Cupcake Riesling, Mosel Valley, A Nice Surprise

This bottle showed up unannounced a few months ago, and I was immediately suspicious...After all, it has been something like a year and a half since I last reviewed a Cupcake Vineyards wine.

Cupcake Vineyards has a decidedly lighthearted, whimsical label and image, but the brand is one of the most popular on the market. However, could they turn out a good riesling, one that retains bright acidity with a touch of residual sugar? Cheap riesling is easy to find, just go to any Trader Joe's and you'll find some truly awful stuff priced around $5 per bottle.

On the other hand, the wines Cupcake makes are inexpensive and well-crafted, delivering value around the $10 price-point. I've previously reviewed their 2009 Central Coast chardonnay and 2010 New Zealand sauvignon blanc, both of which delivered good quality to price ratios.

Back to this riesling, I was happy to note that it's from the Mosel River wine region in Germany, home to perhaps the greatest rieslings on the planet. The bouquet is wonderful, brimming with notes of green apple, stone fruit, honeysuckle, and a chalky minerality. On the palate it's clean and crisp - a testament to the racy acid - with flavors of granny smith apple, apricot, and citrus-infused minerality. There's a subtle sweetness present too, doing just enough to balance out the acidity. I was particularly impressed with the finish, it lasts impressively long before gently tapering off.

I tasted this over the course of two days, with consistent notes. My fiancee and her sister tried it too, and we all agreed that for around $10, it's a really good bottle of wine. It appears that Cupcake Vineyards has once again delivered a high quality white wine at a great price.

This wine was a sample for review purposes.

Beau Carufel

Cupcake Chardonnay - Hedonists Rejoice!

(img via http://weeklywinejournal.files.wordpress.com/)

What do you think of when you imagine a cupcake? Something sweet, rich, creamy? Maybe a bit of sprinkles on top, adding a textural dimension or additional flavor to the overall taste? I bet the association is a positive one, because it's hard not to like cupcakes. I'm rambling on because I figure this is about as close to a perfect marriage of label name and wine style as we're likely to see.

Cupcake Vineyards makes a bunch of wine. By "a bunch", I mean 14 different wines are listed for sale on their website. I was sent two to review, a Sauvignon Blanc and this Chardonnay (100,000 cases produced). Hopefully they send me some reds to review soon.

The 2009 Cupcake Vineyards Central Coast Chardonnay is textbook California. From it's pale-straw color in the glass to the buttery, apple and pear scented notes wafting out of the glass, this is the juice that put California Chardonnay on the map. While there has been the ABC (Anything But Chardonnay) movement over the past five or six years, sales of this style continue to grow.

I freely admit to disliking overly oaky, buttered up Chardonnays, regardless of where they're from. I can see people rolling their eyes at this, because that's a trendy thing to say right now. Still, I'm sticking to my guns because I feel that those Chardonnays are not indicitative of terroir.

Back to the Cupcake, which embraces the traditional California style to the hilt. Rich and creamy as it washes across your palate. Given it's $14 SRP, I couldn't help but be impressed by the quality of the fruit used. I loved the pineapple and passion fruit dance as the wine finished, a good foil to the ripe buttery wallop of cream that smacks you in the face on your first sip. Still, if you don't like buttery chardonnay, this probably won't be for you. Loads of butter cream intertwined with oak all the way through, no way around that.

I like the quality, the fruit is well sourced and the winemaker knew what he was doing. I'll reiterate, this is textbook California Chardonnay that delivers above it's price point. A quick google search brought up prices from $7-$14, quite the range. Wine Spectator loved the 2009 Cupcake, giving it an 88 points. Me? Not quite that exuberant, but I'm no Jim Laube. I give this a B-, or 83 points for those more accustomed to numerical values. Above average quality, well made wine but for me at least, too much butter and oak. More information on the 2009 Cupcake Chardonnay is available here.

This wine was a sample for review purposes

Beau Carufel

Cupcake Sauvignon Blanc..I'm impressed!

I recently received some samples of Cupcake Vineyards wines. You've probably seen Cupcake if you shop for wine online or at some brick and mortar stores. My first exposure to Cupcake was perhaps a year or so ago when I had a glass of their Red Velvet, a blend of Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot. I recall the wine being good especially since I was having it with random hors d'oeurves at a party. Later that night I cracked a bottle of Brunello, which obviously dominates my wine-memory of the evening.

Anyways, the first of the two Cupcake wines I tasted was the Sauvignon Blanc. All the grapes come from Marlborough in New Zealand. The winemaker, Adam Richardson, used stainless steel tanks versus oak barrels to ferment the wine in. After that, it underwent extended aging sur lie, meaning the wine was sitting in the lees, which are dead yeast cell and bits of grape skin and pulp. This can help tame the acidity and add a fleshy richness to the wine.

 

2010 is considered (by people in the know) to be a good year in New Zealand. Given that, it only stands to reason that Cupcake made a delicious Sauvignon Blanc. I chilled this for about 15 minutes just to allow for the somewhat warm day. Right away I smelled notes of lemon custard, lime-washed rocks, hints of perfume, passion fruit and that "traditional" New Zealand grassy note. The way each scent fit into the overall picture put a smile on my face

I'd describe this wine as a clean, dry white wine that's lighter in body with great citrus flavors. I tasted lemon peel, hints of pineapple and passion fruit, and right through the mid-palate, what felt like Bartlett pears! Almost reminiscent of some of my favorite whites of all time..Sancerre's! Unfortunately, the finish left me wanting more, it felt too abrupt and under-developed. Still, Cupcake's Sauvignon Blanc delivered some very nice quality at a supremely reasonable price.

You can expect to find Cupcake Sauvignon Blanc for anywhere between $7-13, it's SRP (Suggested Retail Price) is $14. I rate this wine a B, with a solid BUY recommendation. For those of you who salivate over numerical scores, I would rate this an 84/85 points. If you happen to see a bottle of the 2010 at your favorite local wine retailer, give it a shot! I think you'll be happy you did. I should add, and though I rarely say this kind of endorsement, I fully intend to buy another bottle to pair with some tilapia fish tacos I'm going to try making soon. The mango-chipotle salsa I'm going to attempt would pair brilliantly with Cupcake's S.B. There may or may not be a blog about that experiment, depending on a singular thing: whether or not I remember to take pictures!

Disclosure: This wine was sent to me as a sample for review.

Beau Carufel