Incanto Chardonnay Pinot Grigio

First, let me lay this on the line:  I have coveted this big ass blue bottle of wine every year when Trader Joe’s brings it out around the holiday time.  TJ’s always have special, super huge wine bottles, and they are sooooo appealing to my eyes!  Seriously, every year I want to buy them.  David and I normally grocery shop together, and I know that he, being the more realistic (and once in a while the more responsible) of the two of us must think these big ol’ wine bottles are ridiculous.  And, in my heart, I have always known he was right.  So, year after year I have held back and not snuck one of these big wines into our cart.

But this year – oh, this year I WENT FOR IT!  I got brave enough to snag one of these bottles on a night I was shopping without David actually 😊 .  But look at it – it is gorgeous!  The shape of the bottle.  The size.  But mostly, the color! I mean, how bad would this Italian blend have to taste to undo all of those positives???

Here is David before the bottle was opened.  See - it is LARGE!

So, this holiday season, I got one and we hauled it down to Florida with us.  I thought we might drink it if we had friends over, but (as almost always happens in our lives), we were hermits and didn’t have a dinner party.  We were invited to a friend’s house for New Year’s Day dinner, and I guess it would have been nice to bring this bottle, but it just felt a little strange.  There were going to be 5 people at the meal, and in we would walk with a huge ass bottle of wine?  What if we were the only wine drinkers?

Close up of the label

Now January is ticking by and we still hadn’t opened this bottle...  One night our friend Sarah said she was going to stop by (and I know she likes wine).   Voila – there’s my chance!  I had David open the bottle and the 3 of us did a taste test.  Here is what we thought:

Well isn't this elegant??  Bottle is too big for the fridge

Susan:  Before I can discuss the taste of the wine, I must talk through the logistics of it.  This.  Wine bottle.  Is.  Ridonkulous!!  It is white wine and we wanted it chilled, but the big bottle most certainly could not stand up in our refrigerator.  It ended up lying on its side and taking up a big chunk of the fridge (though to be honest, for a day or so it served as a “shelf” as David rested his used paint brush (wrapped in Saranwrap) on top of the horizontal bottle…).  OK, now on to the taste:  The taste is sort of water-y to me – there is not much taste.  Because of that I wound up drinking it pretty fast.  So, if your goal is to down wine quickly (and therefore feel a bit tipsy quickly…), this might be a good pick.  Artistically it is beautiful.  Logistically it is stupid.  And to be honest, the actual wine seemed sort of incidental!  I will give the taste of this wine 3.75.  If I gave a score for the look of the bottle it would be a 5, but if I gave a score for the usability of the bottle (squishing it in your fridge) it would be a 2.  So, I will average those scores together and give the overall product a score of 3.5.

David gives Incanto a try

David: “I think this is good, it is nice and cold which is good for this wine.  It has a little bit of a fruity taste.  It has a hint of a chardonnay kind of oakiness – I don’t like chardonnay but this was not too much, so I thought it balanced it out kind of nice.  This is not a wine I would seek out, but I am delighted to drink it.  I guess I will give it a 4.  (David added that he should have docked his score because of the unwieldy size of the bottle.)”

Sarah refilling her glass
 (by the way, this bottle is hard to pour, too!  It comes out super fast.)

Sarah: “I did not like this wine at the first sip, because it tasted like chardonnay and I do not normally like chardonnay.  But I kept drinking, and (like most wines) then I enjoyed it more.   It ended up being more fruity than dry, which I liked.  This is a super easy wine to drink.  I will give it a solid 4.5.”

Overall, I suggest only buying this big bottle of wine if you have plans to drink it all in one sitting.  That way you can chill it, uncork it, and drink it all without having to worry about re-corking it to lay sideways in your fridge.

Price:  $12.99 (cheap when you consider it is the equivalent of 2 bottles of wine)

Rating (average of 3 raters):  4

Day 305 - Trader Joe’s Reserve Chardonnay Russian River Valley Sonoma County (2013 Lot 129 )

 I am disappointed in this wine.  It tasted better when I was standing in the store tasting it than it did when we get it home and drank it with dinner.  I think this is because the wine sample lady was pretty cool and explained to us what Trader Joe’s “Reserve” wines are.  She told us that they are somehow “fancy ass wines” (my words, not hers) that TJ’s gets ahold of a shit ton of (again, I promise she did not use this phrase in the store, this is my interpretation of how she explained it to us…) and bottles it up.  But they are not allowed to reveal the true names, see, because they are selling them for less than the hoity toity wine companies are, so they have to keep it TOP SECRET.

We are not kidding around here, this is TOP SECRET!

Now me, I love a secret.  So I played along with the whole “shhhh – it is a RESERVE!” thing.  I LIKE that part of this wine a lot.  And in the store I also liked the taste of it a lot. 

But when we drank it at home, I didn’t like the taste as much.  It wasn’t spectacular or anything.  It was alright.  It was chardonnay.  It didn’t bring anything special to the table.  The bottle says it has flavors of “tropical fruits, citrus, and baked apple” but for some reason the tropical fruit isn’t registering to my taste buds.   David says, “Unless the tropical fruit in question is durian which is famous for smelling like baby’s diarrhea…”.   (While this is a great joke, I must point out that this wine does not in any way shape or form smell like baby poop.) 

Here is what David thought:  Woody.  Sharp.  Pleasant.  Not too oaky.  I am happy to drink it and normally I hate chardonnay. 

Isn't this a nice chalkboard?  This is an example of Trader Joe's Clarendon doin' it right - lookin' great sign maker!

Overall, this wine doesn’t taste BAD.  There is just no excitement to it.  It is higher priced than many other wines at TJ’s.  We are not big chardonnay fans but we thought when we tasted this in the store it might be opening up a new variety of wine to us.  But nah.  Not so much.

Apparently it is vegan, too.  And a flyer item in October. 

Before I wrap this review up, I want to mention one other product that I PLANNED to review but am not going to now.  Kouigns Amann (caramelized Breton style layered pastries) – these were a good reminder to me to “not keep your slip in a drawer”.  That is a phrase often repeated at our house that we heard once in an NPR story.  It means, basically, LIFE IS SHORT.  Wear your nice slip.  Drink the good bottle of wine.  Cuz one day you won’t be around, and if you haven’t enjoyed it before that, well, you missed out, didn’t ya??  And that’s what happened with this product.  They looked super yummy.  I bought them.  I lost them in the freezer and found them 17 months AFTER the expiration date…  I went ahead and tried to “proof” them (letting them rise overnight) but of course they didn’t rise and I had to throw them away.  Let that be a lesson to us all – DON’T KEEP YOUR SLIP IN A DRAWER!  Dance today.  Eat tonight.  Celebrate.  And most importantly, ENJOY.

ENJOY LIFE.  For my 40th birthday one of the surprises David had up his sleeve was a HOT AIR BALLOON RIDE.  It was remarkable.  The whole experience was amazing.  It is something I had wanted to do but "never got around to it".  So what I am saying is - GET AROUND TO IT.  Life is short.  Don't keep your slip in a drawer.

Now for the price and rating of the TJ’s Reserve Chardonnay.

Price - $9.99

Rating – 3.75

Day 227 - Villa Cerrina Italia Chardonnay Pinot Grigio (2013)

We served this wine (a blend of Chardonnay (60%) and Pinot Grigio (40%) with take-out pad thai from our local Thai restaurant.  Don’t judge – we were tired and I didn’t feel well…  It was just a “slap some pad thai on a plate, cover it with sriracha (which got a glowing review on day 45 of this blog), and pour some wine” kind of dinner.

And this wine was a good match for it.  It was light and fruity.  The label identifies the fruit notes as apples, peaches, and citrus but in my tired and stuffy nose state I identified them simply as FRUIT. 

Chardonnay Pinot Grigio blend - go for it

David’s (also sleepy) take on this wine was “Nice, light, but with a good body.  Good for day drankin’…”.  J 

The bottle tells us it would be a good aperitif or good to serve with an appetizer, light seafood or salad.  I say - it’s FIVE BUCKS.  Serve it with whatever the heck you want!  It is cheap but tastes good.  It may not be a winner of any fancy schmancy wine awards, but it is an acceptable white wine to serve at your table.  (Unless your table is super fancy schmancy, in which case, you should shop at Wegman’s or Whole Foods and not Trader Joe’s…  But if you do go to one of those other pricier grocery stores you will not find this wine, because it is exclusive to Trader Joe’s.  So there.) 

Comes in just under $5 bucks.  Cheap, cheap, cheap.

A blog called "The Winey Mom" (see what she did there?  Clever...) says, "I can see why this wine is so popular.  It's got a bargain price and the folks at Trader Joe's recommend it!  It's a great party wine too because you can't really go wrong serving it to a large crowd.  It's the best of both worlds: Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio.  I'd definitely get a few bottles to have on hand.  And in mouth!".  So there - if winey mom likes it you might well like it, too!

Price - $4.99

Rating – 4

Day 104 - Pacific Grove Chardonnay

I asked my partner David what he thought of this wine as we were drinking it with dinner.  His reply, “It’s Chardonnay, but it’s not poopy”.  Eloquent, no?  And quite accurate I think.

The simple label caught my attention  - this was our first purchase of Pacific Grove Chardonnay

It is a cheap, simple wine (with a simple label).  The bottle recommends serving it with “herb crusted fish, roasted chicken, or light pasta dishes”, and I would agree that it would complement those well (and I thank Trader Joe’s for not listing pretentious dishes to pair it with that only rich foo-foo people cook!  For example, I went to a neighborhood wine bar tasting tonight, and the man leading it recommended pairing one of the wines with a RACK OF LAMB.  Yeah – cuz I cook rack of lamb, like, every Tuesday, so I better stock up on this one…)

So yeah, this is a Chardonnay.  It is $5.99.  It has a tropical fruit taste.  Drink it on a summer evening with a roasted chicken you bought at a grocery store already cooked (not at Trader Joe’s, cuz they don’t do those…).  Drink it on your porch.  Enjoy.

Price - $5.99

Rating – 3.75