Bargain wines big winners in a new book whose testers tried 6,000 glasses of wine

On a lark, I’ve been know to select a wine by the welcoming contour of the bottle in my hand.

Or when a fantastic label design meets my eye.

Sometimes I like what I get.

Sometimes not.

But the point is, after tasting, I know what I like.

Or so I think.

When the wine stars align in a particular way and I decide to splurge on the product of some otherwise fiscally forbidding region of France or Italy, does the price help make up my mind about its likeableness a bit?

Am I sometimes duped by a particular vineyard’s celebrity status into discerning a deliciousness I could have more affordably found in Two-Buck Chuck?

Several recent articles (including at The New York Times and Newsweek) explore the labyrinthine psychology of wine appreciation.

They come in the wake of a new book, The Wine Trials, that boasts of uncovering “100 wines under $15 that outscored $50-$150 wines in brown-bag blind tastings.”

Those results are based on tastings of more than 6,000 glasses of wine by 500 wine experts and everyday wine drinkers, according to the book publisher. Press kit examples:

  • Two-thirds of tasters preferred a $12 Domaine Ste. Michelle Brut, a Washington State sparkling wine, to a $150 Dom Pérignon Champagne; a six-dollar Vinho Verde from Portugal beat out a $40 California Chardonnay and a $50 1er Cru white Burgundy.

Other picks from the book:

  • Aveleda Vinho Verde, Portugal, $6
  • La Vieille Ferme Rouge, Perrin & Fils, France, $8
  • Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc, New Zealand, $13

These findings shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to alert readers of Wine News Review, home of the aptly named fairly frugal affordability index.

As I say in the About page concerning the guiding principle of this blog: “Even some of the world’s top experts acknowledge, wine doesn’t have to be pricey to be good.”

Scientists, too, have chimed in.

A California Institute of Technology study earlier this year — plumbing the exotic field of neuroeconomics, the subconscious appeal of expensive stuff — found that people report a greater enjoyment of wine if they think it costs more.

Turns out, that’s no big surprise either, in wine circles, at least, according to this Times Online article:

Rupert Wollheim, a master of wine who runs ripegrapes.co.uk, an online wine retailer, said that the response described by [the study] was well known in the wine business.

He said: ‘Price is just one of the elements, but if you served the same wine in better glasses or a grander environment, that would also make people think the very same wine was better.’

USA TODAY‘s Jerry Shriver decided to put the tester to the test. He tried 10 wines blind. And then he tried the same wines with the labels visible.

Interestingly, he discovered that his top three favorite wines were the same from both tastings (including this affordable pick: 2007 Georges Duboeuf Clos des Quatre Vents, Fleurie, Beaujolais, France, about $12).

Which reminds me of an observation in one of my previous postings: Just as Duke Ellington opined about the quality of music (“If it sounds good, it is good”), the same could also be said about wine.

If it tastes good, it is good.

Even if it’s inexpensive!

Want to find a perfectly priced bottle of wine? Give the Smarter Wine Search a try.

Consumers are smartening up and getting more kicks from champagne bargains

“I get no kick from champagne.
Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all,
So tell me why should it be true
That I get a kick out of you”
Cole Porter

With all due respect, Cole, an increasing number of us do indeed get a kick from champagne. Or for that matter, from sparkling wines in general.

Particularly around that time of year when the confetti starts flying, the noise makers start making noise and New York’s Times Square holds its collective breath for the New Year’s ball to drop.

As this recent USA TODAY article proclaims: “Bubbles are back.”

Not since the buying frenzy of 1999, when people bought champagne in bulk to ring in the millennium, have U.S. champagne and sparkling wine sales been so high. Volume for 2007 is expected to hit 900 million glasses, up 4% over 2006, says the 2007 Impact Annual Wine Study.

Among the things driving the rise in sales is heightened consumer education about price, flavors and food pairings, according to the article.

So I thought I’d do my pre-holiday bit and bubble up a little know-how that could come in handy as you consider what sparkling wine to select.

A good place to start is this tempting list of bubblies — “from bone-dry and austere to very fruity to sweet” — brought to us by the San Francisco Chronicle. (Affordability alert: This NV Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut, from one of California’s several French-owned sparkling wine producers, rings up at only $23 but earned three stars.)

Speaking of affordability (or at least, relative affordability), Mike Steinberger at Slate reviews non-vintage champagne offerings, which unlike their vintage cousins are typically blended from wines from different years. Steinberger also cites the Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut, calling it “arguably the best-value bubbly on the market.”

At Food & Wine, Ray Isle continues the non-vintage thread with five of his favorites to look for this holiday season.

If you really can’t get enough of the stuff, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg at The Washington Post offer some decadently tantalizing instructions on how to have A Sparkling Toast for Every Course.

Concluding our educational focus:

Happy New Year!

Weekend wine bargains: “soft and round” tops experts’ picks

Comparing the picks: A survey of recent selections from popular wine experts, spotlighting bargains and best values.

2006 Ironstone Vineyards Obsession Symphony Sierra Foothills, U.S.A. – California:
Natalie MacLean — “soft and round with a touch of sweetness” and the brand’s typical fragrance, her best-value white. $14.95

2006 McManis Family Vineyards Syrah, Calif.:
Jerry Shriver — serves up tones of black cherries and blueberries … “I could quaff this by itself or with a nice pork roast.” About $11

Tahbilk Marsanne 2005 Nagambie Lakes, Victoria:
Jancis Robinson — she calls this quite a rare variety, “pale gold and has an attractively wide range of aromas and flavours – ripe apricots and peaches, ripe apples, something slightly floral, maybe honeysuckle, and just a little bit of honey.” Under £7 in the UK

Banfi, Toscana IGT (Tuscany, Italy) Chardonnay & Pinot Grigio “Le Rime” 2006:
Michael Franz — “tasty little wine is fresh and pure and very usefully balanced on the line between light and medium body,” offering pear and white-melon flavors. $9

Yellow Tail Chardonnay South Eastern Australia The Reserve 2005:
Wine Spectator — neither heavy nor sweet, “soft and fruity, with spice and floral character piling on.” $11

Tip: Print out this list and bring it to you local wine shop — even if a specific favorite isn’t available, ask the salesperson to recommend something similar. Or try browsing the latest wine reports from this custom collection of hundreds of news websites — filtered for bargains, continuously updated, and quick and easy to scan:

  • Reds (from Beaujolais to Zinfandel)
  • Whites (from Chablis to Sauvignon Blanc)
  • Organic (red, white, in between)

To hit closer to home, try WNR’s Advanced Wine Search tool and see what wine finds local columnists and wine experts may be writing about in your area. Once there, just type in your city and state (within quotation marks, as in, “Napa, California”), to get results ranked by relevance.

Or dig into some perennial standbys at SFGate.com’s Top 100 Wines of 2006, the Top 100 of 2006 list (PDF download) from Wine Spectator and the list of 50 Wines You Can Always Trust from Food & Wine.

Attracted to a bottle that’s advertised in the local paper or sitting on the local wine store shelf?

Do a little background research with Wine Enthusiast’s free, searchable Wine Buying Guide—either with a specific name or by types and price. For a little extra info, try Robert Parker’s handy Vintage Chart. Or see what the online wine community says about it with the search tools at cork’d, snooth or Wine Log.

Once you’ve selected the wine, you naturally want to decide what to eat with it. For some savvy guidance, try Natalie MacLean’s Wine & Food Matcher, which boasts a database of 360,000 wine-food pairings.

The Web is about community. So take a moment to comment about your experience with a particular wine — to help steer others to or away from it. And of course, have a great weekend!

Weekend wine list — experts’ picks: from ‘peaceful’ to bubbly pleasure

Comparing the picks: A survey of recent selections from popular wine experts, ranging from a powerfully drinkable Cabernet and “peaceful” Chardonnay to a plentifully pleasurable bubbly and a black-cherry high-ender.

2005 Jacques & François Lurton Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon Mendozza, Argentina:
Natalie MacLean — combining “drinkability with power,” this Cabernet serves up “a whole lot of quality per cubic milliliter.” $14.95

2006 Buehler Vineyards Chardonnay, Russian River Valley, Calif.:
Jerry Shriver — a “peaceful wine” … the “gentleness of the ripe pear flavors, the soothing quality of the creamy texture and the homespun baked-cookie aromas just put me in an all-is-right-with-the-world mood.” $14

Alceño/Pedro Luis Martinez, Jumilla (Murcia, Spain) Crianza “Seleccion” 2004:
Michael Franz — “very well made from impressive material” and exhibiting complex flavors ranging from “subtly toasty oak … and light spices,” along with fruitiness. $16

J Laurens, Les Graimenous Brut 2005 Crémant de Limoux:
Jancis Robinson — “pleasure a plenty” seems to say it all for the dry bubbly from the far south of France that greets you with “deliciously inviting aromas of freshly baked apples and cream” when your nose first touches it. From £7.49 in the UK and also available in Europe and the US

2006 Colonia Las Liebres (bonarda):
Edward Deitch — a find from the Rivadavia and East Mendoza regions of Argentina, “a first-rate wine and an excellent value.” $7

2004 Corison Winery Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon:
Lynne Char Bennett — seemingly the best pick from this group of high-enders (let’s put the WNR fairly frugal affordability index aside temporarily) with a nose that “shows black cherry, cola and baking spice amid toast and sweet vanilla.” $70

Whenever there’s an option, the more-affordable wine is spotlighted, focusing on possible choices for weekend purchases. Prices are approximate. Check websites for full descriptions and other picks

Tip: Print out this list and bring it to you local wine shop — even if a specific favorite isn’t available, ask the salesperson to recommend something similar. Or try browsing the latest wine reports from this custom collection of hundreds of news websites — filtered for bargains, continuously updated, and quick and easy to scan:

  • Reds (from Beaujolais to Zinfandel)
  • Whites (from Chablis to Sauvignon Blanc)
  • Organic (red, white, in between)

To hit closer to home, try WNR’s Advanced Wine Search tool and see what wine finds local columnists and wine experts may be writing about in your area. Once there, just type in your city and state (within quotation marks, as in, “Napa, California”), to get results ranked by relevance.

Or dig into some perennial standbys at SFGate.com’s Top 100 Wines of 2006, the Top 100 of 2006 list (PDF download) from Wine Spectator and the list of 50 Wines You Can Always Trust from Food & Wine.

Attracted to a bottle that’s advertised in the local paper or sitting on the local wine store shelf?

Do a little background research with Wine Enthusiast’s free, searchable Wine Buying Guide—either with a specific name or by types and price. For a little extra info, try Robert Parker’s handy Vintage Chart. Or see what the online wine community says about it with the search tools at cork’d, snooth or Wine Log.

Once you’ve selected the wine, you naturally want to decide what to eat with it. For some savvy guidance, try Natalie MacLean’s Wine & Food Matcher, which boasts a database of 360,000 wine-food pairings.

The Web is about community. So take a moment to comment about your experience with a particular wine — to help steer others to or away from it. And of course, have a great weekend!

The Web’s latest wine buzz, 10/28/07

Tune in to what top wine bloggers and experts are decanting into cyberspace with handpicked highlights of their latest and greatest, ranging from reviews of luscious rosés and a sweet desert wine to the skinny on Montalcino and the care of stemware.


For Master Sommelier Ronn Wiegand at Vino!, Autumn’s deepening signals it’s time to focus on rosés — the dry ones, which are “usually fuller bodied and more complex in flavor than most white wines.” He serves up 16 international recommendations, many of them well within Wine News Review’s fairly frugal affordability index. (Full disclosure: Chalk it up to the seasonal vibes, in advance of reading Wiegand’s paean, I gravitated to a lovely organic rosé the other day, a 2006 Chateau Miraval Cotes de Provence. Lively and dry, as “lip-smacking” as the label promises. No autumnal melancholy states with this baby around!) Anyway, to quote Wiegand…

Dry rosés have improved dramatically in quality in recent years, both because more top wineries are producing them and because the wine type is being treated with “respect” (that is, wines are being produced from quality grapes, by experienced vintners).


Speaking of coincidences, my gaze naturally gravitated to a Wine News cover story on Brunello, after trying a splendid 1998 Rienzi Brunello di Montalcino recently. (Frugality warning: At $65, alert readers will surely note that it’s way beyond the affordability index — but, hey, it was at a tasting event so I had to drink it.) Written by Kerin O’Keefe, this piece offers everything you might want to know about the history and current events of Brunello and its birthplace, Montalcino — an in-depth story with some suspense thrown in.

Montalcino has become an international sensation. Americans, in particular, can’t seem to get enough of what is undoubtedly Tuscany’s most prestigious wine, with one in every four bottles of Brunello made destined for U.S. shores. Yet the elite appellation is facing certain challenges that may require tough remedies to keep quality up and bring what has become the enological pride and joy of all of Italy to new and sustained levels of greatness. 


Dorothy J. Gaiter And John Brecher at The Wall Street Journal provide some delicious instructions on how to cap off a sensational dinner with friends — a “great finishing touch,” courtesy of Muscat, “with its unique aromas and tastes of honeysuckle, apricots, peaches and just-picked grapes.” With reviews of eight bottles, some quite affordable .

It probably will take some effort to find a Muscat Canelli. Many stores won’t have any and it’s unlikely you’ll find a big selection anywhere. But they’re out there— we bought ours from six states. So our advice is that sometime soon, long before your next big dinner party, call around and see if you can find one. Then, after dinner, don’t ask your friends if they want to try a sweet wine— they’ll likely say no. Just open and pour. The wine will do the rest.


An estimated 3 to 5 percent of cork-sealed wines go bad, and the blame often unfairly goes to the winery rather than, say, bad handling on the way to the shop or restaurant. Here’s a Washington Post behind-the-scenes glimpse by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg at the extent to which wineries are trying to fight back. With some wine recommendations thrown in.

Even if a bottle of wine leaves its winery in immaculate condition, the road it travels to your glass is fraught with peril every step of the way. Because wine is a living, breathing substance, it can be mortally wounded by improper handling. A wine that starts out perfect can be ruined by many factors: how it is shipped and stored, when and with what it is poured.

Although a number of those elements are out of the winemaker’s hands, if a bottle disappoints, customers probably will blame the winery whose name is on the label. That is why some wineries increasingly are going to extraordinary lengths to ensure customer satisfaction.


There are times when the reason for having printers attached to computers is crystal clear — that is, bring along this Vinography review of the Wine & Spirits Top 100 Wineries for 2007 event next time you’re headed to a wine shop, perhaps in case one of these selections happens to be on sale.

Thankfully the Wine & Spirits list doesn’t actually rank these wineries from 1 to 100, which would be inane to say the least. They just publish an issue with profiles of each and list their high scoring wines (which presumably got them on the list to begin with).

But more to the point, the magazine also happens to put on a tasting where all 100 of these wineries are invited to pour the wines that were rated highly by the magazine, and it ends up being one hell of a tasting.


Speaking of crystal, there’s “no excuse for stemware abuse,” says Wine Enthusiast. A quick and savvy primer on how to wash, dry and otherwise care for glassware so as to avoid unwanted tastes and odors. Stuff you should know.

You’ve gone to so much trouble to select the right wine, purchase the perfect glasses, serve just the right food — it would put a damper on your dinner to serve in cloudy glasses with a faint odor. If you’re guilty of neglecting your stemware, read on. The fact of the matter is that the way in which you wash and care for wine glasses has a direct effect on the taste of wine. Properly caring for your crystal will insure that your wines always taste their best.