Sausage and Two Buck Chuck

The sausage shop in the Housewives Marketplace in Oakland makes great Italian sausages. Today for lunch I browned them (in their casings) on a cast iron skillet with a slight brushing of olive oil, then poured in a generous amount of Charles Shaw "Gamay Beaujolais" and covered, cooking on low heat until the sausages were done and the moisture was almost all cooked out of the pan. Yum.

Charles Shaw makes lower-mediocre wines, when it really comes down to it. They cost $2 and that is about what they are worth, but for certain cooking purposes they are fantastic. And, I have to say, as an accompaniment to a simple lunch of sausages and cheese (Danish fontina for me, String cheese for Amalia), and simple salad, the Beaujolais (which is 75% pinot noir) was fine. At $2 a bottle, it was magnificent. Of course we are finally seeing some great deals on decent table wine. I have been paying $5.99 a bottle for a red that tastes like a cross between a Super Tuscan and a Super Piemontese. When I can get wine this good at this price, it takes the charm out of Two Buck Chuck.

However, the fact that we have so many inexpensive and decent table wines is very good indeed. I remember when good, cheap wine was rare, with very little choice (of course those were the days when the Boomers were guzzling that wretched white zinfandel) if you did find a place that carried some. Then there was a period when the price of even rather modest wines went up fairly steeply (Big House Red for over $10 a bottle?!? Don't get me wrong, I love all of Bonny Doon's wines, and this one in particular (we served it at our wedding), but Big House Red was one of those great $6 staples, and to pay $10+ for it smarts). But now, thanks to outlandish overplanting, the prices are becoming good again.

Of course farmers will tear out their vines, and the whole thing starts over again, without the benefit of the old vine base that would have been in place were it not for the strangeness of the market. One thing that I am bracing for is the onslaught of horrid Merlots (I actually had a "white" merlot at a tasting a few years back - yuck). I never could understand why people liked this varietal, as it has always been a blending wine. Once in awhile I will encounter a merlot with some character, but usually they are fairly insipid wines.