The first time I drank this wine, years ago, was an error. I was starting out as a professional wine drinker, and bought it by mistake, not realizing there was a difference between petite sirah and syrah. And who says mistakes don’t pay off?
Very little has changed the Bogle over the years. It’s still cheap ($10, available at World Market) and still good –- peppery, dark and fruity, but not as showy as shiraz. It’s like the person who shows up at work every day and does a fine job, but never gets ahead because they don’t run around high five-ing everyone during meetings.
Drink this with end of summer barbecue, sloppy, tomatoe-y Italian food, and even something as simple as meat loaf.
Other notes:
• There is a huge furor in the wine world, caused by Wine Trials author Robin Goldstein pulling a fast one on the Wine Spectator, the leading wine review magazine. Each year, the Spectator awards restaurants for the quality of their wine lists. Goldstein invented a restaurant, which earned an award of excellence from the magazine. The Spectator is furious, accusing Goldstein of fraud and deception because he went to such lengths to make this work –- a web site for the fake restaurant, a phone number and answering machine, and even fake customer comments.
• Expect to hear the results of an appeal by wine wholesalers later this year or early next challenging a federal court decision that overturned a Texas law restricting Internet wine sales. In January, a federal judge said that the 2005 Supreme Court decision that allowed wineries to sell to out of state customers should also apply to retailers. Currently, most states have laws like Texas’, which forbid retailers not in that state from selling wine to state residents. And, just to show how weird the world is, the lawyer representing the retailer group is Ken Starr. Yes, that Ken Starr.
