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It’s Sunday afternoon. You’ve dragged yourself to the grocery store to stock up for the week. You pick up some eggs, bread, sandwich meat, almond milk, granola bars, and probably some greens that will undoubtedly sit unused in the crisper until Thursday when they have started to go brown. Then you stumble upon the wine aisle. Two sides of shelves stocked full of hundreds of bottles in various flavors and price ranges. It’s a bit overwhelming. You want to pick up a bottle “just to try it” but you don’t know where to start. Well that’s why I am here.
Lately, Mrs. Cush has gained an affinity for Trader Joe’s wine. As such, I have gained quite the palate for their wine as well. TJ’s is big here in the Northeast and for good reason. It is a great grocery store. They do a lot of things right, but two things they excel at are flowers and wine. Both are dirt cheap and of higher quality compared to other places. If you’re looking for a cheap bottle that won’t let you down until the next morning when you regret finishing the whole thing, then Trader Joe’s should be your go to.
Each week I will select a wine that has been purchased from TJ’s and write up a review on it for you wonderful people. This is a wine review column for amateurs, by an amateur. I’m certainly no sommelier so you don’t have to worry about me using big words that normal wine people use. I am here for the simpletons. We will be judging the wine based on the only three things that matter to the lay person: price, taste, and label.
This week’s selection is a wine called Too Uncanny.
Not all wine comes in bottles now in case you guys haven’t heard the news. Smaller sized containers are all the rage now. Cans and juice boxes (as I like to call them) are a go to for Mrs. Cush because handling these things while playing cornhole or polish horseshoes is much more reasonable than lugging around a bottle of wine and spill way less than when you are drinking out of a cup.
The Mrs. and I chose to drink this cabernet sauvignon straight from the can with our dinner of penne alfredo with sun dried tomatoes and garlic bread. It was also chilled in the fridge which was an interesting move, but it’s summer so fuck it. Everything should be cold as far as I am concerned.
Quick Facts
Type: Cabernet Sauvignon
From: Australia
Alcohol Content: 13.5%
Price
This 375mL can cost a whopping $3 plus tax and deposit. That’s a $6 bottle of wine in case you wanted a different perspective. The price point is fantastic, but you’d think for that price you are probably getting some MD 20/20 or Boone’s Farm shit. As you’ll read below, it actually tastes like a real wine and for $3 this is an absolute steal.
Rating: 5/5
Taste
The following was the evaluation of the aroma prior to the consumption by Mrs. Cush:
“It smells…not bad.”
The wine is a cab sauv but it isn’t really full bodied like others I have had. Nothing berry or flavor wise stands out to me, so I apologize for being useless in that area. It is on the sweeter side of things as far as cab sauv’s go and the chilling of it made it wicked smooth because we hammered this thing down pretty quick. Very crushable for sure. All of this coupled with the 13.5% alcohol content and the fact that a can is a sneaky half a bottle when you’re talking volumes, it could be very dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands.
Rating: 4/5
Label
A big part of wine shopping is the label. Every amateur knows that. If a bottle looks cool, I am much more likely to buy it. The name of the wine is clever for sure. However, the wine’s label does nothing for me because it is just so bland. I do respect the approach given that the brand name is Simpler Wines. It makes sense. In the end, had it not been for the $3 price tag that stuck out like a sore thumb I would have skimmed over this wine completely.
Rating: 2.5/5
This wine was great and I would definitely get it again. Glad we found it..
Respond
@207Cush
Fun fact: TJ’s wine is so good for so cheap because they sell brands that buy the excess or slightly off batches from big name winery’s and package it under a new name. You’re getting some quality rotten grapes without the name tag attached.
The box wine at TJs is a godsend. It’s 4 bottles for $12.99 and you just can’t beat that. Only issue is not knowing how much you’ve had, so maybe you drank a bottle, maybe it was closer to 2.
Not all of us want to be faced with the reality of our drinking habits so that’s why I am all in on box wine these days.
You also live in section 8 housing, so it’s fitting.
There were 4 homicides in my neighborhood last week so like, you aren’t wrong by any stretch of the imagination. But other than that small detail, it’s not. that. bad.
American people need to start adopting boxed wine’s correct name, “Goon”, as passed down by the forefathers of New Zealand/Australian pissheads.
Once again, in a sentence:
“Jeez Sally, you were really slapping that goon sack hard last night.”
This is the wine review the people want… nay need. Meets my typical standards for wine purchasing:
– greater than or equal to 13.5% alcohol,
– under $14 per bottle,
– cab, pinot, or Malbec
The other details were icing on the cake.
They have a pretty good Nero d’Avola as well.
Too Uncanny is the perfect roadie for night time walks around the monuments.
I am in DC this weekend, sounds like a perfect idea.
If you haven’t done a drinking/drunken stroll of the monuments, you haven’t lived in DC.
So happy the cheap wine reviews are back. It’s been too long since Taylor gave the last wine review. This needs to be a regular article.
TJ’s amazing frozen food selection and dirt cheap wine make it way too easy to phone it in.
Those TJ’s wine prices are impossible to beat. Being able to take those canned wines anywhere a beer can go make up for any lack in taste.
Does it have any semblance of a metallically flavor or is it pretty comparable to a normal bottle?
Excellent question, Cube-A-Saurus. I tasted a tiny trace of something metallic but that could because Mrs. Cush mentioned it first and I had the placebo affect going on. Nothing overbearing though, so even if it was a real flavor it is totally negligible.
This is excellent content. Please do more reviews!!!!!!!