Trader Joe’s Grand Reserve Sonoma County Brut Rosé
This is another of Trader Joe’s many Grand Reserve, Diamond Reserve, Platinum Reserve, North Coast, Carneros, Napa, and Sonoma Sparkling wines.
The have many variations on a theme.
Most of those were released near the holidays, the time when Bubbly rules the season.
June Bubbles are not typical.
In the podcast I speculate on what exactly this Sparkling wine is, I have no insider information, just wondering.
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Hey, Domain Dave, cheapwinefighter.com. Again, like always. And today we've got actually a new wine from Trader Joe's. They're kind of been uh slacking on new wines lately. I show up and they had a couple. So this is the $12.99 Trader Joe's Grand Reserve Sonoma County Brute Rose Bubbly. Now, you probably already know that they have the Platinum North Coast and the Platinum Diamond Um Napa bubbly and the Diamond Carneros bubbly and just the Sonoma Counties for two different kinds of uh diamond and reserves and whatever. Even though there's maybe 25 variations, I'm I'm exaggerating. This is the first uh Trader Joe's Grand Reserve Sonoma County Brute Rose that I can find. I went back in our archives and normally I write these up and do podcasts. So here we are. $12.99. Uh uh Brute Rose means that. First of all, there's very um Champagne France, and this is California Sonoma, is very regulated. And there's certain grapes they can use and certain ways they can do everything. California has none of those regulations. So this is supposed to be a Champagne style wine, but there's no regulation. So I am assuming that the the well, actually, it's more amber. The the color of the rose comes from Pinot Noir, and that it's mixed with uh Chardonnay, and maybe a little bit of Pinot Mune, which is a red grape, but uh is traditionally one of the one of the grapes used in champagne wines. Like I said, there is nothing in California that makes them do that. And it says it's uh traditional method, which is the champagne method. Though in champagne that's very regulated in here, who knows? It's made by Rack and Riddle. And I'm you know, I don't want to downplay everything. Rack and Riddle is a uh huge California sparkling wine producer. They have four locations. This one I think is Healdsburg and Sonoma. For a long, long time, champagne was made with a lot of labor and a lot of time. Took forever, but I mean, this still has the second fermentation, it still takes a decent amount of time, but the other parts that were um you know labor intensive had all been technology has all reduced that. So you can make it fairly easily with fewer people. I mean, it's just isn't technology fun. We'll take a sip. Nice and crisp. Um, this is a tasty little bubbly, it's a little bit more relaxed. Um, it's more California style bubbly than um champagne-style bubbly. I just went last Tuesday to a champagne seminar where we had five different champagnes, four or five, and you know, I was drinking like a 2012 champagne and you know, a sweeter champagne and all these things, and those are tighter in terms of how the flavors are focused. And this one's a little bit more relaxed, a little easier to get your head around. And in my opinion, more people, you know, who just who aren't really into the whole champagne thing. I mean, uh don't want to be spending $80 for a bottle, but prefer this to an actual champagne. I mean, paying $12 for it and getting a nice bubbly, you might actually enjoy it better than uh a wine you've spent $65.70 on. I mean, it's I mean, it doesn't, it's not necessarily that waste, and it's not that the um the more expensive stuff is is bad in any way. No, it's it's excellent. Truly excellent. It's just that this stuff isn't that bad. I mean, this Rack and Riddle knows how to make wine. And this is a a well-made bubbly with Sonoma grapes. There's Sonoma Coast, there is Sonoma Particaneros, there's Russian River. There's a lot of locations in Sonoma where you can get Chardonnay and Pinot Noir that are very good quality. Vineyards and in excellent locations, um being managed by people who know what they're doing. So you're not really losing anything too much, especially with the price differential, from France to Sonoma. It's just a value luxury wine. So here we go. I'm taking another sip. So here we go into the conspiracy theory part of this review. Typically, Trader Joe's has released their um their their sparkling wines around the holiday season, November, the end of October, November, December. Because that's where a lot of bubbly is sold. And here we've got a June um release of sparkling wines. And I was thinking, okay, maybe it's for the 4th of July, 250th anniversary, but nope. The label's a new label for Trader Joe's. I mean, in terms of color, it's very black and gold. It's actually looks very nice that black and gold look great, but that's not too 4th of July. So there's a lot of um wines being canceled, there's grape vineyards being pulled up, there's all sorts of tragic kind of things happening in California since the wines aren't selling like they used to sell. So is this a because it's in June? And this is another one of their 57 different uh Trader Joe's Diamond Reserve, North Coast, this and that. Is this somebody's hey, we got some wine left over? Can you use it? And Trader Joe said, yeah, we saw a lot of sparkling wine. So this might be somebody's more expensive bubbly, because it does taste great. It is really well made. Rack and riddle does a really good job. And I don't know this to be true, but I'm just putting two to two together because this kind of thing has been happening. Is this actually maybe somebody's more expensive sparkling wine that they decided they weren't going to put on the shelves because they, you know, they they weren't getting orders from stores? Or they needed to cut their uh losses. Maybe they didn't sell it last year and they still have it and they needed to make some money out of. They couldn't sit on another and wait till next November. So maybe this is a more expensive than a $12.99 bubbling, and maybe we're getting a bargain. Still a bargain, but maybe. So there you go, it's the Trader Joe's Grand Reserve Sonoma County Brute Rose. It tastes great. I think there's also just a straight up brute, not rose, which is probably more Chardonnay. But I'll try that in a couple of couple of days. We'll do that because if we're getting a bargain of wine, we want to know about it. So adios keep it cheap. Uh all my speculation is just me talking. I don't know anything about it, but there you go. So adios, keep it cheap. This is uh Trader Joe's Grand Reserve, Sonoma County Brute Rose, Dave Cheap Wine Fighter. Adios, bye bye.