gary happy birthday!! hope you drink something really nice tonight!

salud!

Happy Birthday Gary. 31 huh? I’ve got sneakers older than that.

White Zinfandel as worst wine? Give me a break. I’m a child of the sixties who was a regular drinker of Boon’s Farm Apple wine. For a step up, we would drink the Mateus Rose. Now that was classy.

Very entertaining episode..and a very Happy Birthday to you as well..Paris, anniversaries, birthdays..that’s a lot of fun for one week. Worst wine? Anything choosen by us in high school can’t hold much hope.
Now that we know better, we choose better..thanks to WLTV!

H-A-P-P-Y B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y G-A-R-Y !!!

I have to say Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill…but back in highschool we loved the stuff!

Happy B-Day! Canei wine

Happy B-day Gary…Love your site, probably spend more time on your site alone than doing actual “work” while at work.

Worst wine ever….GOLD SEAL PINK CAWTABWA

Happy Birthday Gary! 31? I forgot what 31 felt like so enjoy yourself on your big day.

Worse wine ever tasted? It has to be Boones Farm Strawberry if that is classified as a wine, otherwise, Beringer White Zin.

Cheers!
Dom

P.S. Go Colts!

Happy birthday gary. ill be turning 32 in about 6 weeks. so did you like cru better than the old washington park? my wife and i liked them both, but i think cru might win. just a comment…i know you thought the jason glen bottle was bad, but at least it was not his brother arron’s number and the fake spike. by the way i was at that game….happy b-day. QOD worst bottle of wine was a bottle of elk cove at union pacific 3 or so years ago and it tasted like a garbage truck smells.

Hello everyone, here is my maiden post.

White Zinfandel

White Zinfandel, often abbreviated to White Zin, is an offâ??dry to sweet rosé wine that is pink in color. White Zinfandel is made from the Zinfandel wine grape, which would otherwise produce a bold and spicy red wine. As such, it is not a grape variety but a method of processing Zinfandel grapes used in California.
Historically an inexpensive jug wine, White Zinfandel is a quaffing wine that is sweet, low in alcohol, and soft, making it a popular choice with those who would not otherwise drink wine. This frequently makes zinfandel a target of ridicule among many wine connosieurs. Depending on the amount of sugar it contains, White Zinfandel can taste almost like a fruit punch, although some examples have crisp acids and are balanced in their own way. It is rare when a White Zinfandel is not manufactured with the intention of immediate consumption. As of February 2006, White Zinfandel accounted for 10% of all wine sold by volume, making it the third most popular varietal in the United States.

History of White Zinfandel

Zinfandel was first produced as a rosé wine in 1869 by the El Pinal Winery in Lodi, California. The resulting wine was thought of highly enough that Calfornia vitacultural commissioner Charles Wetmore, the later founder of Cresta Blanca Winery, advocated Zinfandel’s use as a white wine grape.
In the 1970s Sutter Home Winery was a producer of premium Zinfandel in the Napa Valley. One technique they utilized to increase concentration in their wines was to bleed off some of the grape juice prior to fermentation to increase the impact of compounds in the skins on the remaining wine. The excess juice was separately fermented into a dry, almost white wine that Sutter Home called “White Zinfandel.”
In 1975, Sutter Home’s White Zinfandel experienced a “stuck fermentation”, a problem that occurs when the yeast dies out before consuming all of the sugar. This problem juice was set aside. Some weeks later the winemaker tasted it, and preferred this accidental result, which was a sweet pink wine. This is the style that became popular and today is known as White Zinfandel. Sutter Home realized they could sell far more White Zinfandel than anything they had produced to date, and gradually became a successful producer of inexpensive wines. The demand for White Zinfandel resulted in extended commercial viability of old vine Zinfandel vineyards, which saved them from being ripped out. When the fine wine boom started in the 1980s, demand for (red) Zinfandel picked up considerably and these vineyards became prized for the low yields from the sometimes centuryâ??old vines.
Rather than use the leftover juice from premium Zinfandel production, Sutter Home (and most producers today) grow grapes specifically for use in White Zinfandel in places like the Central Valley of California. Production costs are substantially lower and fruit quality is not as important to the final taste as it would be in a dry table wine. Ironically, in the 1990s the Trinchero family, owners of Sutter Home, began production of a new brand of fine wines, M. Trinchero.

Notable Producers

Sutter Home is the first and remains one of the most popular producers of White Zinfandels. Shipping over four million cases of the variety, its White Zinfandel is a sweet, pink wine.
Beringer Vineyards produces one of the most popular White Zinfandels on the market. The vineyard recently released a new “Sparkling White Zinfandel” to commemorate its 20th anniversary as a White Zinfandel producer.
Barefoot Cellars, a Sonoma County winery, began producing another popular and affordable nonvintage White Zinfandel in 1993. This offering has a good balance between zest and sugar, while their Barefoot on the Beach White Zinfandel, first released in 1999, has a more fruity flavor than most.
DeLoach is noted for a White Zinfandel that is drier, more complex, and more expensive than most.

Hey Gary, Happy 31st! So sorry you have to taste the ZinfanSWILL. Treat yourself to say…… yeah that it, the 47 Cheval Blanc. Happy Bithday man!

Gary,

Happy Birthday!

I have to admit, I have consumed a few boxes of Fanzia white-zin in a past life.

Happy 31st, Gary! I’m hoping that after the taping, your crew had some really good juice to celebrate with! My worst bouteille de vin was many, many years ago. Yago Sangria!!! Yes, it’s true. But hey…it was hot back then. :}

As another who began drinking in the 60’s, the absolute worst was Thunderbird. Boones Farm was balanced in comparison. Happy Birthday!

Happy B-day G-man! Worst bottle was drunk back in the ’70s. Someone had given my parents a bottle of Sake as a gift. They did’t know what the heck to do with it as they were not even wine drinkers. So it was put away in the closet and forgotten about. As a kid the bottle had me mesmerized for years. Finally when my parents were out one day I got up the courage to pop that bad boy and chug me some forbidden fruit. (Or in my case rice). I think I threw up for an hour.

A website about really bad wine for those interested in such: http://www.bumwine.com/

Happy Birthday Gary!!!

Does knocking back a 3 Liter Bottle of Purple Pasion count when you are 15???

John I remember that site from years ago. Completely hilarious. I used to drink Cisco back during my high school years. Actually I never made it to school on those days. Liquid crack! Too true. Those were some dark times.

This seemed like more of an April Fool episode than a Birthday Episode.

C’mon guys! You should have at leasted ended with a nice pink Bandol! Now I am feeling sorry for the GV!

Dan (In Houston. Where it is still warm enought to drink a nice pink Bandol)

Happy Birthday!

Worst bottle surprisingly was Ramey 2004 Chradonnay Russian River Valley chardonnay.

Skol

Happy Birthday Gary!!!

Wow — a white Zin tasting. I’ll have to say that white zins come pretty close to the worst wines (wine??) I’ve ever tasted, but the superlative goes to a Taylor (New Youk State – not Bully Hill) gold label champagne — yes, they had the gall to call it that which was so bad that I still remember the date — August, 1967.

Now, you still should do some decent Roses.

HBG! I want to defend white zin a bit. When it first came out in the early 80’s (or so), I tried a number of them. They were mostly terrible, but DeLoach made an excellent one. They had access at the time to some pretty good zin vineyards, and the juice was excellent. While I haven’t had a white zin in 20 years (and it doesn’t look like I’m missing anything), I do have fond memories of that DeLoach RRV white zin. Jim
Worst wine: Cooked 1950 Ch. LaGrange in 1982. Awful, just awful. I’d like to try a 2005 though! Jim

Great facial expressions when tasting the white zins.

Hard to pick the worst as I too was a child of the early 70’s and drank Boones Farm, Almaden, Liefermilch, and step up to impress was Matus or Lancers. But I think Mad Dog 20/20 was the bottom. The goal was the buzz and the hell with the taste. MD’s other great feature was the bottle/flask was made to fit in your back pockets.

The worst wine I’ve ever had was a Cabernet Sauvignon made in New Jersey. It was like drinking a glass full of liquid mulch.

QOD: Wild Irish Rose >

Happy B-D Gary. I hope the wines look up for you later in the evening!
Worst wine I have ever had was not in fact a white zin, as I have only ever smelt one of these extraordinary examples of bat’s piss. No, the worst was a Seaview ‘Claret’ – a mass market blend of Aussie red that was produced in the 80s (and is still around I hear). Tasted like a mixture of paint-thinner and essence-of-decaying-skunk. Horrendous.
Have a great red on all of us tonight!
Cheers mate!