ddeuddeg wrote:I had to look that one up; turns out it's in the dictionary as a past tense of blend. Now added to my vocabulary.

Well, I guess one learns something everyday! What happened to 'blended'?

Edit: first TOP in a long time!
Edit 2: I see that it is proper either way...never heard it before.

Garlic wine from the garlic capital, Gilroy, CA. Can't remember the winery as my head was about to explode...

kmagt wrote:Garlic wine from the garlic capital, Gilroy, CA. Can't remember the winery as my head was about to explode...

Did you try the ice cream? Was about just as bad.

Multiple CORKED bottles of that crap-in-a-bag "Adequate Gift" http://wine.woot.com/Blog/ViewEntry.aspx?Id=20370 which, despite many attempts to get replaced, was left to fester as a bad taste I cannot seem to shake. :-(

Itwdswafo wrote:Did you try the ice cream? Was about just as bad.

You should have gone about 100mi. north, to San Francisco and the Stinking Rose! The garlic ice cream sounds terrible, but *everything* at that place was amazingly good. :-)

The worst ever was a nasty bottle of home-made wine that a friend of mine made back in the 80's. The worst recently was a bottle of Olde Savannah Sweet Tea Wine that I bought at the grocery store - I poured out the rest of the bottle after 3 swallows. GROSS!

Easy: Carl Reh Bernkasteler Kurfürstlay Spätlese.

Note that this is not "Riesling Spätlese" just "Spätlese." I failed to notice that when I picked it up and took it to the counter. Much to my chagrin.

It had no nose, a minimal taste of "fruit," and no finish to speak of (which was probably a good thing). It was so flabby and lacking in acidity that it was chemically a base. That's right, it's pH level measured alkalinity. Worse yet, it was not even sweet enough to pass as a low-end dessert wine.

Basically (yes) it was a mix of water, egg whites, and ethyl alcohol that someone dipped a stick of Juicy Fruit gum into...briefly.

My tongue shudders at the memory.

iByron

iByron wrote:Easy: Carl Reh Bernkasteler Kurfürstlay Spätlese.

Note that this is not "Riesling Spätlese" just "Spätlese." I failed to notice that when I picked it up and took it to the counter. Much to my chagrin.

It had no nose, a minimal taste of "fruit," and no finish to speak of (which was probably a good thing). It was so flabby and lacking in acidity that it was chemically a base. That's right, it's pH level measured alkalinity. Worse yet, it was not even sweet enough to pass as a low-end dessert wine.

Basically (yes) it was a mix of water, egg whites, and ethyl alcohol that someone dipped a stick of Juicy Fruit gum into...briefly.

My tongue shudders at the memory.

iByron

But you liked the color ;)

My worst was a Sebeka Pinotage something. It was so smokey it tasted like a tire fire. Couldn't drink more than two sips.

La Chaize Brouilly - not just barnyard, but barnyard floor right after the cows left. So much poop you had to hold your nose to drink it, but the extremely sour taste was not worth the effort. It was more than a year before I could make myself drink another gamay.

The worst wine I've ever had?

Spanish red wine with dinner in Spain. Everyone in my party was made sick by it. (I know it was the wine not the food because people who had eaten earlier and joined us for a number of glasses of wine got sick as well.) Nausea, headaches, etc....a lot of us
felt like we either were dying or wanted to die !

I must say that I enjoyed little of the Spanish wine I drank on that trip. Perhaps at that point an additive was often included in the wine as it was during the period when Italian winemakers were including higher-than-healthy amounts of an anti-freeze like chemical in their wines.

Bay Bridge Vineyards, Sweet Red. Got it at a local Kroger on sale for 2.99, so I didn't expect much, but I did at least expect it to taste like wine, which it didn't. I probably should have read the label closer and known better when it said "Made from grapes and natural flavors".

merryberry wrote:La Chaize Brouilly - not just barnyard, but barnyard floor right after the cows left. So much poop you had to hold your nose to drink it, but the extremely sour taste was not worth the effort. It was more than a year before I could make myself drink another gamay.

Sounds like this was spoiled. Bad case of brett. Even OW Gamay is generally more fruity than barnyard-y.

iByron

rpm wrote:Now we're getting somewhere - new lows unknown to many of us.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned any of the 'horribles' of past decades (surviving until today...) such as Mad Dog 20/20, Night Train Express, and the granddaddy of them all, Thunderbird. Or any of the truly frighteningly bad (even when sound) cheap 'port's, muscatel, and the like that still emerge by the tank car load from Central Valley industrial wineries.

I haven't had any of those wines in decades but those are exactly the ones I used to get as an under-aged punk looking for a cheap buzz, along with Boone's Farm and Canei (Canei? Yes, you can!) and anything I could swipe from my Dad's liquor cabinet without detection.

IIRC, I enjoyed the Canei more than the others but the Night Train Express was my "go to" wine for partying purposes. In the words of John Belushi, "that Night Train is a mean wine".

As for the worst wine I've ever tasted it was a Blackstone Merlot, don't remember the vintage but it's the only wine I've ever poured down the sink for a reason other than the bottle being open too long.

EDIT: sdbcmr's post reminded me that my high-school g/f's favorite was Wild Irish Rose. We would usually either split a bottle of Canei or get 1 each of NTE and WIR. Ahh, good times with bad wines!

richardhod wrote:Blue Nun, and any of the cheap Liebfraumilchs in grocery stores of yore.
I once bought something claiming to be wine stuff at Ralphs or somewhere, and it was really really atrocious. More a sweet spritz madw tiwht sugar. Can't remember the name, but that'll teach me!

Any wine in a pub where the choice is "red or white?"

Good call on the Blue Nun, I forgot about that one. Blecch!

iByron wrote:It had no nose, a minimal taste of "fruit," and no finish to speak of (which was probably a good thing). It was so flabby and lacking in acidity that it was chemically a base. That's right, it's pH level measured alkalinity. Worse yet, it was not even sweet enough to pass as a low-end dessert wine.

My tongue shudders at the memory.

iByron

I've had that wine! Well, based on the description at least. It was called "D-cubed Zinfandel", from WTSO. I poured it down the drain.

also McGuigan, some perma-sale Sainsbury's bought brand wine from South Africa or Chile,. A 2010 Cab that tasted sugary, disjointed and revolting.