Plonkapalooza: biggest values in little wines

Opinions by the glassful on what tastes best - red and white - and tops out at $12 at the register for your weeknight supper

November 09, 2011|By Stephen Meuse, Globe Correspondent

THE MARKET IN wine opinion may be a busy one, but traffic in information about the kind of wine most people drink from night to night - red and white bottles at or under $12 - is far less brisk. To fill that gap, we created an event we call Plonkapalooza, in which three of Boston’s sharpest professional palates help us identify our market’s biggest values in little wines.

Over the course of a long afternoon, with ham sandwich chasers, panelists sip 25 whites, followed by 25 reds, exchanging observations, and taking notes before settling down to select five wines in each category that most closely approach their ideal of quality and value. The highest score any wine can earn is four votes (one from each judge). Joining me on the panel for this year’s event, our seventh, were Liz Vilardi, partner in Central Bottle Wine + Provisions and a partner and wine director at the Blue Room restaurant, both in Cambridge; Betsy Ross, sommelier at Meritage restaurant and wine director of the Boston Harbor Hotel; and Chris Graeff, beverage director at restaurants Lumiere in West Newton and Area Four in Cambridge.

Our goal is to highlight generally small-producer, lesser-known wines at a price most consumers will consider appropriate for informal occasions and simple weeknight suppers of soup, pasta, or roast chicken. Inevitably, an upper limit of $12 eliminates many worthy wines whose price may be just a dollar or two higher, including those from regions such as California, where production costs are endemically high. While we provide the undiscounted, single bottle price for each wine, discounts of 10 percent and even 20 percent are typical when purchasing by the case, mixed or uniform.

Top picks among whites this year were the 2010 Weingut J. Linden Mosel Riesling and the 2010 Domaine L’Enclos Vin de Pays des Cotes de Gascogne. The 2008 Querbach “Riesling Classic’’ Rheingau, the 2010 Winzer Krems Kremser Weinzierl, the 2010 Vignarco Orvieto Classico, and the 2010 Domaine des Cassagnoles Cotes de Gascogne were the runners-up. No white wines earned all four votes.

But two reds from the Abruzzo region - the 2008 Italo Pietrantoni “Etichetta Nera’’ Montepulciano d’Abruzzo and the 2008 Montupoli Montepulciano D’Abruzzo - achieved perfect scores. Runners-up were the 2008 Poggio Romita Chianti “Fiorino,’’ the 2010 Vigouroux “Gouleyant’’ Cahors, and the 2009 Cantina Santa Maria La Palma “Le Bombarde’’ Cannonau di Sardegna.

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