There are a lot of bars in Harvard Square that serve decent glasses of prosecco and interesting cocktails for around ten bucks a pop, which is cute, considering I’ll have to start repaying student loans in a year if I don’t get into grad school. For this reason, FM is giving the people what they want: the best cheap wines of Harvard Square, reviewed by a seasoned early twenty-something casual drinker with no specialty knowledge of alcohol whatsoever. Have at me.
1. Trader Joe’s Block White
($10.99 for 3 liters; that’s $3.66 a liter!)
The convenient thing about Trader Joe’s Block White is that it’s in a box. The inconvenient thing is that—once poured out of the box and into your mouth—it tastes a bit like sipping watered-down white grape juice while someone in an adjacent room removes the chipping red polish off their toenails: sweet, some acetone, a veneer of fading glamour. It is a Thursday, and I down three glasses of the weak elixir in the chasm of anxiety between sending and receiving a booty text. I then read Lacan. The wine has a bouquet of honey cough drops and sexual anxiety; the box has a bouquet of cardboard.
2. Gaetano D’Aquino Pinot Grigio
($3.99/bottle. Trader Joe’s.)
It is Saturday. When I go to Trader Joe’s to get this bottle, I am greeted by the staff personally, indicating that I should be doing substantially more thesis reading. Gaetano D’Aquino is supposedly “light, crisp, and refreshing,” and I am 85-percent sure we have run into each other at a family reunion. Gaetano’s wine is full-bodied, like my high school drama teacher told me I was. Gaetano D’Aquino’s aftertaste is sort of lemony, and maybe a little peppery—or, then again, maybe not.
3. R.G.M.V. White Blend
($3.99/bottle. Trader Joe’s.)
At this point I can’t taste with much accuracy, but I’d say that this is a fruity wine, which is great because I am uncomfortable around heterosexual people. It’s from 2011, when I was approximately 30 pounds lighter and had three times the number of sexual partners, though I don’t think these two things are strictly correlated. This wine has a bouquet reminiscent of the other two wines, and it isn’t tannic. I am, however, getting some grapefruit notes. The label categorizes R.G.M.V. as a “white blend,” which also describes the racial composition of my hometown. This gives the evening a nostalgic, casually Republican feel.
