The Best Inexpensive Wines Available Now

Cpdunn99, sorry to hear about your job loss.

Most of the the wines I am into lately are, in fact, meritages. Meritage being a made up word to denote a blend, generally a Bordeaux-style blending, as opposed to a standard varietal. If you want to check a good one out, I'd refer back to the previously mentioned Hahn Meritage 2001 (now 2002?) for about $12.

The meritages I am into tend to favor a blend of cab franc, malbec and petit verdot. All rich and jammy, not unlike the Incognito we talked about before.

California, in particular central CA, has some astoundingly good wineries and grape production is so strong that prices are low. Good for us!

Let me know if you try the Hahn and what you think.

What do you like in Portugese wines?

I've seen quite a few blended red's these days, some very nice. It's usually a Cabernet-Merlot, but sometimes a Can-Syrah-Merlot or something similar. Would you consider these (technically) a Meritage? They certainly are not marketed with that name on them.

Thanks,
Bob

Bob, yes, I believe those would count as a meritage. As the term is made up, I think the bottler could slap the name on any blend. It's supposedly a term created by blending the words merit + heritage, but I find it a stretch to apply those terms more than any other. I think they just liked the "Frenchness" sound of the term the marketing folks came up with!

2000 Bordeau Christian Mouiex Merlot $5.95 at Costco. Absolute steal. Complex with hints of currants and blackberries. Nice finish. The 2001 is not bad either. Christian is the owner/winemaker at Chateau Petrus. This stuff can even be cellared for probably up to 4-5 years, but drinkable now. This is our everyday wine now, with Chateau Potensac 2000 Medoc our Saturday night wine at $19.95 per bottle and our once a month special wine being 1990 Lynch Bages, and our aniversary wine the Mouton 1982

Thanks for the tip, Schubertmaniac. I have a cellar full of "B2K", but nothing that can be drank now, so I'll pick up some of the Mouiex.. have seen it, but not tried it.

Doug: Besides Port, I've developed a taste for Duoros. Two that I've had recently and REALLY like are:

2000 Quinta do Vallado Duoro
2000 Quinta do Crasto Duoro Reserva

[being out of work, at least for a few months, ain't such a bad thing...getting caught up on wines, audio, friends, etc.!]