Sometimes, when I am at Trader Joe’s, I find it hard to choose between $5 bottles of wine. Often, I have not tried them before, I know nothing about the wineries, and really, I have no basis on which to make an informed decision. I ran into exactly this scenario last weekend at Trader Joe’s. In the end, I made my decision on the ultimate tie-breaking criteria: which wine had the cooler label. In this instance the winner was Flying Heart Red (it has a heart with wings!). I grabbed a bottle for $5 and took it home to try out.
The Flying Heart Red is a blend of practically every red wine you’ve ever heard of. Is Merlot in there? Yes. How about Cabernet Sauvignon? Check. Zinfindel? That’s there there. Cabernet Franc? That too. Syrah? Yes, it has Syrah as well. In fact, it has even more than that. Chardonnay. This is a red blend with Chardonnay. Weird, right? When you are blending so many different grapes, things are either going to be great or they are going to be an absolute mess of competing flavors.
This wine is decent. It has a lot of sweet berry flavors that almost make it taste like alcoholic grape juice. It does go down easy, but it is not what I’m looking for in a bottle of red wine – even a $5 one.
Fyi: some if the wine there are bottled under mock labels owned by TJ’s. Which is awesome cause they get juice from established wineries with extras, throw it in a bottle, call it blue fin, sell it for $4 while the same stuff made by xxxxxxx winery is $15. Yay TJ!
Anyway, I don’t think it’s the case with this wine. It tastes like Pinot noir mixed with koolaid, a splash of merlot, and garnished with a cinnamon stick. (eew). Grab this years VINTJS sauv blanc, it’s excellent and from a great supplier
Actually, it tastes remarkably like Georgian wine, and anybody of former USSR extraction who’s missing Georgian wine should hasten to TJ’s to get some.
For the rest of us, this is a semi-sweet wine great for summer sipping or with dessert.
tastes like 70′s era Spanada, only sweeter
Actually Jim, more like Tyrolia blended with Blue Nun and any of T.J. Swann’s finer wines like Easy Nights or Mellow Days.
Actually, you don’t know what you’re talking about (see above).
can I order wine from Trader Joe’s and have it mailed?
can trader joes wine, spices etc.. be mailed to me?
Ginny -
Trader Joe’s does not ship anything. Your best bet is to find a friend who can put together a care package and mail it to you!
Cheers,
Dave
Far too sweet for my palate. Not at all what I would consider to be a normal flavor profile for red wine. Regret this purchase.
Bought this. Husband loves it. Can’t get the label to soak off intact. Cool label. I collect them. Tried to find a web site. Can’t locate. Admin…can you help? :}
I think it might be a Trader Joe’s exclusive, hence the difficulty in finding a website.
So this bottle was given to me by a friend (he’s never tried it before either) and when I first opened it, it smelled nice, my mouth even watered a bit so I got very excited until I actually took the first sip, yikes! this wines is extremely sweet, doesn’t taste like any variety of grapes I’ve ever tasted before, I keep looking every where so try to find out what’s in it. Does anybody know? anyways, just a bad wine.
What season does Flying Heart wine come out?