The stuff we used to pour down our throat, eh? Shlosh and Retch and Matoose and Hock and the Big K. Now you can’t even find them at garage sales. Where did they all go?

A little diligence revealed someone’s drinking them—a whole lotta someones, in fact. The Shlosh rings in to the tune of over $3 million a year!

I don’t know what came over me; let’s put it down to an acid flashback, listening to Surrealistic Pillow the other night. I wondered what those wines tasted like now. And what I would have to bribe the faithful with to come and taste them with me.

Donning an impenetrable disguise and pushing a borrowed Safeway cart down to the government store, I assembled the customary baker’s dozen: Mateus and White Zinfandel, Hochtaler and Schloss Laderheim, Blue Nun and Black Tower, Retsina, both Kressmanns, Sommet Rouge, Gamza and Egri Bikavér, Melini and Paarl Roodeberg. Okay, so it’s a baker’s dozen with a bonus. (Now! 750 millilitres more!)

Would we drink any of them again? And pay for them out of our own tip jar? Well yeah, some: Mateus, the Red Kressmann, Melini Chianti, and the Roodeberg. After that, they fell into one of two categories: a) the marinade or b) the sink.

Mateus Rose ($9.49) Crack open that distinctive bottle, and guess what? It’s fresh, clean, round, and full of nice—if unidentifiable—flavours; the level of sweetness is right, so’s the fruit, and it does look pretty in pink. It needs to be very, very, very cold, though. There’s a reason it was the world’s best-selling wine once upon a flashback.

Sutter Home White Zinfandel ($8.90) The surprise is the damn bottle still has a cork—a cork cork—in it. Who among us would have the guts to send it back? Who’d have the guts to order it in the first place? All right, we’re seasoned palates, we can taste past that. Not very Zinny under ideal conditions, short and flabby. In a pinch, maybe, or a punch.

Hochtaler ($8.99 for one litre) Sublabelled “A quality dry table wine”. Define dry. More copy: “Artfully vented from selected grapes offering a clean, balanced taste”. Define artfully. A nasty, janitorial nose gives way to some light sweetness—did we define dry yet?—and no fruit flavours whatsoever. Add some of the white Kressmann and it’s more tolerable. There is also Hochtaler Dry, but my store only carries it in the four-litre box, for $33.99. I’m not that committed to this body of research.

Schloss Laderheim Riesling ($8.99 for one litre) Define Riesling! The colour of water, the aroma of dishrag, the flavours of sugar and lemon peel, but mostly sugar. Riesling, eh? Really? From where? What?

Sichel Sohne Blue Nun ($9.85) The faint-blue bottle, home to the faint-blue taste: wet and gulpy and sweet, not showing much fruit, certainly not any mainstream Riesling. Not as zappy as Red Bull, either. But if you’re a student of that sort of thing, this is Germany’s single best bit of wine marketing since the beginning of time.

Black Tower Rivaner ($10.86) Same as the Blue Nun above: no fruit, no taste, water and sugar, and there we go. Don’t be looking back.

Achaia Clauss Retsina ($8.91 for one litre) What were we thinking? Hugh Johnson once said it was a wine “best drunk in situ”, and there’s still something to that: iced to the nines, on the beach on a Greek island, in the blazing sun, with some really fatty lamb roasted to a crisp. But not in a Vancouver apartment with the autumn rain outside. Initially, the pine resin went in to preserve the stuff. Don’t we have sulphites for that sort of thing now? At least it has a discernible taste, even if it is a thoroughly unpleasant one.

Kressmann Selectionne White ($10.79 for one litre) Very pale colour, no discernible aroma or taste, a hard and tart edge—what it needs is food, fast (or fast food). Its saving grace might be that it’s not the least bit sweet. But where’s the fruit? And what?

Kressmann Selectionne Red ($10.79 for one litre) Described as “unoaked red”—we wouldn’t have guessed!—this shows some fruit, anyway. Then only tartness, but it’s clean and quite fresh, and you don’t feel like there’s a headache coming on. Iceable, mixable, sangria-able, spike it with some cheap brandy or vodka, a little sugar, and float a bunch of fruit in it. Cheap like borscht. Same colour.

Sommet Rouge ($8.19 for one litre) Label rhetoric: “A full-bodied, dry French-style wine…blended with Cabernet Sauvignon, Barbera and Grenache grapes”. Fair enough, but what is blended with those grapes? Sweet, syrupy, dark—and that’s going to be some hangover in the morning.

“Silver Goat” Merlot & Gamza ($7.18) No goat, and no mention of Merlot when we used to lug it to Kitsilano house parties. Cherry-gargle aromas, light, green taste, no finish—whoosh, gone. “Tobacco-flavoured gamza” is the grape descriptor; maybe they ought to have put more of it in the mix. Of course, you could always crumble in a Craven A and see if it adds anything.

Egri Bikaver ($7.91) I think the sanguine old bull has been taking some blood thinner. Pretty wimpy-looking and -tasting, with a cherry-pit edge, bitter and sour at the back, roasty, but certainly not—to hear them call it—“robust”.

Melini Chianti ($12.86) How many candles gave up their lives for that little basement décor item? Soft, fruity pizza wine—thank goodness something still works. Thirteen bucks is asking a lot, though. It’s worth seven, easily.

KWV Paarl Roodeberg ($14.86) Tall and handsome bottle, chokecherry aromas, reasonably rich flavours, and, above all, some depth of flavours. Good partner for barbecued meats: wieners to smokies to lamb chops to rib eye and right back to meat loaf. Too expensive, though; you can do better for three, four bucks less—see next month’s under-$10 survey.

Thank you all for coming. Nothing but Dom Pérignon next week.