Quality Cheap Wine

[BadBoyBenny]

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You can also do well with Spanish reds for less than $20

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Can anyone provide more specific advice for Spanish reds?

[HDPM]

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You can also do well with Spanish reds for less than $20

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Can anyone provide more specific advice for Spanish reds?

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I never seem to remember the names of some of the Spanish ones and I don't drink them too often. But my favorite inexpensive one at a casual Basque restaurant we go to is Izadi crianza. That retails for about 12 in my area when it is available. The restaurant charges the colossal price of 15 for the bottle and about 4 for the glass.

[MrMon]

Spain has increased in quality incredibly in the last few years and is a really good bargain right now. But because they use different grape varieties, you really need to talk to the people at a store who will be more familiar with it. Even Spanish whites are now good, which was not the case except for Albarino a few years ago.

Australian rieslings are also a hot up and comer at a bargain price, and check out Argentine malbecs.

[MCS]

Hardy's in the box.

[Rduke55]

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find a wine store with a knowledgable staff

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This is the best advice. Different stores in different areas have different wines. Especially when you are talking about good affordable wines b/c these are often from smaller places (as opposed to [censored] like yellowtail, etc.). If someone from my area wanted to know what wines I like for $X I could give them recommendations but otherwise stick to Mon's advice.

[Rduke55]

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There are some prety good values in WA State wine. The Columbia Crest winery puts out some pretty reasonable wines in the $7 range on their Two Vines label. Their Grand Estates label is one step up, and is pretty solid wine for usually <$9. The Two Vines Chardonnay is pretty well regarded, and I really like the Grand Estates Cabernet for the price.

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yeah, the cab is good, and the 2 vines cab for like 6.99 is a very good value. For whatever reason, I think the grand estates merlot isn't good. The cab is better I think. WS gave the merlot a high score, but I hated it.

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I don't care as much for merlot as a variety, so I haven't had either merlot in a long time.

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You may want to get back to them. The merlot boom starting in the 80's resulted in people not pruning, etc. their vines and resulted in an overproduction and a huge drop in quality. Recently merlot makers have been reversing the trend.

[MrMon]

Top quality merlot can imitate cabernet, and a lot of people can't spot the difference blind, yet it costs a lot less.

I'm a huge fan of Clos Pegase's Mitsuko's Vineyard Merlot, I usually pick it up once a year from them direct when they clear it out for $15-16 a bottle. There are other good Merlot bargains from Napa, just check around and try a few.

Watery, weak mass-market merlot = bad. Fruit-bomb merlot = mmmmm!

[MrWookie]

I'm more than willing to accept that there's good merlot out there. It's just that the world of wine is so huge, I've generally chosen to explore things I know I'll like (cab, zin, riesling, and a little bit of Bordeaux, Rhone, and Tuscany) and veered away from things I haven't liked as much (chardonnay, merlot). I appreciate the merlot rec, though. I'll look that one up next time I'm in the liquor store.

[Rick Nebiolo]

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Pretty much everyone I talk to agrees that there are wines under $20 that are as good as their more expensive brethren. I am hoping for ideas, as the wine section of the liqour store can be intimidating for me unless I am looking for stuff that I already know pretty well.

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Go to Target and get the 3 liter box of Chardonnay for $16 (equal to four normal $4 bottles). They also have about five other varieties but I'd start there. Fits on the second shelve of the fridge. The last glass will taste almost the same as the first, even if it takes you a month to drink to drink it. gf likes it more than the $10 bottles of reasonably popular wine we used to drink.

Wine in boxes will become far more common in a few years, and include more and more decent stuff. Trust me.

~ Rick

[testaaja]

I don't really know anything about wines but that they can get you drunk. We had a 10 liter & 2x 6-packs (red) of wine when we were in italy and, well, I drank quite a bit of that stuff. Tasty and really good. Bottles were 0.79 euros/piece so hell they were cheap. So I'd say, try the wines. The 10 liter stuff was pretty horrible but I managed to get it down (what wouldn't I [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]). I think you know this but I'm still drunkeen from the night and I can't sleep anymore so I thought I should write up something reaally important.
Peace lopl [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]