Blog Archives - Wine for the Rest of Us

More Wine Spectator Top 100 wines worth the $

11/30/2011

The three – count ‘em, three – value wines available locally that made the top half of Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of 2011 are worth seeking out for everyday wine drinkers. And in an ironic twist, all but one of the sub-$20 bottles in the bottom half of the Top 100 are step-up wines better suited for special occasions.

The easiest to find locally and least expensive – despite being listed at $24 a bottle in the No. 58 spot on the Top 100 – is Bodega Catena Zapata Malbec Mendoza 2009. It’s available every day for just $13.97 a bottle at Total Wine stores in Virginia, and on sale through December 17 for $13.99 at Chevy Chase Wine & Spirits. (See the slideshow for a representative sample of stores and prices throughout the area.)

Wine Spectator Top 100 includes some familiar values

11/28/2011

Even with unemployment hovering around 9 percent nationally, the editors at Wine Spectator magazine apparently think the Great Recession is behind us. After bowing to the economy and focusing more on “value” in selecting its Top 100 Wines of the Year in recent years, the magazine included just 12 wines listed at $20 a bottle or less in its lastest roundup of “the most exciting wines of the year for quality, value and availability.”

Nearly a third of Wine Spectator Top 100 Wines of 2010 were priced at $20 or less, and we found 24 of available locally. This year’s Top 100 is nowhere near as top-heavy as 2010’s, with half the number of triple-figure price tags. And the most expensive bottle is a mere $175, compared with the $535 Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape that was last year’s most pricey wine. Yet for everyday wine drinkers, there’s little to get excited about this year.

Giving thanks for value pinot noir

11/23/2011

While the Beaujolais wines we recommended Monday remain under the radar for most consumers – regrettably thanks to the nouveau gimmick – pinot noir has always been a popular choice for a food-friendly Thanksgiving red, especially after the 2004 movie Sideways made pinot such a fashionable choice.

We always have a few pinot noirs to recommend for Thanksgiving, like these. But the problem with pinot noir is that the really good ones tend to be pricey. And as previously noted (see “Thanksgiving wine tips: more of the same”), you need copious quantities for the multitudes at most Thanksgiving gatherings. And a six-pack or case of many of the better pinot noirs can cost anything from a car payment to a mortgage payment.

No nouveau: Older Beaujolais are perfect Thanksgiving reds

11/21/2011

We promised in Thursday’s column on Thanksgiving wine to circle back from our general suggestions to more specific bottles that are widely available and well priced. And as much as we wince at the idea of celebrating others misfortune, we have to thank the lingering sluggish economy for widespread bargains on some of our absolute favorite turkey-day wines from Beaujolais. In his Wednesday Wine column in the Washington Post, Dave McIntyre took his annual look at Beaujolais. And though we agree whole-heartedly with his implied suggestion to seek out wines from the ten Beaujolais villages that are thought to produce the top tier wines from this large swath of southern Burgundy, we can’t see eye-to-eye with his costly selection criteria. He takes an odd, backhanded swipe at Beaujolais’ largest producer, Georges Duboeuf, maker of some of the region’s best values, insisting that for “true exploration of Beaujolais, one must seek out wines by small, family-owned producers.”

Thanksgiving wine tips: more of the same

11/18/2011

As we noted last year, the annual ritual of offering Thanksgiving wine advice is fraught with peril. It’s easy to be tired – offering the same suggestions year after year – or trendy, grasping for a new spin on what goes with turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce. But since questions about Thanksgiving wine reprise themselves year after year, like the NFL football games in Dallas and Detroit, we’ll continue to make suggestions for readers who haven’t memorized any food pairing rules or who just want a current recommendation for well-priced riesling or pinot noir that’s on store shelves today.

As always, we reject the idea of precise pairing of wines with the Thanksgiving feast. There is too much going on at the holiday table – textures, aromas, colors and flavors from subtle to spicy. No one wine or pair of white and red wines will harmonize perfectly with everything, so don’t waste your time trying.

Aside from the prime directive – drink what you like – there are no hard-and-fast rules. But a few general guidelines can help narrow your choices.

For one day only, the world’s best $6 wine

11/18/2011

Buried in yesterday's column offering Thanksgiving wine advice was a passing reference to a one-day sale so compelling that it deserves its own headline. The sale tomorrow (today, if you’re reading this on Saturday) on Borsao Garnacha 2010 at the Fresh Market in Vienna is exciting for at least three reasons.

First, it’s the newest vintage of a perennial great value from the stable of awesome values produced by Bodegas Borsao and imported by Jorge Ordonez Selections. (See Top 5 Spanish red wines.) Second, the $5.99-a-bottle sale price at Fresh Market is about the lowest price in the county. And third, the sale comes just in time for Thanksgiving, and as we noted in yesterday’s column, these medium-bodied Spanish reds are good complements to the holiday feast.

A $9 white Burgundy in time for Thanksgiving

11/7/2011

This white Burgunday typically sells fro $12 a bottle.

Good white wine from Burgundy – the ancestral home of the chardonnay grape – can be prohibitively expensive. We’ve highlighted some notable exceptions recently from the southern Burgundy district known as the Mâconnais, like this $12 Macon-Lugny, this $11 Macon-Villages and this $10 Macon-Lugny.

If you tried and liked any of them, you may want to try 2010 Cave de Lugny Mâcon-Villages 'La Côte Blanche,' on sale at Calvert Woodley for $8.99 a bottle, $3 off its regular price of $11.99. And if you really like it, you can stock up on a white house wine for the holidays, with an extra 5 percent discount by the case, bring it down to $8.49 a bottle.

A Robert Parker 'house wine' on sale near you

11/4/2011

Few people – even his many critics – would argue that Robert Parker, founder of the Wine Advocate, is not the world’s most influential wine commentator. (In fact, it’s his pervasive influence that his critics bemoan most of all.) So when Parker says a wine is fit to be his own “house wine,” that’s no small endorsement. And fortunately for Washington-area wine drinkers, just such a wine that typically sells for $16 to $20 a bottle (Parker has a bigger budget for “house wine” than most of us) is widely available around town, and on sale at several of our favorite wine shops.

The 2009 Volver from Bodegas Volver in the up-and-coming Spanish wine-making region of La Mancha (yes, the home of the fictional Don Quixote) is made from 100 percent tempranillo, the dominant grape in the renowned wines of Rioja, Spain. These particular tempranillo grapes are from 50-year-old vines, according to the importer, Jorge Ordonez of Grapes of Spain, who also brings us some of our absolute favorite value wines (see “A new contender for best $7 red wine ever?” and “Top 5 Spanish red wines”).

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Author

Rob Garretson is an award-winning journalist, who remembers the bottle of Burgundy that converted him from a wine drinker to a wine enthusiast. He maintains a 400-bottle wine cellar in his home outside of Washington, DC, yet upwards of 350 of those bottles cost $9.99 or less.

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