This is the second part of a two part series on Crane Lake wines; this one is on the Red wines. The first part was on the white wines, and you can find it here. Crane Lake is a budget tier table wine, one of the Bronco wine labels owned by Frank Franzia, part of his Classic California group. Bronco is best known as the makers of Charles Shaw wines, the "Two Buck Chuck" wines sold by Trader Joe's. These are all California wines.

Crane Lake Reds

Crane Lake Cabernet Sauvignon 2006

In a glass, the wine is an attractive garnet red, but the color and the aroma both make me suspect that it's not 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. Blackberry on the nose. The taste is fruity, but with a bit of an edge, not jammy at all. The label is completely uninformative though, so I have no idea. This is a rather gentle Cabernet Sauvignon, quieter than either the California Meridian Cabernet Sauvignon, which is more oaky than this, or the Australian AU Cabernet Sauvignons. I wonder if this subdued, muted quality is the result of blending bulk wines from various vines and wineries? The ABV is 12.96.

Crane Lake Zinfandel 2006

We picked this up out of sheer curiosity at the local co-op, since we've been trying Crane Lake wines. The co-op is usually rather snotty about wine, favoring imports over North American wineries, and varietals over blends, so seeing Crane Lake on the shelves was a surprise. This is a robust and peppery Zinfandel. A massive, hearty wine, that reminds me very much of Chinese spiced dried plums. My first thought was that it was like the Riunite Lambrusco of the early 1980s. It's a fun wine, and quite quaffable. It's got the peppery, spicy quality of Zinfandel but it's a bit sweeter, and fruitier than the California Sutter Home Zinfandel. A few friends could easily kill two or three bottles over a couple of shared pizzas, and honestly, it's just about perfect for that.

Crane Lake Merlot 2007

Love dark red with ruby highlights. Plum and blackberry on the nose. Fruit very much dominates the flavor, with none of the slightly bitter dark cocoa or coffee I have noticed in other Merlots. It's a lovely color, but the wine strikes me, somewhat oddly as thin, or muted. The wine in the glass doesn't adhere to the glass much; there's less streaking than I'd expect. Once again, the label is so very very uninformative that I don't really know what's in the bottle—but I suspect it's not all Merlot. It's a very smooth, mellow, even silky, wine. I think I might describe this as a Merlot for people who think they don't like Merlot.

Crane Lake Sangiovese 2008

The aroma is fruity, and a bit like ripe strawberries. In the glass this is a dark crimson with ruby highlights. In flavor, it's far less fruity than the aroma would suggest, and noticeably dry. There's a bit of the spicy quality I associate with Zinfandel, but this is more oaky and drier by far. This is what people who don't like red wine think red wine tastes like, and I can see why Sangiovese is so often used in blends. This is not a wine to drink on its own. This is a wine that needs food, but that pays off in the pairing. We liked it quite a bit though, and are thinking about what to pair it with.

There's a lot about Bronco Wines that I find problematic. I admit to being completely confused by a long list of labels that seem to be in the same tier. I also admit that I'm more than a little suspicious that a number of the labels are more about branding than the wine in the bottles, and that the bottle contents are the same, but that's quite possibly just me being cynical about branding and globalization. I think some of Bronco's business practices are iffy, but I admire Frank Franzi's work ethic and refusal to engage in wine snobbery. I also admire Franzia's operating assumption that wine is to be enjoyed, now, with food, as a regular part of life. It reminds me of the attitude of friends of mine who live in Tuscany and the French countryside, where small wineries make wine for local and immediate consumption.