{"id":583,"date":"2026-01-21T21:17:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T21:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clickwinebar.com\/?p=583"},"modified":"2026-01-21T21:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T21:17:13","slug":"cheap-french-behaving-like-cheap-french","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clickwinebar.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/21\/cheap-french-behaving-like-cheap-french\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheap French Behaving Like Cheap French\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p id=\"block-1ce423ca-90f5-4638-8d22-5c2b1da6537d\">5 May 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Belles Vignes Collection Sauvignon Blanc<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, I was meant to be busy doing a Mexican wine tasting for a virtual group, but they never materialised, as people don\u2019t understand the Mexican wine industry. I know a goodish amount about it, but I\u2019m not going to share that here, or at least not until I have a Mexican Savvy to write about. Anyway, so here I sit, still listening to KCRW after about 5 weeks or more, and still wondering about this new world we are living in. Meanwhile, I finished my dodgy day at 1830 near Trader Joe\u2019s, so I popped in to buy the bag of Cheesy Poofs I had promised my increasingly irritable 11 year old. I confess, I\u2019ve had this $5.99 Savvy before, but I sill cannot begin to provide any information regarding the provenance, considering the font is in the negative numbers, I\u2019m old, and the label is went and distorted. Moreover, I have, once again, lost my favourite, blue Ray Ban reading glasses. Therefore, in addition to not being able to read labels, I\u2019m also annoyed in general. Anyway, the above title about this behaving like cheap French, isn\u2019t me slagging this wine off. I was actually luring you in to make a point about this. Yes, bad French wine exists. However, this is a perfect example of how by just using decently raised and handled grapes, from decent vines, in a sensible part of the world, can still produce a solid, unremarkable, yet unoffensive wine for $6.00 in the US. All said, this means the juice in this bottle probably cost less than a dollar at its source. Wow. However, in all likelihood, all of the land which produced these grapes has been owned and paid for for many years and generations. These vines are likely prolific in their production, mechanically harvested, and thrown into massive stainless steel fermenters. There is no oak, thank god, and there is no advertising costs at any level. Moreover, Trader Joe\u2019s runs this through a shell company, and therefore the margins all along the way are very slim. So, what\u2019s in the bottle? Well, light green appley, light herbs and lime, so far everything green, washed through with green citric acid, and river rocks and chalk. The apple notes are on the back end, occasionally showing a bit of green skin as a soft tannin. There is not much complexity, let alone layering, nor is there a stunning finish. The finish, isn\u2019t short either, it just isn\u2019t terribly inspiring in any way. The wine is naturally balanced, as it is too cheap for anyone to interfere, and because it is French, it is inherently planted in a place that produces balanced wine, and has done so for generations. This is a great Tuesday night wine, a decent second bottle of the night, and a rockstar for getting well pissed, and drink dialing ex lovers from 30 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>5 May 2020 Belles Vignes Collection Sauvignon Blanc So, I was meant to be busy doing a Mexican wine tasting for a virtual group, but they never materialised, as people don\u2019t understand the Mexican wine industry. I know a goodish amount about it, but I\u2019m not going to share that here, or at least not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clickwinebar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clickwinebar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clickwinebar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clickwinebar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clickwinebar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/clickwinebar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/clickwinebar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clickwinebar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clickwinebar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clickwinebar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}