7-11 Yosemite Road. California. 299yen. 7-11

0 out of five stars

When the Barksdale crew are the kingpins of West Baltimore you think,"damn shit couldn't get worse than this". Then Marlo takes the corners and even the informal laws of the street are broken. If all the other other wines yet reviewed are the Barksdales, this is Marlo wine. It's rock-fucking-bottom (or at least I hope so).

I'd say that this bottle was spoiled, but it was a screw top so I guess it's supposed to taste like Lodi table grapes fermented with Bridgestone tires.

7-11 clearly didn't think of the market for this wine which seems to me to be the irony-and-Pabst crowd, rubber fetishists, and the homeless. This cruel son of a bitch doesn't need a label, but should be sold pre-brownbagged with anti-psychotics.

on hold

Finishing up thesis will continue soon enough...

No vintage Michelangelo, Vino de Cavola Rosso. Italy. Marushoku. 650yen

3 of 5 stars

This wine didn't have a whole lot going for it from the start and its clearly come from bunker fuel quality grapes and mass produced like a Carlo Rossi. The taste was smooth and somewhat sweeter than you usually find in old-world wines, but by all counts unremarkable.

I drank this wine with a barely edible dinner of undercooked chicken, onions, and eggplant over cooked pasta. Actually I'm feeling a bit light headed so maybe it was inedbile... we'll know in a few hours. *Update: I didn't die*

There are a couple of things that I liked about this wine:

1st: it was really cheap

2nd: it was dark enough that I couldn't read a newspaper through a glass of it, which is, unfortunately, not always the case for the combini cru wines

3nd. Calling a cheap wine from Italy "Michelangelo" is just ridiculous.

4th and most importantly, there is a picture of an angry peasant on the label.

2008 Ciceron Cabernet Sauvignon. France. YouMe Town. 650yen

4 out of 5

This wine is a good value at just 650 yen. It’s certainly better than the 2007 Ginestet Brodeaux fraud or the Clear and Dry misnomer. It’s by no means perfect (or even very good) but it does have a coherent leather and earth taste and leaves nice tannin caulk on the tongue.

I’d drink this with a steak or something really peppery and like tonkotsu ramen or Korean food. For some reason it reminds me of Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jimmy Carter.

Clear and Dry. Japan. Daily Yamazaki. 490yen

1 out of 5 stars

Clear and Dry is a detestable liquid that's name describes the characteristics of the low quality bottle more than it does the low quality wine it contains. Granted, the liquid is clearer than traditional (ie. drinkable) wine, but the liquefied cherry tootsie roll flavor is certainly not dry. The “wine” has all the character and depth of glitter. I drank two bottles of it ‘cause it was cheap.

Tateyama Sake Grey Label. 1080yen. All Combinis in Toyama Ken

5 out of 5

Without the wellbred character of Tateyama sake the debauched forces unleashed by Saizaria house wine would surely lead to passage of Alien and Sedition Acts in Toyama Prefecture.

Tateyama’s refined liberal qualities fused with its biting wit (and easily pronounced kanji) sooth social tensions between the middling foreign menace and the landed Toyama gentry.

Consider this a letter of invitation to bring Tateyama Sake into your drawing room as a social lubricant avec les society noblesse, an inexpensive way to stay warm in the public square, or as an offering to appease the ravages of dust allergies most foul.

200?. Saizaria House Wine. Saizaria. 1060 yen

Can't remember out of 5 stars.

Served exclusively at the Plas-talian family restaurant Saizaria, this 1500ml artillery shell is pure Bacchic trouble.

Its deservedly wild reputation comes more from the geography of the restaurant (and the price) than the taste of the wine itself. Besides being the Mos Isly Cantina of foreigners, the Nishicho Saizaria lies between a Shidax kareoke joint, the Ajito noise dome, a tattoo parlor, James's crash pad, the hostess district of Sakuragichu, and the crosswalk where Daiji kicked that stranger in the face. So basically after drinking a few cheap salvos of wine, you're flush with cash and already where trouble starts.

As for the taste, it tastes like red wine.

2007 Ginestet Bordeaux. France. Marushoku. 980yen

1 out of 5

My friend Kia was really into French culture and majored in it in college. When she moved there, she got head lice and had to shave her head. She hasn't been back since (true story).

This wine is Kia's head lice.

I'm not coming back to French wines with beige rectangular labels with cursive writing and a gold imprint of a 2-story house until i can afford the good French wines with boring beige rectangular labels with cursive writing and a gold imprint of a 2-story house.

2008 Borsao Garnacha. Marushoku. 900yen

2.5 out of 5

The Don Quixote-ish image on the label should have warned me that this wine was going to be directionless.

An exotic spicy jam promised a satisfying conclusion, but then immediately dissolves into a pulpy mush. Drinking this wine is like watching a cricket match for the first time: the basic layout and equipment seem vaguely familiar, even exciting, but when the action starts you have no idea whats going on.

I'd drink this wine in the desert on a horse with no name, backward, playing solitaire with a deck of 51.

2008 Gracia de Chile Reserva Pinot Noir. Family Mart. 850yen

3.75 out of 5 stars.

Tastes like ethanol at first, but opens up rather nicely into cherries and berries after, like, 5 hours. Given the long decanting time, it's a bad choice for park, beach, or skateboard based drinking, but worked nicely as a data entry companion and mild pain killer.

A Blog Ferments

As a wine reviewer I have a least 3 strikes against me.

1) As a grad student, I have virtually no income
2) I live in Japan where there are two types of wine avaiable: pinkish-hued and Rothschild Grand Cru
3) I'm sure as shit not going to spit anything out, and much of the time I will drinking directly out of the bottle.

So basically if you want great recommendations for impressing people at dinner parties, you're in the wrong place. Go check out Robert Parker's blog or just fake it 'cause nobody's really going to notice.

However if you, dear reader, are a wine lover in spirit, live near a Japanese convienece store, or just tripped on to this site, I hope you will enjoy it.

Eventually some sort of review structure may emerge but I kinda doubt it.