one can talk about hints of berries and robustness on trained pallets...