My children have been blessed with a wonderful stepmother who is unlike me in most every way. She is tall, a statuesque brunette, while I’m the sort of mom a teenage boy can pick up and move out of the way. She’s concrete and detail-conscious where I am abstract and forgetful. She loves to shop, drinks sweet, sparkly wines, and eats red meat on a near-daily basis. Also, she’s from Oklahoma — and a great southern cook.
When my 13-year-old daughter needs to buy party clothes or bookshelves from IKEA, I give her my credit card and she goes to her father and stepmother’s house, with my blessing. (Me. . .I get hives whenever I drive within 5 miles of a mall.) Often she’ll stay for dinner. Last time she came home all excited about a delicacy called Frito Pie.
So for our family dinner last night (mine and my husband’s with the children we all share), my daughter made her stepmother’s version of this Texan dish: Fritos, ground beef, spicy chili beans, diced tomatoes, onions, cheese and sour cream. As it happened, my husband had stopped at Byerly’s earlier in the day and they were having a penny sale on Red Bicyclette wine (buy one bottle for $10.99, get the other for a penny — who could resist such a deal?), so he picked up a couple to try.
What a happy coincidence. Talk about a pairing! I can imagine nothing better to go with Frito Pie — which was tasty and filling and, in our house at least, a fun departure from the usual vegetable-heavy fare — than this profoundly adequate French table wine.
First, you have to admit, the label is just too cute. It’s like something right out of the canon of François Truffaut — or, for you more modern cinephiles, this past summer’s Ratatouille.
But also, this is exactly what a mediocre rural French table wine should be: fruity, drinkable, and inoffensive, meaning there is no bitter, sour, sharp, or syrupy flavor. Red Bicyclette is rather like Fritos and sour cream in this respect: no matter which “varietal” you buy, it is generic and soothing, pleasantly bland, straightforward and serviceable.
Don’t be fooled, though. While Red Bicyclette may appear to be a charming little garage wine from the south of France, it is in fact a product of the California-based winemaking monster E. & J. Gallo, the same people who brought the world Carlo Rossi and Chardonnay-in-a-box. Is it worth $5.50 a bottle? I’d say yes, particularly if you’re having Fritos for dinner. But not a penny more.
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