04 Feb Wired wine – Coppola Black Label 2018 Claret
Wired wine bottles.
Why?
To prevent counterfeiting.
A few hundred years ago in Spain, scrupulous wine makers
were plagued by unscrupulous wine crooks.
The crooks would pop the cork on a good bottle, refill it with bad wine
and sell it at a high price.
Not good.
Worse yet, customers drank bad wine from what appeared
to be a good bottle.
The bad wine went down the drain.
So did the good wine’s reputation.
Gold wire netting eventually came to the rescue.
High-end Spanish wine producers started covering their bottles with wire netting,
preventing counterfeiters from tampering with the cork and ultimately,
what’s inside the bottle.
Wire netting is still used to this day…
but for tradition, not counterfeit protection.
It’s Wine Thursday!, our weekly good-wine-at-a-good-price-
that-you-can-find recommendation, just in time for your weekend.
This week’s featured wine is a good value…but a bit of a head scratcher.
It’s a California bottle that sports the gold wire
but is actually much more French than it is Spanish.
Visually, Coppola’s Black Label Claret certainly stands out.
It’s probably the only bottle in the Cabernet Sauvignon section
of your store with the wrap-around gold wire.
But Spanish it is not.
Claret is a term originally coined by the British
to describe Cabernet-based wines, usually from Bordeaux.
Coppola’s ’18 Claret is 80 % Cabernet, blended with Petit Verdot,
Malbec and Cabernet Franc.
If you’ve heard of Bordeaux-blend reds but don’t know
what they taste like, this is a perfect primer.
It’s a dry, full-bodied blend with interesting dark fruit and spice flavors.
It’s easy to like on its own but combine a glass of this Claret
with a grilled steak and you are set.
Note: the 2017 and 2018 are both currently on the market.
I’ve tasted both. They’re quite similar.
Costco sells the 2018 vintage for $13.89.
Total Wine has the 2017 Claret on the shelf for $13.97.
Fred Meyer’s price for the ’18 is $14.99.
The Wine Buyer.com also has it at $14.99.
Wine Library’s price is $15.09
QFC has it for $17.99 and Safeway sells it for $18.99.