The joys of cheap, everyday wine...

Picked this up on a whim for $9.99 at Whole Foods and popped it today:

What a joy. Everything about this is “just right”. Nice fruit, sun-drenched savory Italian overtones, and a bit of tannic and acidic bite. (It’s a shame the equivalent $9.99 California wine is pseudo-swill made in a factory, but that’s another discussion.) I am thinking about this in the context of the “wine insurance” discussion, namely, what would happen if my cellar went up in flames… would I really miss all those $200 Napa Cabs and nosebleed Burgundies? I’m forced to admit the answer is “not really”, if I can find wines like this on a regular basis.

I fear we are overcomplicating life.

My wine of the night came from a 3L box - Les Treilles de Coupe-Roses 2017 - estate “boxed” in the Minervois in Languedoc and, to borrow your phrase, sun-drenched, but with enough acid and tannin to make it a worthy partner for my home-made pasta sauce dinner.

I am lucky to taste a lot of great wine. I always love coming home and having a glass of something easy as a reminder that the pleasures of wine are really simple, and I can very happily live with this.

The thread is off to a lovely start. Thanks to both of you!

Is it April 1st already. Lol

I guess if my wine cellar was destroyed, I would take the insurance money and put 3/4 of it away and buy a little bit of everything I am loving right now. I would then book an AirB&B in Italy and spend a month drinking inexpensive sun-drenched wines all made within a km of where I am standing, that would be the only rule.
Then I’d come back and drink RM, Sandler, Maybach and Produttori de Barbaresco…every day.

By the way, I almost cried when that 2013 August West Sierra Mar Pinot Noir dropped from my hands onto the cellar concrete floor this past Saturday so, yes, I’d be upset…

I agree, Nick. There have been many $10 +/- wines that have been “very very good” to me. There can be a place for these kinds of wines even for the more serious and discriminating wine drinkers among us. As elsewhere, it helps to have some knowledgeable advice so it’s not so “hit or miss”. I personally have benefitted from having my local wine guy featuring this segment in his “Joe’s Wine of the Week” selections. He has been on a pretty good hitting streak!

I texted Marc and Corey several days ago with the same point, after popping a Chasse Spleen with some age on it. I bet it was $20 or so in release. For daily pleasure, really hard to beat some of these mature Crus. While I know this from years of buy and drinking, I do get caught up chasing the big guns, when these honest, affordable wines also offer so much. I immediately bought almost two cases including: Sociando, Potensac, Lanessan and a couple others. The 2014 Lanessan with coupon came in at $17. I’ll be a happy man drinking that in ten years. Popped one last night, it’s a worthy buy. While I have a fair amount of these types of wines for maturing, the premium on storage space keeps me buying less. I should rethink.

I thought about that again as I was drinking this last night:

2015 Fabien Collonge Chiroubles L’Aurore des Côtes
Quite deep color with some magenta at the rim. Black cherry, dark berries, and some baking spice on the nose. Very lush and fruity but with a little grip too. Really outstanding QPR.

The simple truth is that wine is so much better today than it was when I started building a cellar in the early 90s. It’s really not that hard to manage an interesting cellar without spending a lot on wine. It’s especially true if you can live without leaning into the high-fashion areas that go in and out of vogue (see the Cornas thread).

I came very, very close to selling my cellar and going that route. After blind tasting with various groups weekly for ~15 years, I got a little jaded and became increasingly skeptical of the objective relative value of most (certainly not all) fine wine. In the end, I decided I had invested too much of myself in the hobby to leave it and my cellar is 5 days from completion.

The most interesting point, I think, is that if you poll hard core wine geeks with decades of exposure to the hobby or industry – like the people that are ITB or people that hang out here – I think you’ll often find a deeper appreciation of the joys of (well-selected) cheap(er) everyday wine.

Cheers.

a 2009 de villaine mercurey was drinking exceptionally well for its $29 sticker price. although top tier wines are always tempting, there is far less disappointment to be had with wines that are free of expectations.

I’m pretty careful about the ‘little’ wines I buy. But boy, isn’t that the truth.

Nice note. I always looks at the shelves when at WF or similar stores where I just might find a good wine, and wonder if there’s a hidden gem. Sometimes it disappoints, but at $10, it’s a small risk. When it works it seems like a coup. Having an old world palate makes it much, much easier IMO. Italy and off-the-beaten-path regions of France often provide this kind of cheap thrill. As Alfert mentions, even BDX can offer much to love in value categories, but they tend to require patience whereas wines like this are ready to go right off the bat.

I recently had a Hecht & Bannier Cotes du Roussillon Villages that was also $10 at WF (on sale) and was very much in line with what you found here; juicy and simple in the best ways, it was ideal with grilled sausages and did everything you could ask of it. For a negociant bottling at $10 from the South of France expectations were low, and, as mentioned, that led to a happy surprise.

My wife and I drink “cheap, everyday” wine pretty much every day…$15 - $35/bottle. There’s an ocean of mediocrity in that price range (pretty much every price range, actually) but we’ve found many dozens of various bottlings to fit the bill over the past decade. They’re rarely profound, but often offer complexity and interest. I’ve found the price/quality curve to be logarithmic so at a certain point, huge jumps in price produce marginal increases in quality. Maybe if my palate were more sophisticated…

Cheap everyday wines help protect the cellar while more precious gems hopefully blossom to meet future expectations.

Perhaps most importantly, I find that cheap everyday wines offer satisfaction. I accept that’s not true for everyone.

RT

I’m pretty careful about the ‘little’ wines I buy.

Opposite here. I am very careful before I pay $100 or more for a wine made by a high-priced consultant to garner high scores from a critic I don’t care about to feed the ego of someone with lots of money who wanted to be “into” wine and open a winery.

But there are many many wines in the $20 range that are worth drinking and even when they’re corked, aren’t that upsetting. Last week we had Mont Thabor CdR - funky as hell with a lot of dark cherry notes and very ripe sweet fruit, but good CdR and if you’re going to buy SQN, you might as well buy a few cases of this at under $15/btl. And we had a great Mencia that would definitely be a great bistro wine - Bodegas Adriá Viña Barroca Bierzo that comes in for around the same price. No new money there, just an old collection of growers who decided to up their game.

Then there was Vins de Vienne Vin de Pays des Collines Rhodaniennes, old school Syrah, lean and meaty, and a Blaufrankish from Sopron - Weizer, contrasted with one from Slovenia called Kobal, both of which were slightly over $20 retail but well worth it.

And I met a new guy this weekend, or new to me at least - Joe Swick. Winemaker from Oregon making stunningly good wines, but of a type. Actually made a Pinot Noir that I enjoyed. His aesthetic may not be for everyone as his wines are a bit cloudy and lean, but they’re all enjoyable, all utterly different, and all under $25. How many people make a Mourvedre/Counoise blend in Oregon? And his Chardonnay was first-rate.

I’m far more careful about the Nap Cabs I buy these days. When I want a consulting winemaker expensive Cab that is big, sweet, and lacking any Cab character, I buy based on price. Otherwise I select from a handful of old favorites.

What am I; chopped liver?

I thought you retired!

Yeah, it’s kind of hard to back off once the giant cellar has already been built. I should have had the wisdom to stick with a 500-bottle Eurocave to force discipline. I am sick of opening the umpteenth $150 bottle that doesn’t deliver because of reasons inside or outside my comprehension. Enough!

Where did you pick this up? I miss those ‘good’ box wines - had a company who launched a few years back, but looks like they didn’t make it. Forgot their name…

Bravo Nick
It’s a lesson that I took a while to learn, as whilst I’m never a player at the proper top end, I was invariably leaning towards the fancier bottlings almost by default. Some of those turned out to be over-ripe, over-oaked and overweight bottles that were less enjoyable to drink than their kid brothers. Many others needed more time in the cellar than they were getting. At best I had a lot of weekend / get together with wine friends ‘serious’ wines, many of which needed much longer in the cellar. So my cellar was unbalanced.

These days there is a much more useful smattering of simpler, more rustic wines in the cellar. Some have disappointed, but not much more than the fancier wines. I also buy into the logic that having simpler wines helps you appreciate the fancier wines when they come along, often best illustrated by how bored I get with single region / single grape offline dinners. At such events I find myself getting bored of Nebbiolo in its grand forms, longing for a Barbera, Vespolina, Grignolino (or indeed Erbaluce or Timorasso). Too much of a good thing doesn’t work for me. Conversely I generally find loose themed, or free for all offlines a much greater joy, and they’ll often avoid the worst excesses of generosity as people all go for fancy wines to avoid letting the side down (I applaud the sentiment, but the end result can be monotonous).

Montepulciano d’Abruzzo seems to be a very useful style at the lower end, with juicy fruit that is appetising, and can cope with a little overcropping. Going a bit further south, I find Puglia has some fine value as well.

Regards
Ian

I am enjoying reading this thread!!

I truly love the experience of finding an inexpensive, joyful wine.


What do I mean by “joyful”?

I consider lighter-bodied wines with fresh flavors, clean finishes, and broad applications on (and off) the table, to be “joyful wines”. They are usually lower in tannins - in the case of reds - and slightly higher in acidity - wines that could be served with a bit of a chill.

Young Montepulcianos, some Côtes du Rhônes, many basic Beaujolais (and village-level bottlings from Fleurie or Saint-Amour), inexpensive Bardolino and Valpolicella wines, etc, meet my criteria for reds.

Whites with fresh, zippy fruit evocative of “Spring in a Bottle” - that typically do not undergo Malo, or are aged in old oak/stainless steel - are also considered “joyful wines” by me.


There are more and more American wines being made in a style that I would call “joyful”. The only catch is that they often venture out of the price range to be called inexpensive.

From me!

But the importer, Vintage 59, sells in California (I think). Ask a good retailer and see what they say.

I’ve wanted to start a thread on box wines for some time but was too embarrassed. Thanks for this suggestion. Hopefully I like it too and am always in need of a good cellar defender