Its the Wines You Love to Hate...

Feel free to comment on your concurring/disagreement with my notion that these are the worst grapes in the world...and pictured is the soon to be member of this countdown, my grapevine bonsai that will one day produce a thimble of wine which will chart on this list.

5 - Cabernet Sauvignon - Before you start the chant to have me stoned in the village, I'll preface this by saying that this falls more under the category of overrated in my mind, rather than just god-awful. Left Bank Bordeaux certainly need not apply, as well as our California brethren that get it right and don't let their wines taste like some candy-coated exaggeration of the grape. But since Cabernet Sauvignon is seemingly grown in every nook-n-cranny, it has a target. I taste these wines on the regular and there are so many examples of greenish or flabby or overoaked versions of this grape that it often bears no resemblance whatsoever to the originator. I mean, we're talking about a LOT of wine here.

4 - Furmint - This grape is really awful and oh so appropriately named. It really does taste like fur and mint. Mmm, doesn't that sound delicious?

3 - Carmenere - I'm still at a loss to understand why these wines from Chile hold so much favor with the wine public. I'll admit that this is really more an indictment of Chilean wines in general than so much on this grape but they go hand in hand. Usually stalky and funky, these wines are grown on the wet side of the Andes...a fact that is hard to deny and equally difficult to recover from no matter how much oak you apply.

2 - Savagnin - This is the grape of Jura that makes that super-oxidative, trunk-o-funk wine that is almost brown and tastes like a hairball. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

1 - Pinotage - So firmly entrenched as the most awful grape in the world, that there is really nothing else to look at. For I would rather grab a glass and put one ounce each of a Jura, Carmenere, Furmint and Cabernet Sauvignon, stir it and drink it down rather than suffer the pain of Pinotage. Seriously, what knucklehead thought it would be a good idea to cross Pinot Noir (the greatest grape on earth, unquestionably) with Cinsault. Just the idea is preposterous! This filthy, vile grape is like drinking faint berry toned sod with pepper, bitters and farmers armpit after a hot day amongst the vines. It's clearly the worst grape in the world.

JCB the 4th