The Cheap Wine Thread

[Noodley]

C'mon then Noodles, tell us what we should be buying to save our pockets!

Ah the good old days when I got to taste wine and get paid for it...

I can no longer advise on the 'best' bargains, but IMO there are a lot of bargains to be had....it would be too simplistic to recommend an area, country or grape variety.

[pcolbeck]

The Saint Chinian is no more. It's recycling collection on Monday and I put the bottle in our crate but it was the only thing in there and looked lonely so now I am having a Stella so that it will have company.

[citoyen]

I can't be bothered buying books or researching it enough to keep up to date and simply find that French plonk at a reasonable price point tends to be more inserting and complex than the New World stuff

Am I imagining it or do some Australian producers (they seem the main culprits) mistake "high in alcohol" for "having lots of character"?

Avoid the 2.99 French stuff though as it tastes like Ribena.

Useful if your lawnmower runs out of fuel, though.

d.

[pcolbeck]

On holiday this year near Bezier in Languadoc we were drinking the wine from the local farmer CO-OP at 6 euro for 5 litres. It was fantastic. Not great like a vintage Bordeaux but great like a £7.00 or £8.00 bottle of wine in the UK. Loads of character and not too much tannin and no hangover after what was really too many glasses.  As a warning though I have bought undrinkable muck that should have been used as tractor fuel before from CO-OPs in France so YMMV.

[Basil]

Against the trend in this thread I find some wines from Leftpondistan quite acceptable.

I have a Washington Hills merlot in front of me.  Near enough for a sick squid. 
Although, as I also have a plate of Melton Mowbray pork pie with lashings of mustard and branston pickle, I'm sure anything would be acceptable.

[Andrew Br]

I'm with Basil on this.
I've just spent a week undertaking research into Washington/Oregon wines.
I'm sure I can state that there are some cracking ones though it seems that, if you drink enough of them, you still get a headache.

[Julian]

My current favourite bargain is Celier des Dauphins, seen at £3.99 in Morrisons and £4.99 in Tescos in these parts.

It used to be the best part of a tenner in the UK, or ten francs if you went to France for it. 

[Ian H]

I'm lucky to have a really good wine merchant down here. It's a small shop with bare boards and boxes stacked with bottles. Cardboard tags describe the wines. I just ask for something that, eg., resembles a good burgundy, and he gives me a few choices at less than supermarket prices.

An aside: he bought quite a lot of the contents of Keith Floyd's cellar at a bankruptcy auction a few years ago - apparently that's where all the money went.

Alan Clark said that a claret that cost less than thirty quid wasn't worth drinking (presumably around £50 in today's money). Ho ho.

[border-rider]

Just drinking a nice 2004 Mendocino County red, which I took a gamble on in Waitrose today.  It was hugely reduced to about £6, and I worried it might be a bit elderly.  Not at all

[mark]

What citizen smudge said about australian wine would seem to apply to US wines as well. Gallo and similar mass market wines aren't highly regarded in the US, and shipping them a few thousand miles isn't going to improve them, just drive up the price.

[citoyen]

What citizen smudge said about australian wine would seem to apply to US wines as well.

Indeed. And South American and South African wines too.

If you think about the economics of wine making, you have to conclude that Eastern Europe is probably best placed to provide the real bargains.

These ones, for example, look promising (I've not tried either) - well, they could probably hold their own against an Aussie wine at the same price point:
Eva's Vineyard Chenin Blanc / Pinot Grigio / Királyleányka 2008 Neszmély Region, Hungary - Waitrose Wines
Eva's Vineyard Merlot / Kékfrankos 2006 Szekzard Region, Hungary - Waitrose Wines

d.

[valkyrie]

You often get good value wine from the less fashionable parts of France. My current favourite fizz is Aldi's Cremant Du Jura - the Jura is only about 50 miles from Champagne region but without that name the wines are much cheaper. I think Aldi's one is £5.99 and it's at least as good as most champagnes under £20.

[Mrs Pingu]

Many years ago I bought some Bulgarian red wine. It was bad with a capital B. I've never tried any E. European stuff since.

You often get good value wine from the less fashionable parts of France. My current favourite fizz is Aldi's Cremant Du Jura - the Jura is only about 50 miles from Champagne region but without that name the wines are much cheaper. I think Aldi's one is £5.99 and it's at least as good as most champagnes under £20.

We had a similar experience when we were in the Rhone area. The local fizz was called Clairette de Die and was ver' nice. Well, quite good enough for our penchant of making kir royale anyway. Never seen it here though. It was cheap as chips there.

[border-rider]

Many years ago I bought some Bulgarian red wine. It was bad with a capital B. I've never tried any E. European stuff since.

The Bulgarian State Wine Exporter, Vinimpex Sofia, got an acknowledgement in my PhD thesis

Some of it's good, especially these days.  I've never had a decent Kekfrankos though.

[Snakehips]

My local Sainsbury's currently has a load of wines on offer at 3 for a tenner including Hardy's Crest which is more often discounted to about a fiver from the notional £9.99
The strange thing is that if you buy six bottles of wine the extra 5% discount is applied to the £9.99 which makes each bottle come in at under £2.90 !

Siamo tutti farabutti

[citoyen]

Many years ago I bought some Bulgarian red wine. It was bad with a capital B. I've never tried any E. European stuff since.

I don't recall having sampled Bulgarian wine. I had some very good Hungarian wine when I went to the Gay Hussar a few years ago. It was actually the only good thing about that meal. Cost rather more than the two I mentioned above, though.

And I had Georgian Saperavi wine in a Georgian restaurant once. It was not at all bad and went well with the food - hearty and richly fruity. Georgian wine isn't so cheap, though - probably largely down to them not being in the EU.

d.

[vorsprung]

The generalisation with Bulgarian wine is that it has a pretty good flavour and an excellent price but it doesn't "burn clean"
I seem to get more of a hangover with Bulgarian stuff

The least hangover-ish stuff is german dry riesling.  Mrs Vorspung has a low tolerance these days to wine the night before but reports some success with Prosecco

The South African wine seems better at the low price point than the Oz stuff.  For example Coop do a generic South African Red wine that is unexciting but quite glugable.  Back in the 80s I used to live in London and got a bottle of wine most nights from the wine shop    The best stuff I used to get then was red austrailian with a picture of a duck on it for a fiver.  Maybe even less than a fiver, I don't remember exactly.  Utterly fantastic

[Noodley]

Altivo Rioja Reserva 2004 from Sainsbury reduced by 50% to 6 quid. 

Lovely. 

[citoyen]

As a past fan of Wolf Blass Yellow Label Cabernet Sauvignon, you can imagine how pleased I was to see it in Sainsbury's at the weekend reduced from £8.99 to £5.

A very drinkable drop of plonk.

d.

[Tewdric]

As a past fan of Wolf Blass Yellow Label Cabernet Sauvignon, you can imagine how pleased I was to see it in Sainsbury's at the weekend reduced from £8.99 to £5.

That's a lovely wine and a bargain at that price.

I find the vast majority of supermarket special offers are worth exactly what you pay for them, the "reductions" being marketing foo.  That's a genuine deal though.

[pcolbeck]

Morrisons had a blindingly good Saint Chinian a few weeks ago on offer at £5.00 instead of £10. I wish I had bough a couple of cases as it's now back up to £10

[Hot Flatus]

I'm a big fan of Cono Sur Pinot Noir reserve and Tricastin uranium flavoured cotes du rhone