Mendoza red blend tops our wine picks of the week

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Joe

Each week we post our favorite bargain wines we had tasted during the previous week. These are wines that we had purchased from various stores on the San Francisco Peninsula. Each week our Vintage Wine Club suggests wine for this list. Here are the most interesting picks for January 16.

Clos de Chacras’s 2008 Cavas de Crianza $12.99 at KL Wines and The Wine Stop – Joe’s Pick
This is a terrific deal for this wonderful blend from Mendoza in Argentina. It is 40% Malbec, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 30% Merlot. I found this wine to be loaded with plum and spice characteristics, and it leaves a beautiful texture in the mouth. It has a great finish and all this for a measly $12.99. I think it will go great with a juicy steak. Robert Parker gives it 91 points, I will go with an easy 89 Points. It’s a true bargain wine!

Caves de Crianza

Blend of Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot

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Screw Top Wine – The wine bargain hunter’s curse

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Joe

I’m very old fashioned and sentimental when it comes to wine closures. Most of my 40-year career of wine drinking has involved opening wines with a real cork. I get a thrill each time I use my waiter’s corkscrew to open a bottle of wine. There is nothing like that popping sound when I pull the cork from the bottle. That sound has come to mean something very special to me, one that signifies I am about to embark on very pleasurable adventure. The unfortunate part of being a bargain wine hunter today is that many reasonably priced wines come with screw tops.


With a screw top there is less chance for a wine to go bad, (corked) and the cost for the winery to use screw tops is less than for corks. Screw tops are fine for wines that you are going to drink within a short period of time. Although some may argue with this, I do not believe that a bottle of wine with a screw top is going to improve sitting in your wine cellar for a of couple years. It will taste the same as the day you stuck it in the cellar or perhaps worse, but never better. No oxygen is going to pass through a screw top so those subtle aging characteristics produced by a cork are not going to take place. Corks breathe, screw tops to not. I am not recommending that you shy away from purchasing wine with screw tops but that you are aware that these wines are to drink now. When you purchase wine that comes with a screw top, be sure to drink it within a year. Continue reading →

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Salice Salentino tops our bargain picks for January 9, 2012

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Joe

Have you started out the New Year following our wine resolutions? We hope so, and if you are reading this post that means you are following the most important resolution of all, and that is to read GoodCheapVino.com. Here are the bargain wine picks for this week.

Leone de Castris Salice Salentino Riserva KL Wines – $12.99 – Joe’s pick
This is a beauty of a red wine that delivers like a $30 bottle of wine. It is complex, layered, and full of intense flavors. The aroma and flavors are many, but black fruit powers throughout. This is a big wine but balanced with alcohol at 13.5%. The winery is in Puglia, Italy, and this wine is made from 90% Negroamaro and 10% Malvasia Nera grapes. This one will go fast at KL Wines at this price. Robert Parker gives it a 91 and I will go with 90 Points.

Big, bold, and beautiful


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Bargain Wine Alert #10

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Joe

Cost Plus World Market
This Saturday and Sunday at California Cost Plus World Market stores there is a “Wine Blowout” sale. The sale says up to 50% off on over 75 wines plus an additional 10% off when you buy 4 or more bottles. In addition but somewhat confusing is another wine sale going on until January 16. It is worth a look if you are near one of the Cost Plus stores. If you have a tablet or smartphone be sure to use Wine-Searcher.com to find out what a wine is selling for elsewhere.

Stonestown Trader Joe’s in San Francisco
Vintage Wine Taster Mike reports that this store has Parson’s Creek Shiraz/Cab for $15, which is less than half the regular price. They also have the Donatello Chardonnay for $10 (our review) and magnums of the Tribunal at $16.50 (our review). These wines are few and far between at most TJ’s in the S.F. Bay Area

BevMo 90 Point Wines
I just received an email about BevMo’s huge sale on 90-Pt and above wines. When I perused the hefty 18 pages of 90-Pt wines, with the exception of about 5 wines, all ratings are by BevMo’s Wilfred Wong. This is somewhat misleading in my view.

The Results of the 2012 Chronicle Wine Competition
This past week some 65 wine judges evaluated 5500 wines at this annual competition. This is by far and away the biggest wine competition around, and you can get some great leads by browsing the list of medal winners. Personally, I just look at the “Best of Class” and the Gold Medal winners. The nice thing about this competition is that the wines are placed into categories by price. For example, you can find all the Chardonnay winners in the $10 to $14.99 category. What a great idea!

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Win A Pair of Tickets to the Zinfandel Festival in San Francisco

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Joe

If you love Zinfandel wine, here is your chance to taste oodles of Zinfandel wines all in the same place. The 21st Annual Zinfandel Festival takes place January 26 to 28, 2012, at the Concourse in San Francisco. We are giving away a pair of tickets to two of the Zinfandel Festival events. We have two tickets for the Epicuria Food & Zin Pairings event on Thursday, January 26, from 6 to 9 pm and two tickets to the ZAP Grand Tasting on Saturday, January 28, from 2 to 5 pm.

A chance to taste oodles of Zinfandel wines at the Zin Festival


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Bargain wine picks for the first week of 2012

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Joe

Start 2012 off with a firm commitment to making the best use of your wine budget. We can help you with that by checking out our weekly wine bargain recommendations. Try these wines and tell us in the comment section what you think about the wine. Please suggest any wine you think should be on our recommended list. Here are this week’s bargain wine picks.

Rabbit Ridge 2010 Allure de Robles $4.99 Trader Joe’s – Joe’s Pick
Rabbit Ridge Allure de RoblesThis wine recently made it to the shelves of my Millbrae Trader Joe’s. The 2009 vintage of this wine did not hit the TJ’s stores until February. There was a ton of the 2009 with huge floor stacks at TJ’s. Not only is this vintage early but there is just a handful on the shelves. I am recommending this wine with reservations. I like the wine early on with nice aromas and good flavors, but suddenly the wine falls flat with no follow through. I like it for one glass and after that it is no fun. The wine is decent and you cannot beat it for the price of $4.99. Vintage Wine Taster Jim likes this wine and will purchase it in case amounts. I give it 84 Points. Jim goes with 86 Points. Continue reading →

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Bargain Wine Hunters – New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Joe

Drink Spanish wines
There are plenty of delicious and wonderful Spanish wines well under $20 and many excellent ones closer to the $10 mark. Look for Tempranillo (red wine) from Rioja, Ribera Del Duero and Toro. Look for Verdeho and Albariño, white wine varietals with tons of character and flavors. Drink Cava! This is Spanish sparkling wine that is hard to beat. You should find many good ones like Segura Viudas under the $10 mark.

Spanish wines

Seek out wines from the Rhone Valley and Languedoc
It is amazing how many great red wine bargains you can find from these two areas in the south of France. The best way to find these wines is at a good local wine shop. K&L Wines in Redwood City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles always has a good supply. My local wine shop, Weimax in Burlingame, always has a gem of a Cotes du Rhone wine.

Open more than one bottle of wine
This is a great way to compare the characteristics of one varietal of wine and learn the different nuances of a varietal. We often open two bottles and drink them over two or three days and continue to compare them. Start with a non-oaky Chardonnay vs. an oaky Chardonnay. Pick a different theme each week. This is a great learning experience. Continue reading →

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Buehler Vineyards – Two red wines top our bargain wine picks of the week.

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Joe

This week we pick two outstanding wine bargains from Buehler Vineyards. Year after year this winery delivers quality wines at value prices. Buehler Vineyards was established in 1971 and is located in prime vineyard land at the base of Howell Mountain in the Napa Valley. We love traveling off the beaten path in the Napa Valley to escape the crowds, and Buehler Vineyards certainly qualifies as one of Napa Valley’s hidden gems.

John Buehler, Jr. and his family are committed to producing excellent wines but keeping prices affordable. Because they have been in the Napa Valley so long, the cost of their operations is not as high as most wineries. Kudos to Buehler Vineyards for keeping their wine prices in check. These two wines could easily sell for more. Continue reading →

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Mumm Napa: Three Sparkling Wines to Cheer the Holidays

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Joe

I was invited to attend a small wine bloggers event at Mumm Napa this past Saturday. The winery is located in a stunning setting on the Silverado Trail. It was a beautiful clear spring-like day in the middle of December. We took a tour of the winery with assistant winemaker Tamra Lotz and viewed every aspect of the sparkling winemaking process, from the grape-crushing pad to the bottling line. The highlight of the day was a tasting of eight different and delicious sparkling wines produced at Mumm Napa.

Mumm Napa tasting of sparkling wines

Tasting of eight sparkling wines

I was particularly impressed by the procedures undertaken to determine the blends for each of Mumm Napa labels. There are several different stainless tanks containing Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier, and Pinot Gris. A tasting panel tastes the juice from each tank and later creates what they think would be the perfect blend for each style of sparkling wine in the Mumm Napa lineup. We tried our hand at blending Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines. It was very interesting to compare the taste of various percentages of each grape. Just adding 25% Chardonnay to the 100% Pinot Noir made an amazing difference in flavor and character. Continue reading →

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Montes Alpha Cabernet Tops are Bargain Wine Picks of the Week

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Joe

We love to “treasure hunt” for good cheap vino. We continue to find an amazing amount of wines in the cheap category that taste as good or better than many wines well above the $20 mark. It takes a little persistence and intuition to find these wines but if you don’t have that time, you can rely on the Vintage Wine Club members to recommend terrific bargain wines. This week we have yet another set of wines to recommend and both will go nicely with your holiday meals.

Montes Alpha 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon – $12.99 Costco
Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon reviewThis is fabulous wine from the Colchagua Valley in Chile. I visited this winery in 2009 and every aspect of winemaking here is top notch. It is amazing that Montes can produce a wine at this ridiculous price. I see that Robert Parker has rated this wine at 90 Points. The wine has great character throughout with a great lingering finish. It is elegant and tasty. The normal price of this wine at Costco stores is $16.49 , but during the Holidays there is a $3.50 coupon discount at checkout. Wine.com is selling the same wine for $19.99. I give it 89 Points. Continue reading →

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