The Worst Wine - Ever

March 2025.  “Little darling - It's been a long, cold, lonely winter.”  It seemed so long since we had the warmth of the sun that Kim and I fled to Miami Beach to get some color back on our pasty selves.  We heard of the annual migration called “Spring Break,” but thought most college kids would go further north to Fort Lauderdale or over to Clearwater on the West coast.  However, there were plenty of string bikinis and cans of beer in the Miami area.  South Beach and Little Havana were essentially closed for any parking unless you handed your keys to a valet or hailed an Uber.    

In the area near our hotel in North Beach, the center of after-hours activity was the 24-hour CVS pharmacy on Collins Avenue which sold medicines, crackers and chips, candy, suntan lotion, souvenirs, and copious amounts of wine and beer.  I went on a mission to buy a bottle of red and a bottle of white for our room and our appetite, and it was there that I encountered the worst wine of my life.

Being sans a corkscrew and wanting to avoid corkage fees, my selection of red wines was limited to screwtop bottles.  The wine industry mantra is that screwtops are not necessarily a sign of inferior quality.  They seal well and avoid cork taint if you want to know.  Still, when it comes to red wines at the CVS, a screwtop should have been a warning.

There on the top shelf amid a jumble of reds and whites in no particular order, I found my Stella Rosa L’Originale Black. 

The bottle was embossed with a crown across the shoulder.  Elegant white, gold, and red script on the label announce that this is a “low alcohol grape wine specially with natural flavors” and that it is “semi-sweet.”  It is non-vintage.  A gold seal on the side announces that this wine received 90 Points – a Gold Medal and Best Buy award from Tastings.com (Beverage Testing Institute).  All of this seemed legit.

Wine aficionados will tell you that you should swirl wine before you taste it to experience the aromas that rise from the glass.  Stella Rosa produced one aroma – grape soda.  Supposedly, the wine is made mostly from the Brachetto grape from the Asti region of Northern Italy, but its aroma was that of Concord – as in Concord grape jelly.  The on-line tasting notes for Stella Rosa mention blackberry, blueberry, and raspberry notes.  Nah!

The taste was sickeningly sweet - a poster child for what wine reviewers refer to as cloyingly sweet wine.  With not much alcohol to make it interesting, the wine was flaccid, like some of the fat dudes we saw around our hotel pool.  It has an unwelcome lingering presence that I wouldn’t want to call it a “finish” – more of a foreign substance claiming squatters rights in your mouth.  

The wine didn’t have flaws in the traditional sense.  It wasn’t oxidized; there was no brett or smell of rotten eggs, etc.  Rather, I suspect my Stella Rosa was intentionally made to be like this.  Some of the comments you read online say this is a good introductory wine for young drinkers.  I would agree - if your objective is to turn them onto beer or spirits instead.

I couldn’t finish a single glass of the stuff for fear of becoming ill.  With no mouthwash to cleanse my palate from the sweet grape bomb, I had to brush my teeth to get back to normal.   

The Tastings.com award makes me wonder what the lower awards like Silver, Bronze, and “Not Recommended” could possibly be like.  They scored this wine as “Exceptional.”  I wonder how much worse a Platinum award could be.  

Eventually, I was able to secure a nice Argentinian Malbec that did quite well for me.  The hotel maids will find the Stella Rosa virtually untouched in our vacant room.  Perhaps they can find some college kids willing to trade for it.  However, throwing it in the trash would be no one’s loss.  I did gain something by setting the lower end of my wine tasting standards.  Many years ago, I read a Soviet Realist novel that still functions as the worst novel I’ve ever read (boy meets girl, boy meets tractor, boy falls for tractor).  Now I have the same floor in wine.