Carmenet Vintner’s Collection Cabernet Sauvignon, 2003 vintage
price: $20-$25 for a 3-liter cask (the equivalent of 4 bottles)
suggested food pairings: pizza, heavy pasta dishes, grilled burgers and steaks

I was so taken with the quality, value and convenience of the Carmenet Chardonnay cask last week that I went right back to the store and procured one of their two reds sold in the same format. The Cabernet Sauvignon is directly on par with the Chardonnay and opens a new world of convenience in the Pierce household. Aside from cooking with better wine and raising the quality of my bride’s everyday wine, I can now produce quaffable red wine in outdoor settings with minimal effort. For years, I’ve been filling sterilized plastic soda bottles with wine from glass bottles to take skiing and fishing. Now, no more funnel searches. No more funnel washing. No more air pumping with a VacuVin to preserve the 5 oz. left in the glass bottle after screwing the cap on a 20 oz. plastic Coke bottle newly swollen with wine. What a country!

It’s really satisfying for me to see more convenient wine packaging in the United States. Europeans and Australians have been making it easy for people to enjoy wine in casual settings for years with screw caps, disposable wine casks, plastic jugs and lined aluminum cans. If Guinness or a Jim Beam and Coke can go in a can, why not a reasonably good table wine? Finally we’re getting there and realizing that while the romance of a bottle has its place, it’s not the only place for wine.

Peppery berry and cherry aromas wind up out of this very dark red-purple wine. The juice obviously spent a lot of time mingling with the skins after crushing to reach such an extracted hue. Pudgy yet fleet legs run down the bowl of the glass. The berry and cherry notes play into flavors in the mouth, and are woven with a straightforward tannic quality that gives the wine a rustic appeal. A strawberry-like acid flits around throughout the flavor profile in a way that lightens the rustic edge and draws out the blueberry and red cherry flavors. Better than good!

Craig Pierce, clubhouse manager of Baker Hill Golf Club, can be reached at craig_l_pierce *at* hotmail *dot* com.