CheapWineFinder’s Beginners Guide To Wine Part 5
January 22, 2010 by dave
Where Do The Good Value Wines Come From?
Winemakers are paying more attention to value priced wines than ever before. It is relatively easy to find a perfectly nice affordable wine to drink. With a little knowledge, you can find a perfectly awesome wine to drink. There are wine growing areas around the world that are famed for their wines, Bordeaux, Tuscany, Napa, Rioja, etc…, wines from these regions are excellent and in demand and the price of these wines reflect that. But often winemakers from just outside these growing regions also make excellent wines, but because they are not located in the official boundaries of the hot, trendy area, they can’t charge as much for their wine.
In France, Bordeaux wines tend to be very expensive, but wines from the Rhone Valley for reds and the Loire Valley for whites can be bargains in comparison. In Spain, Rioja makes wonderful pricey wines and Jumilla makes wonderful affordable wines. In Italy, Tuscany is one of several regions making exciting wines, but Puglia and Sicily are making excellent well priced wines. In Washington State, the wines from Walla Walla rival the wines from Napa, but Columbia Valley makes a wide variety of excellent under $20 wines. In California, Napa is famous for it’s outstanding wine, but Lodi and Paso Robles (among others) are making top shelf wines. In Australia there are more under $20 wines with a rating of 90 points or more than any other wine region. Australia has been concentrating on it’s value wines far longer than most of the wine regions.Portugal is famous for it’s Port wines, but the food friendly red and white wines it produces are of very good quality and extremely under priced. The wines of South America are terrific values, they have really come into their own as a mature wine growing region in the last few years. Land and labor costs are lower there than most of the wine growing areas and they have not yet developed a trendy reputation to jack up the price of their wine, The quality of the wines are on par with any wine regions out there and the price is far less. You should be exploring the wines of Chile and Argentina (and Brazil), before the prices go up. South Africa is another up and coming wine region that has quality wines and reasonable prices.
There are many different varietals of grapes that make very tasty wines, the more popular varieties tend to cost more than the less known grapes. While Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon are well known grapes and can make exceptional wines, they are not the only grapes that can be turned into kick ass wine. For white wines some good grapes to explore are: Alberino, Chenin Blanc, Viognier, Riesling, Gewurztraminer and Sauvignon Blanc. For red wines try: Cabernet Franc, Grenache, Malbec, Mourvedre, Petite Sirah, Shiraz and Tinta Negra for some well priced wines. I named only a few of the available grape varietals, experiment, see which ones are the right wines for you.
Wine blends can be very reasonably priced (not always, some blends can be very pricey), but blending wine can be a excellent way of making grapes with deficiencies into to very good wine. Say you have some Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, they taste good, but the nose is kind of light and the color is weak and the tannins are a little too noticeable. It’s going to make a lousy single varietal wine, but if you add some Merlot to soften the tannins and then throw in a little grenache to add another flavor and then some Cab Franc to punch up the color and finally splash in some Viognier (a white wine, but it has a very fragrant pretty nose) into the vat, you now have a well rounded bottle of wine. Most bottles of red wines have other grapes added into the mix, in California the law states that for a bottle to labeled as a single varietal, say Merlot, it has to contain at least 75% Merlot, so 25% of the bottle can be whatever grapes the winemaker thought the Merlot needed to really shine.
Be open minded about different grape varietals and growing areas. Say, you tried 3 Spanish wines and were not that crazy about any of them, well you have only tasted less than 1% of all the Spanish wines available. That is too small of a sample to make an informed conclusion. Keep trying new wines, there are so many wonderful wine being made, don’t settle for just what you are familiar with.
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