Budget or Bust: we attempt Aldi

Having nothing better to do on a fine spring Wednesday, VC and I trekked down to the local Aldi. I had never been in one before, so it was a chance to see for myself cardboard boxes replacing shelving and off-off brands of products. Happy Farms instead of Crystal Farms. They did however have German pumpernickle bread, and (here's the important part) a wine selection. Of course we got the most expensive, for $10... a 1.5 litre "Bell'Italia" red wine imported from Tuscany -- one of those pot-bellied bottles nestled in a half-basket.

Well, this wine must have had all the red grapes of Tuscany mashed into it. It was not bad but very intense, sort of what you get if you mix chianti and sangiovese and merlot. Eaten with a hearty ratatouille (which was supposed to be pasta but our pasta disappeared... hmm), it was not ideal but not terrible either. As they say... everything gets better with more wine.

Veni, Vidi, Vici: Mamertino

Imagine: it is 59 BC and Julius Caesar has just been elected Consul of Rome ... for the first time. In celebration of the occasion, he sponsors the making of a new wine from Biancale and Trebbiano grapes. He christens this wine Mamertino and declares it the best stuff he's ever had. Some two thousand years later, his opinion does not seem too far off the mark. Possibly, several years later and after the "rug incident," Cleopatra stuck with him just for that wine ... although admittedly, politics aside, if one had to choose a #1 between Gaius Julius and Marcus Antonius, it's a no-brainer.

Caesar.  Antony.

No wonder she resorted to the asp. (Plutarch, Life of Antony, 86.1-3)

But perhaps the best white wine would have consoled her enough to live with her children in captivity, had that been an option the Living Isis would take. Because Mamertino is, in the words of my roommate, the incomparable VC, "Caesar's greatest achievement." She would also describe it as, "Yummy."

It is also cheap and pleasing to the palate. Although it's stocked at World Market for about $12/bottle, our local Woodman's (Employee-Owned Grocery Store) has it at a lovely discount of $9.99. Do yourself a favor and try this delicious, crisp but sweet, mellow but satisfying, ancient and modern Italian white.

Just who are we, anyway?

The Wine Snobbery Manifesto

We are wine snobs. We are on a budget.

We believe in the equality of all wines and wine drinkers. The justice of wine consumption -- that it should be available to all. That all ought to drink wine. Even college students on a budget. For we are just that: desperately poor, soon to be graduates of a private liberal arts college, soon to be seeking jobs and grad schools and scholarships -- and in spite of it all, we remain wine snobs.

How do we do it? Read this blog and find out. Wine snobbery is not a 12-step program but a way of life. A way of life that all can achieve. The ultimate form of equality and justice for all -- or, perhaps, a new ideal of communism. Whatever. If the Founding Fathers drank wine, then Marx probably did too. So did the bourgeoisie and the anti-bourgeoisie. So did the rich and so did the poor. So will you and so will I.

Life is like wine and wine is the stuff of life. It doesn't get much more complicated than that.

Casa Solar Tempranillo

Casa Solar Tempranillo, a lovely Spanish blend, can be found at World Market for only $4.99 (or at least it could be a few weeks ago...). We put it to two purposes: cooking and drinking. It worked well for both -- I added it to a caramelized onion soup, and then finished off the bottle with the meal. Yum yum. The wine is dark, a little spicy, and quite full-bodied. Not for the faint of heart, or those who can only drink dessert wines. But then if you only drink dessert wines, you shouldn't be reading this blog.

Recommended as a good, cheap wine.