It’s a good day for Pinot Grigio. The mercury hit 95 degrees here and that’s perfect weather for a cold glass of wine. It’s terrible weather for anything else, but good for cold wine. I like my Pinot Grigio right from the fridge, which is too cold for purists but you like what you like. This Cupcake version is straw colored and smells clean with citrus aromas. It’s very nice, maybe my perspective is skewed by the temperature today but it tastes crisp and refreshing with a little acidity before the short finish. Just as a Pinot Grigio should be I think. Not as complex and interesting as the one by Kris, but perfectly acceptable.

This one held some promise because it’s a Pinot Grigio, which I often like, from the Friuli region of Italy, which I also often like. And the bottle has a screw top, which I always like. The color is very pale yellow, a typical hue for Pinot Grigio. It has a crisp citrus aroma, primarily of lemon. The flavor is clean and dry with tart fruit flavors and some mineral notes. Not bad and pretty refreshing on a day like today but it’s a little dull overall compared to some of my favorite Pinot Grigios like Kris.

Smells like rotting garbage and the flavor is truly, truly disgusting. This is one of the cheapest wines I’ve ever tried (no small feat) and it’s 5 years old which is a long time for a Pinot Grigio to sit on the shelf so that explains the price. Still though, if you see this wine in a store RUN, do not walk, in the other direction as fast as you can. Seriously.

Summer is getting close after this long winter, thank goodness. And I’m getting a hankering for some of the libations of summer. One of those is a nicely chilled Pinot Grigio, perfectly light and refreshing on a warm day. This Cavit has a little more color than a typical Pinot Grigio and the aroma is an understated honeysuckle. The flavor is bad. Yuck. Unfortunately it’s complex and bad so it’s harder to describe. You know how sometimes when you grow a fruit it will get mixed up with another fruit and while you like the two independently, the mixed flavor is nasty? Kinda like what happened when Bruce Willis and Demi Moore procreated? That’s what this tastes like, an experiment in the development of new citrus fruits gone horribly awry. An ass-flavored finish tops off the wretched experience.

This is good stuff. Light yellow color, aroma of melon and citrus. The flavor is slightly sweet with herbal and citrus notes. Very good stuff. Wines like this remind me of what good wine is supposed to taste like and make me wonder if I shouldn’t become the “Moderately Priced Wine Guy”…

Home Goods is trying their hand at selling wine in their stores in New Hampshire. I was up there recently and picked up some items on their bargain shelf. This Pinot Grigio was one of them and I picked it up mostly due to the name as I’m a Bocce fan, I might even install a court in my yard. This wine is a bit odd tasting, which may have been the reason for the price reduction. It has an off-putting aroma that smells like some fruit that is just about to rot. The flavor packs an acidic wallop that ends up tasting like grapefruit primarily. Not my favorite Pinot Grigio, but I do like the label.

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I bought a few wines at Costco, mostly on the merit of their packaging. This one has a bottle that is cylindrical like one of those vodka bottles or that fancy water. It also has a screw cap that you can replace after you remove the cork but it doesn’t seal well and is mostly for show. The wine has a bright aroma with pear and melon scents. The flavor is slightly sweet with a slight tartness and an off flavor on the finish. Overall, it’s a pretty decent Pinot Grigio and you can keep the bottle just for fun.

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Darker in color than you would expect from a Pinot Grigio, more like a Chardonnay. Almost a golden hue with a lot of honey in the aroma. Also a little heavier bodied than a typical Pinot Grigio but the flavor is more typical. It is clean and a bit acidic with some definite lime flavors. I tend to like my wine a little on the heavy side so I think this is a very decent Pinot Grigio.

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Nice melon aroma, maybe honeydew. The flavor has a bit of that Californian chemical flavor that all the mass-produced wines seem to suffer. It is a kind of dense, rubbing alcohol flavor that probably isn’t naturally occurring and tends to ruin the light, airy flavor that I look for in a Pinot Grigio. Not terrible, but not great. The label says “premier vineyard selection” which, if you’re a regular reader, you know pisses me off. It’s obviously not exclusive in any way and ruins any credibility of the label. Plus, why Pinot Grigio? This wine is from California, having no allegiance to either Italy or France, so why choose Pinot Grigio over Pinot Gris (the name of the same grape in France)?

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I saw this bottle with an old, broken down white truck on the bottle. The label art looks like someone’s kid did it in Photoshop. It’s one of the cheesiest labels I’ve seen so of course I snapped it up immediately. It’s actually produced by Cline, which is a respectable name in California wines but I’ve previously only had their red wines. It’s actually a decent Pinot Grigio. It has clean and potent aroma of fruit and honey with a crisp flavor and a bit of acidity on the finish. The only drawback is a bit of what I call “cheap wine aftertaste.” I can’t describe it better than that, you’ll have to take a crack yourself.

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