We love wine. We love drinking it, we love cooking with it, and we love running our finger through the layer of dust that settles on bottles which have somehow managed to survive in our basement for more than a few days. We just don’t like paying a premium for it. Our Wine series will feature notes on our favorite great-value wines, plus tips and tricks for finding excellent wine at low prices.
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La Vieille Ferme: Côtes du Ventoux 2005 (Red)
This robust wine is made in the foothills of the Provence behemoth, Mt. Ventoux (”The Windy Mountain” in Provençal, a local dialect). It’s a robust, ripe Côtes du Rhône, and for $8 this is a great wine for every day drinking and cooking.
La Vielle Ferme balances its chewy Grenache backbone with spicy, smokey Syrah, Carignan, and Cinsault. Have a glass with a hearty lunch to keep the blood flowing during the cold days in the garden, or try it in your next Coq au Vin.
http://www.bevmo.com/
La Crema: Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir 2005 / 2006
At $19 a bottle (2006), this Pinot Noir is an excellent value for evenings that call for something classy. This is a well balanced wine from California’s Sonoma Coast, with dynamics not often achieved in this price range.
Take a sip and you’ll notice the distinct lack of a punch-in-the-mouth sensation of explosive fruit, all too common in New World Pinots. Slowly, after swallowing, the flavors come trickling in. A soft duet between cranberries and vanilla nearly becomes a symphony before the decrescendo. By avoiding that overpowering first sip, La Crema has made a wine we could drink all day.
http://www.klwines.com/
Tip: Vin de Pays / Vin de Table
One trick to cut down on the cost of imported French wine is to look for “Table Wine” and “Country Wine” on the label. In French, Vin de Table and Vin de Pays (similar phrases exist in other European languages).
It’s tempting to assume that these wines would be thin and underdeveloped, but the distinction between Vin de Table, Vin de Pays, and AOC (the third and most popular category for French wine exported to America) lies in tradition.
Wine designated AOC must grow only traditional grapes and use traditional harvesting and winemaking methods. These traditions are different for each AOC region and are strict, usually resulting in a more expensive wine. Vin de Table and Vin de Pays, however, are much less strict, and are quite often less expensive.
So what do you get with a less restricted wine making process? Sometimes it means super-dense vine planting or fast fermentation, which can lead to bad wine. But sometimes it simply means that the vintner added a grape variety that was not deemed “traditional” in his city. Or perhaps his winemaking methods were distinctly modern, preventing an AOC designation.
Ask for a good Vin de Pays or Vin de Table the next time you’re looking for French wine at your local bottle shop. You might find a gem of a wine for much less than its AOC counterparts.
tannins give this wine a playful, palatable core with surprising depth, like the soundtrack to a Wes Anderson movie.