Bought this for about $9 and had it last night with home made spinach and onion pizza with spicey chipotle pizza sauce. It's 55/45 shiraz/cab.

-deep, cool red of moderate intensity; a little cloudy (is there any way to say this that doesn't sound negative?); plentiful fast legs

-interesting, surprising nose of smoke, honey, and chocolate?

-plenty of sweet fruit up front, black cherries or "canned cherry pie filling" according to thebuggal, more smoke; reserved acids, fine but ineffectual tannins; very brief finish; medium mouthfeel, well extracted- seems like they got all that was there to begin with.

-overall smooth with nice flavor but needs more of a backbone. Drink 'em if you got 'em, a crowd pleaser. Pleasantly showed a bit more oomph with the pizza.

-WS 86- I'd say this is about right and so is what you pay for it.

[ 11-06-2002, 12:22 AM: Message edited by: thebugguy ]

This is a good basic (really basic) maximum crowd pleaser at an informal "do" type of red. Even better is they sell it in 1.5 liter bottles for $10 or $11 up here so the party and pizza crowd would be well-served.

I agree.

A good "grapey" wine that will satiate the wino's and non-wino's at most any soiree.

Cost Plus recently had it for $4.99. At that price it's a steal imho. Hell yes I loaded up.

I also found the shiraz/grenache a decent swill (for the price) as well.

I heartily agree with the previous posters. this is always a wine that goes down easy. The non serious wine folks always love it and the more serious types can drink it without complaint and be (as was said - basically) satisfied. For some reason (complete lack of drying tannins?) I've found it to be a good wine/perenial favorite for canoeing.

Hiya Folks;
I'm a newbie and I do enjoy this wine, pick it up quite often at Safeway (where I work) for 5.79 on sale. To me it has a nice full fruit flavor and reasonable finish, especially for the price!
Steve