wine: plungerhead zin

Call me immature, but this wine just makes me giggle.  Who doesn't want to drink a wine with a label of wine barrel - legged guy with a plunger on his head?  Not me.  This wine is one of our staples in the wine frig.  I love it.  Great name. Great label.  And the added bonus the wine is actually good! Total score!  This easy drinking, $12 (about) bottle is perfect summer zinfandel for the Cabernet-aficionado.  It's big and bold but has fruity components to it too.  And the ever important test for me - Does it smell like a winery?  Why, yes. it does.  (That's a big one for me.) 

Plungerhead is part of The Other Guys Inc., which also does Hey Mambo (this wine makes me break out into "Mambo Italiano" in the wine aisle at the grocery store). It's true.  And I like to especially sound just like Rosemary Clooney while I sing. (Like there is any other way to sing this song.) 

I blogged about this one nearly 2 years ago, but decided to blog about it again for two reasons:

1. I didn't realize it until just now. 

2. This is a different vintage and it's interesting to see the comparison.

And my oh my have our tastes change  - and our pocket book -  it appears we've become wine snobs over the past few years as $12 seems much more reasonable to us today. In fact a $12 bottle of wine is on the lower end of our wine stock.  I gave it 2.3 stars in December 2010 for the 08 vintage. The 2010 vintage I'm happy to give it 3.84 stars.  (In true Olympic fashion, deductions are taken off for a hop on the landing) ...actually I have no idea why this one wouldn't score higher other than that fact I think you need to be really good to score 4 stars in my book.

wine: Haraszthy Zin

So, I went to a new wine shop, (well, not new, just new to me).  It's called Wine Thieves and I've wanted to check it out for quite some time because:

a. They use wine barrels as planters in their garden.

b. I like the name.

c. They have cheese!

And fancy cheese at that. 

I was sold at cheese.

I went in one day to stock up our wine frig.  I really liked it because they offered a lot of good tidbits on the wine on pretty little laminated signs above each wine. One problem though, we've tried two of the wines that I got at Wine Thieves, and I must be illiterate.  I have been 0 for 2 on the picking of a good under $10 bottle of wine.  Now, they weren't total misses, just not great.  Probably not repeat bottles.   This one has a good price, entertaining label and an OK taste creates the very scientific score of 2.847 stars. 

I really like saying the name of the cheese, Havarti, which is why I was drawn to this name of this zinfandel.  Something about a good strange "H" name with a mouth full of consonants sold me.  I also liked the bear on the label. 

This wine is from Lodi.  I've been learning about in my book, The House of Mondavi, that the Mondavi family called Lodi, California home after moving from Italy to Minnesota and then to California.  (See, I knew there was a reason I like wine...me and the Mondavis have SO much in common! I moved from Minnesota to California...OK, so the Italy part is a bit different, but still, we're like family. )

A little cork marketing never hurt anyone.  This one made me want to be part of the pack...Wait, what is a group of bears called (...other than scary)?  A pack of wolves. A gaggle of geese.  Pardon me.  I need to go google my way to intelligence.

wine: plungerhead and a fancy contraption

I'd like to thank the man, woman or child that came up with the Rabbit Aerating Pourer.  It is the fanciest, most impressive addition to a cheap bottle of wine.  I will use you always and forever.  You win the best invention known to man award of anything ever been invented. 

OK, so the automobile, telephone and a few other things also deserve high praise.

We received the aerator as a gift and had heard high praises about what an aerator can do from the fine folks that sent us our very own device, but had no idea about its capabilities.  Seriously, you all need an aerator.  But, not you, mom and dad, I asked Santa to bring one down your chimney. We have the decanter that collects dust and we never use.

We also learned that if you keep your decanter in your basement, it could also be a very good ecosystem for developing the world's largest black hairy spider. Yep, that good ol' spider wouldn't leave our decanter.  Now we don't have a basement...phew. And now, back to the wine.

So, we got the Rabbit Aerator in the mail one day and proceeded to go buy a bottle of Plungerhead wine from Safeway ($12.99 with your Safeway discount card).  (We also proceeded to buy a frozen pizza to complete our dinner - a real high class Italian meal...I know.) Plungerhead wins the award for the best series of labels. With a name like Plungerhead, I think the possibilities are endless for fun labels, but every time I see a bottle of Plungerhead, I giggle. I love that stuff.  OK, so we read the directions on the aerator. In essence, they said:

1. stick aerator in bottle.

2. pour.

the end.

As you can see, the directions are pretty straight forward.  We were able to excel at those directions from the get-go.  After the directions, it suggests that you do a side-by-side taste test of a glass of wine with and without the Rabbit Aerator. 

HOLY HANNAH!!! The difference was ASTOUNDING!

I kid you not.

You know I don't joke about wine.

The difference was amazing.  It was like you had two different bottles of wine that you were testing. One that came out of a box (yes, I said a box o' wine) for $7/gallon and the other (with the aerator) that was like you were tasting a bottle of wine that you had just purchased for $50.  I have in no way been paid by the Rabbit Aerator company or any aerator as I'm sure they all make cheap wines taste fancy. 

[2.3 stars]
I like Plungerhead quite a bit, although the vanilla taste is very prominent, so if you don't like vanilla notes in your wine (i.e. my husband) you probably won't like this wine much. This is a wine that we get once every couple months because at $12.99, it's relatively expensive weeknight wine option when the most desireable part of the bottle is the label, but it's still a good one when you need to switch it up a bit.