Foodie Merlot from Cost plus world market. Hands down.

First thought was manischewitz . Don't think it's absolute worst but probably worst of wine that might be foisted on me again.

Vina Rita Margarita, grape wine with natural margarita flavor. I did not enjoy it at all and tasted like a mixer!

I had a Chianti one time that tasted like Robitussin! I literally spewed it out in the sink, then promptly upended the bottle down the drain. Truthfully, there was nothing "technically" wrong with it (no cork taint, etc.) That was the way the winemaker made it.

"This winemaker's style does not suit my palate" was a polite way to phrase it.

Anyone remember the Rock Hollow offer(s) from here? Cab, Merlot... egads those were frightening, even to my then-newbie palate.

Brother in law, learning from my wife that we liked wine, gave us a "red" and "white" (for Christmas): Georgia Gothic Habersham / Granny's Arbor

It was "something they came across whilst driving through "wine country" in Helen, Georgia.

The "red" (blush really) was melted grape/strawberry jelly...sickeningly sweet. The white, we still have. I couldn't throw the bottle away...it has the painting (picture) of the old guy and his wife with the dude holding a pitchfork...you know the one. Label says it is a "gold Medal Award Winning Muscadine"!!!

If you want to try a bottle, call Habersham Winery & Nacoochee Village @ 706-878-9463.

I really can't recall a specific bottle that was the worst - I've tasted many wines that were not sound - corked, bacterially contaminated, acetic acid (vinegar), brettanomyces, excessive SO2, etc. - but I don't think that's what this is about, it's about wine that is technically sound, but just plain terrible.

Assuming we're limiting ourselves to grape wine, I'd have to say the memorably worst wines I've had have all been made from vitus labrusca or from from the hybrids made from labrusca/vinifera crosses.

I just think they are uniformly awful.

Also any (even sound) really cheap charmat process sparkler from an unknown combination of the Thompson Seedless and other similarly noble grapes.

And, of course, Red Mountain Pink Chablis, circa 1969 when it first was labeled '100% grape wine' and made from the noble Thompson Seedless grape and just a bit of Alicante Bouschet for color. An improvement from the earlier version that did not say (and according to industry legend, was not) 'grape wine' -- a version that was always good for a raging hangover after even one glass.

In recent memory, the "Wines That Rock" Rolling Stones Merlot was undrinkable.

And my pack had 4 of them, and no Pink Floyd....

The last offering from Sunce was 12 bottles of disappointment. And absolutely no response from the winery when I e-mailed them about the problem.

Of the five bottles I've opened, three were corked -- the cork was covered halfway up with goop, and the wine smelled terrible. The other two were full of some sort of sediment and tasted awful.

The roast I cooked using the rest of one of the sediment bottles (after running the wine through a fine mesh strainer) came out well, but I was worried about cooking with the other ones because they were so contaminated with who knows what.

[quote postid="4817959" user="msummers"]The last offering from Sunce was 12 bottles of disappointment. And absolutely no response from the winery when I e-mailed them about the problem.

Of the five bottles I've opened, three were corked -- the cork was covered halfway up with goop, and the wine smelled terrible. The other two were full of some sort of sediment and tasted awful.


You know, I bought that same 12 pack and I was not at all impressed either. The most recent bottle I opened was the Zemlja's Blend. It too had all kinds of sediment. In each glass I poured! I wouldn't say it was the worst I've ever had but the wine offered nothing noteworthy.

My own worst was a "coastal zin" from Trader Joe's. I let one of the super friendly sales staff talk me into a $9 bottle. One glass and the rest went down the drain. I've learned my lesson and try to stay away from the TJ's "mystery" wines.

msummers wrote:The last offering from Sunce was 12 bottles of disappointment. And absolutely no response from the winery when I e-mailed them about the problem.

You'd want to email service.woot about that. WD has a (well-deserved) great reputation for standing behind what is sold here.

Are we limited to grapes...? I've had a pretty horrific wine made of bananas. And there was the pinotage (which I normally enjoy) that tasted like hot bananas.

Thomas Henry 2005 Zinfandel. Its hard to believe something that thin could taste so awful.

And if you don't believe me, check out Gary V on WLTV, eps #583.

kittymac wrote:Are we limited to grapes...? I've had a pretty horrific wine made of bananas. And there was the pinotage (which I normally enjoy) that tasted like hot bananas.

That is the most vivid description of a bad wine! I love it. (The writing, not bad wine.)

I find the concept of banana wine utterly unfathomable. Whose idea was that?? I must say, though, if I had encountered banana wine without seeing your warning, I would have been game to try a sip. My palate is curious to the point of danger.

The winner goes to a bottle of super cheap wine I bought while touring in Greece. I think it was about a 1 euro bottle, and the only bottle of wine where I couldn't stand the thought of drinking more of it. Worse than two buck Chuck, Franzia, and way worse than Manischevitz.

I have had a couple of corked wines, but it was just individual bottles. There was one 15 year old white (Inglenook Chablis) that I found in my mother-in-law's closet that we just opened and smelled (ugh) and poured down the sink immediately.

I once had a wine made out of Blueberries in Key West. Truly hideous stuff.

My least favorite Woot wine was the 1001 Pinot Noir.

giantfan8 wrote:

You know, I bought that same 12 pack and I was not at all impressed either. The most recent bottle I opened was the Zemlja's Blend. It too had all kinds of sediment. In each glass I poured! I wouldn't say it was the worst I've ever had but the wine offered nothing noteworthy.

Did you try decanting?

a $50 bottle of noir. it tasted like it was a aged wrong.

rpm wrote:I really can't recall a specific bottle that was the worst - I've tasted many wines that were not sound - corked, bacterially contaminated, acetic acid (vinegar), brettanomyces, excessive SO2, etc. - but I don't think that's what this is about, it's about wine that is technically sound, but just plain terrible.

Assuming we're limiting ourselves to grape wine, I'd have to say the memorably worst wines I've had have all been made from vitus labrusca or from from the hybrids made from labrusca/vinifera crosses.

I just think they are uniformly awful.

Also any (even sound) really cheap charmat process sparkler from an unknown combination of the Thompson Seedless and other similarly noble grapes.

And, of course, Red Mountain Pink Chablis, circa 1969 when it first was labeled '100% grape wine' and made from the noble Thompson Seedless grape and just a bit of Alicante Bouschet for color. An improvement from the earlier version that did not say (and according to industry legend, was not) 'grape wine' -- a version that was always good for a raging hangover after even one glass.

Edit: and who can forget the execrable French plonk served at Club Med! They could afford to give it away with meals because (a) someone must have paid them to carry it, (b) no one drank it, (c) it was a ploy to get you to buy bar drinks, (d) all of the above.:

Mine was a red. A really bad merlot. While a good red has the ability to be extremely superior in taste to a white, reds also have the ability to be much worse than white when they are bad. To me, whites are always kind middle of the road.

Winedavid39 wrote:what, no mention of Sierra club chard ??

No, but I've some JanKris you can have the rest of ;)

EDIT: The saddest part is that this half case or so isn't cooked because I didn't bother to put it on the wine racks ;)

It was Greek wine I bought in Switzerland for 2 franc/bottle at the urging of a Greek friend. He ended up pouring it down the drain

Martini & Rossi, Asti-spumante from the Dollar Store; WHAT WAS I THINKING? "What the Hell, it's only a dollar!"

Worst ever? At an Italian dining hall (In Italy) we had rented for an office party... they figured we were all American and couldn't tell a good wine from a bad, so they blent together every partial-bottle of red wine that they could find. Not only was this the red wine the WORST red wine experience EVER, but it also was a different red wine torture each time they brought out a new carafe.

Chocovine-- a chocolate/red wine combo someone purchased at Walgreens. It was pretty much cheap chocolate mixed with cough syrup.

DivineAna wrote:Chocovine-- a chocolate/red wine combo someone purchased at Walgreens. It was pretty much cheap chocolate mixed with cough syrup.

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.

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.

Hard to believe that someone growing up with the kind of experience you had would have allowed even a drop of Thunderbird to pass his lips. I'm just so glad that there's a wine.woot with folks like you to help keep the rest of us, who lack that experience, on the correct path.

ddeuddeg wrote:Hard to believe that someone growing up with the kind of experience you had would have allowed even a drop of Thunderbird to pass his lips. I'm just so glad that there's a wine.woot with folks like you to help keep the rest of us, who lack that experience, on the correct path.

My only experience with a number of these 'beverages' were educational 'swish and spits' my grandfather and great uncle conducted for me as a way of understanding what was in the market, how to distinguish unsound from simply terrible, and a little bit about popular taste at the time (early 1960s). The scary thing about these wines is that they are usually sound - that is, free from true defects - even though to the table wine-oriented palate they are far beyond the pale of undrinkability.

Anything from Coppola. Beautiful estate but the wine is terrible.

noellela wrote:Anything from Coppola. Beautiful estate but the wine is terrible.

I respectfully disagree. We visited the estate with the 2008 RPM Magical History Tour and tasted a number of wines that were quite good. Over-priced perhaps, and not nearly as good as (for example) Corison just down the road for less money, but good to very good wines.

I have had less favorable experiences with some of his low-end wines, but I have yet to have one that wasn't at least sound commercial wine.

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?"

There were huge jugs of "Wild Irish Rose" - not actually a red, not actually a white - not actually a wine, if closely scrutinized.

[In lieu of a CT link, there's a write up of Wild Irish Rose here: http://bumwine.com/wildirishrose.html ]

But my underaged housemates and I were not scrutinizing, so to speak. The party began early-ish on Saturday evening. Many jugs and many buckets o' chicken later (we liked buckets o' chicken a lot - because we didn't like doing dishes. "Chicken Bucket, eat it n'_____ it!" - you can make your own rhyme here ... )

The party ended when none of the bathrooms could be used any more.

It was not a proud time in our lives.

munkeyciao wrote:Worst ever? ...blent

Blent...ROFLMAO!

gregorylane wrote:Blent...ROFLMAO!

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.

rpm wrote:My only experience with a number of these 'beverages' were educational 'swish and spits' my grandfather and great uncle conducted for me as a way of understanding what was in the market, how to distinguish unsound from simply terrible, and a little bit about popular taste at the time (early 1960s). The scary thing about these wines is that they are usually sound - that is, free from true defects - even though to the table wine-oriented palate they are far beyond the pale of undrinkability.

Of course, your grandfather and great uncle would have taken the necessary steps to make sure your education was complete. Over the past several years, our palates have steadily moved in the direction of "table wine oriented." It's really interesting when a wine doesn't have a lot of appeal initially, but as soon as we start eating, it immediately becomes a winner. Bahwm and I have both become much more expert at food/wine pairings, so this phenomenon is not really surprising.
Now for the subject at hand: a Pinot Noir I bought to have a mini-vertical with one I'd acquired as part of a drawing which included a pair of tickets to a local tasting event that turned out to be worthwhile. The wine was listed at $39.99, but the store had it marked at $17 off. It came from a winery called Warm Lake in Niagara County, about 20 miles or so north of Buffalo along Lake Ontario. At the risk of boring everyone with all this detail, I merely want to make sure no one here ever buys any of this awful stuff on the assumption that it must be good if it costs that much. It was simply horrid, and my friends at the store tell me the winemaker's personality is a good match for the wine.

My worst wine in recent memories...Garagiste mystery wine #22 (Dois Irmaos), supposedly a Coelho second label. We found the wine to be almost undrinkable. Our group could barely distinguish it as a pinor noir, but a highly rated $40 Willamette from the great 2008 vintage? Don't think so.

Happy ending though...Garagiste was kind enough to refund me my full purchase price.