While I’m a big beer fan who will claim a degree of expertise over hoptastic refreshments, my mastery over my wine palate is far less impressive. In fact, as long as a wine is pleasing enough to be consumed without blanching in occasional glasses or in mass quantity during my yearly Ides of March celebration—drinking loads of red wine to commemorate Roman culture on the anniversary of Julius Caesar’s death—then it’s a fine wine by me. However, my penchant for all things lucha libre-related required me to purchase and crack open a bottle of Luchador shiraz simply due to its high-flying, top rope wrestling theme.
Sadly, no amount of love for the luchador could bring me to love the wine of his namesake. Tasting more or less like fruity sweat straight out of the squared circle, this wine was so heavy on the vinegar end of things that it was hardly drinkable. This may be a shiraz aimed at a very specific type of wine taster, but for the layman who was just lured in by the cool bottle art, this wine body slammed my tongue in a bad way. Still, if it was going for a tap out, it’s “flavor” definitely had me crying out for mercy!
If anyone has an opinion on this wine—agree or disagree—I’d love to hear it, so please comment below. Perhaps R Wines’ other Luchador varieties are considerably better or the 2007 was just a very bad year. I’d be interested to hear if anyone has some info I don’t. Either way, this wine won me over with the theme, name and bottle art and had to work to make me dislike it—the win itself, Luchador shiraz, did that work and then some.
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Shiraz only comes from Australia (Syrah is the same thing, hailing from France), and I’ve never heard of an Australian luchador. You should have known you were in trouble right there.
I love wine, but my fiancée is a super taster, I get about as far as ‘wine good’ or ‘wine bad.’ I’ll ask her about R Wines. Where did you find this Bizarro shiraz, anyway?
At a wine shop on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I’d heard it existed, saw it, was mesmerized by the noble mug of that luchador and bought the Luchador…yes…poor logic, all impulse and my taste buds suffered the consequence!
The future Mrs. Arnone says they’re a winery that targets wine counter-culture. They have wines with vulgar names and…well…obviously a wine with a wrestler on the bottle. Looks like the emphasis is more on oddball marketing than taste. You should check out wine.woot.com for some good deals. Maynard James Keenan of Tool and A Perfect Circle has a winery in Arizona called Caduceus, good stuff. Non-Bizarro Shiraz/Syrah is a good entry-level red, I like Rosemount Estates. I’ve really been diggin’ on Pinot Noir recently too.
Hey, nice post– I definately like reds over whites, but you should check out Mondavi– that’s California (one of the first out there) and it is relatively cheap and easy to find and it isn’t terrible. Kendell-jacksons are cheap too and nice if you like the chardonnay (my spelling is awful <–LOL) stuff…
The best stuff if you can find is when large name wineries bottle local wineries for cheap– sometimes it is hit and a miss, but I remember getting some italian red wines in Canada that were wonderful. A large bottler held contests for small wineries/estates and bottled the winners for 6months to a year… Anyhow, you can get some great wines like that. $8-10 for a bottle. If you are single or dating, you will never get more tang than if you pop a bottle of french/italian red wine for a lady… Makes everybody feel 'cultured' haha
If you are into wine-culture, check out the movie 'bottle shock.' Its a corny comedy about the early days of non-Euro wine. It is pretty funny, informative and has a nice twist-ending. Some parts of it feel like a commercial, but what can you do… "taste that wine, harry…"