We have lived in Northern California for a few years now and one of the best things the area has to offer is the abundance of wine. This isn't really limited to Napa, Sonoma, Paso Robles areas, but due to the competition, there is wine from all over the place readily available.
However, good wine is expensive. While one would love to have a Cabernet or Chardonnay for 100$ a bottle as often as they can, practical concerns restrict us to a selection of wine that is heavily dependent on budget. Napa has great wineries, no two ways about it, so does Sonoma, and all the other wine regions of the area, but we couldn't really justify having a wine club selection everyday. It ended up being too expensive and in some ways, too limiting. We wanted to try more, try different regions, different varietals, all while staying on a budget.
Sure, a lot of times when you buy on a budget, the wine isnt good, or worse still, it has gone bad because it wasn't stored right, especially when they on closeout/clearance. But there are surprises, we have had bottles under 10$ taste as good if not better than some of the 30-40$ wines from Napa. It does happen, but there are no guarantees. Its all about the experience trying wines from places we would have never found otherwise while keeping a keen eye on what we spend on a bottle.
Its easy enough to pick a few brands we know we like and buy a few cases and have those over and over again, but where is the fun in that? This blog will attempt to provide an every man sort of review for wine we buy on a budget. Wine we pick from Safeway, Trader Joes, World Market, Bevmo, Target, Big lots, Grocery outlet, and any number of other places. You may or may not be able to find these, but if you do, maybe you will find it helpful to have a review at hand. A lot of times, walking up to a wine cabinet in a store is overwhelming. We attempt to make it simpler by providing simple short reviews.
We arent very fancy wine drinkers. We dont like to describe wine with huge sentences likening them to various fruits and berries and chocolate and what not. While several wines definitely exhibit certain aromas and tastes, we aren't complex enough to dissect a wine into several individual components. So our reviews are going to remain simple.
To us, wine is fantastic when its good, and not much fun when its not good. So we came up with a grading system A+, A, A-, B+, B, B- and so on. Maybe it reminds us of something, maybe there is a hint of a fruit or an aroma of coffee or chocolate... maybe not. There are wines out there, that we just cant think of anything much to write about but that doesn't mean its bad. We'll write about them as well without finding it necessary to come up with likenesses.
There will also be two ratings for each wine, one by me and one by my lovely wife. We do agree on most things, but felt its better to have independent ratings and thoughts on each wine just to make it more interesting.
Being called Value Winers, we focus on wines mostly under 20$ a bottle. There will be a few here and there that cross that barrier but for the most part, we would like to keep it under 20 and pick up a few under 10 as well. Regarding the price, its tough to keep track of the price we buy it for since we pick up stuff in batches every now and then, so we'll post the current online price. You might be able to find it for less than that as well.
So enjoy our little blog and we hope you do find some of the wines we enjoy and have fun drinking them without having to spend a lot.
