1) Columbia Crest Two Vines Chardonnay, 2004 (Washington) - An $8 wine which tastes utterly cheap, flat, and boring.  An appropriate match to their $8 cabernet sauvignon I reviewed last time.  Although I'm scoring this a 5 for low average I mean it as a very very low average.

2) Terre Rubre, Cerasus, 2004 (Italy) - I bought this in the Italian North End and I was excited thinking I'd found a different grape.  An internet search later revealed this cesanese grape is actually an Italian clone of the French cabernet franc, so instead of a unique grape it turned out to be rather common.  Then when we went to try this we had the Ironstone version of the same grape (see below) to compare it to.  Clearly the Terre Rubre was the loser.  This was a spicy wine with green pepper and grass but it was bitter, dry, and really not enjoyed by anyone in the room at our wine tasting group.  And later after it had time to open up it actually had gotten worse and had some sort of amonia smell.  The only question with this is how low to go with the score.  Clearly it's below average, however, my impression is this is still a classic style of regional Italian wine (whether we like it or not) so I'm going to be generous and give it a 4 (leaning on 3).  It's clearly below average.

3) Ironstone Vineyards, Reserve, Cabernet Franc, 2003 (California) - Although the same grape as the Terre Rubre this was night and day difference in a wine.  This was a very bold rich wine dense with flavors, especially raspberry.  It had the character of a medium zinfandel.  Everyone in the room loved it and we debated giving it two stars on our chart.  I personally would love to drink another bottle of this.  Not that it's the best wine, it's still only getting a 7 out of 10 from me, but that's still really good.  In my opinion this is clearly above average leaning on well above average.

4) Starfire Zinfandel, 2005 (Lodi, California) - A good bold upper average zifandel.  It probably doesn't fully live up to it's "starfire" name.  In fact the Monkey Business $10 zin was still better than this $15+ bottle.  But I fully enjoyed every drop of this and it's a quality product.  6 out of 10 for upper average.