Sniffing out a bargain wine doesn’t have to make your head hurt
With just a little effort, you can find some tasty wines for $12 a bottle or less.
Sniffing out a bargain wine doesn’t have to make your head hurtFood Calendar Dec. 10Trappist monks mark the 20th anniversary of holiday baking at Assumption AbbeyDon’t buy, bake for the food lovers on your holiday gift listSecret Ingredient: Three brewsBrining the main attractionIt isn’t Thanksgiving without Ollie Perry’s sweet potato piePunch up your Thanksgiving tableThanksgiving menuThanksgiving cranberries: A penny savedThanksgiving recipe: Turkey soupThanksgiving recipe: Buttermilk biscuitsThanksgiving stuffing: relying on staplesThanksgiving Recipe: Potato mashupThanksgiving recipe: Bucking tradition with peas and pearl onions with baconEight simple substitutionsThanksgiving Recipe: Pumpkin-Chocolate Loaf and Pumpkin-Chocolate Bread PuddingStaff thoughts: What we’re most thankful for this year.It’s all gravy: Fun facts about that special extra somethingExploring the many merits of fatAs I pulled into the parking lot at work the other day, I spied an empty bottle of Korbel Sweet Rosé in a planted bed next to my car.
Now that’s a cheap wine if ever there was one.
Well, maybe not as cheap (or as bad) as the paper-bag wines, but even friends of mine who like drinking rosé would never get near that sugary sparkler made from a kitchen-sink variety of grapes.
On the other hand, cheap wine sounds pretty good in these economically challenged days. Thankfully cheap wine doesn’t always have to mean plonk.
In the wine world, the code word is value. Whether shopping retail or restaurant or wine bar lists, you should always ask: Am I getting a pretty fine wine for my money?
I’ve been talking lately about value with retailers, distributors and restaurant people. While there seems to be consensus on several points, including geography, service and smart shopping, everyone’s taste is different, so drinking inexpensively means deciding what works on your palate and with your mood. The more you sample, and the more you look beyond the big-brand, no-surprise wines for variety and value, the more bargains you will find.
Make mine Fuego
Spain has been flooding the U.S. market with lots of good to great wines, many of them available at retail for less than $10 a bottle, give or take.
Almost every wine professional I spoke with recently named Spain as a prime source of value-priced wine. The problem is, most American wine drinkers don’t know much about Spanish grapes such as Garnacha, Monastrell and Tempranillo, says Alan Hagedorn, of Royal Liquors, 103rd Street and State Line Road. “The American consumer doesn’t know Garnacha from Pouilly-Fuissé. The types of grapes the Spanish are using are more fruit-friendly, but they’re not as popular with Americans.”
So Hagedorn and others spend a lot of time introducing their customers to the pleasures of Spain.
I first encountered Garnacha de Fuego, a red wine from Spain’s Calatayud region, about a year ago. You couldn’t miss its flame-wrapped bottle, the kind of thing that makes you wonder whether it’s all about the marketing, not what’s inside the clever package.
But not only was this stuff drinkable, it was good: The producer, Bodegas Ateca, has turned the Garnacha grape into a wine that is earthy, spicy and rounded out with dark, plummy fruit.
“People love that wine,” says Jenni Cossey of Wine, a new shop in Brookside. “It’s got good structure, great tannins.”
And here’s the best part. My neighborhood grocery store last year was selling it for less than $8 a bottle. This season I’ve been finding it for $7.49 and even $7 a bottle at outlets around town. Bingo: Gomer’s Midtown had it the other day for $6.48.
That’s how to make amigos in the wine business.
I mean, really good wine doesn’t come much cheaper than that. And when you find one like it, you know you’ve got a go-to bottle for everyday drinking.
Bargains can be had from other countries as well.
At Cellar Rat, a Crossroads wine shop, managing partner Ryan Sciara likes Italy, Portugal and Argentina as other sources of value wines. “There’s still some cheaper stuff from Australia,” Sciara says, “but it’s getting more expensive.”
If you want value in Italian wines, though, it won’t be Chianti or Barolo or big Super Tuscans. Sciara suggests bottles from lesser known, up-and-coming regions of southern Italy, such as Puglia and Sicily.
Aaron Meeker, general manager of LDF Wines, a Kansas distributor, also likes a lot of the Malbecs from Argentina.
“Argentina has some great values and a lot of junk as well,” Meeker says. “Overall the quality is good, but there are a few producers that are ahead of the pack. Alamos is among that group. The entry level Malbec is pure Malbec. It has the mocha, spice, plum notes that you look for. This tends to retail around town from $8.99-$10.99 a bottle.”