Sometimes finishing fourth in a four-horse race isn’t quite the “epic fail” you might think.

In the first of what will hopefully be weekly(ish) gatherings of the Wine for the Rest of Us Tasting panel, a double blind tasting of South American reds yielded a clear favorite. But second, third and fourth place finishers were separated by barely a quarter of a star (on a five-star scale).

The winner was the ringer among the four wines--Graffigna Malbec Grand Reserve 2010, which ranges in price from about $17 to $23 a bottle and averages $20 a bottle, according to wine-searcher.com. It averaged a three-star rating from the panel of nine tasters (casual, everyday wine drinkers; not a professional palate among them). But as is typical of the better wines in these blind tastings, its scores were all over the map; one third of the tasters gave it only two stars, while another three awarded it four stars.

This website has recently featured three great Italian red wine values, so in anticipation of unveiling our official Top 5 Italian Red Wine Values list, it’s fitting that we found sales on two more candidates.

Unfortunately, we’re not likely to see the $8 sale prices we found for Tormaresca Neprica Puglia IGT at the end of last year, at least until the new 2011 vintage reaches the Washington area, and maybe not until clearance sales later this year. (The 2011 has been released in some parts of the country, but we haven’t found it in Virginia, Maryland or the District yet. The importer and distributor say it’s in the warehouse and coming soon.)

The 2010 vintage is on sale at Pearson’s in Glover Park for $9.95 a bottle, marked down from an inflated $15.99 regular price. It can be found in the District at Rodman’s on Wisconsin Ave. for $9.99 and at Calvert Woodley for $10.99. It’s also available in Maryland at some Montgomery County Liquor stores for $10.85 a bottle, but Total Wine has bumped its price up to $11.99. (So glad we scored a case of the 2010 at the old $7.99 price.)

As noted in the Top 5 French red wine values, 2006 Château de Ségriès was among the first Cotes du Rhônes recommended in this column. Six vintages later, you can try the 2012 for the same $9 sale price featured here more than four years ago.

There are probably a dozen or more Cotes du Rhônes that are credible candidates to join Château de Ségriès and the various bottlings from Perrin et Fils on the Top 5 French red wine values list. But none have the consistency year-in and year-out of the basic red from Henri de Lanzac, who bought the Château de Ségriès estate nearly 20 years ago and has been improving the wines ever since.

This website was a little late alerting readers to the latest vintage of a pair of Top 5 Italian red wines. Supplies were already running thin when we recommended the 2010 vintage of both Falesco Vitiano Rosso and Michele Chiarlo Barbera d'Asti Superiore le Orme last week. That shouldn’t be the case with “a Tuscan classic” that’s just now reaching the market.

The 2009 vintage of Monte Antico Rosso Tuscana got an extra six months of aging in bottle before its release, and it’s only now showing up on store shelves; you’re just as likely to find the 2008 or even 2007 in many wine shops. And though the new vintage hasn’t yet been scored by the critics, it comes from a long line of delicious reds that have scored well every year over the past 20 or more, yet still sells for between $10 and $12 a bottle. The 2006 earned a place on Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of 2009 (we recommended it a month before the Spectator list came out), scoring 90 points, followed by the 88-point 2007 (recommended here) and 88-point 2008.