Lifestyle Design

Good Wine… Cheap!

You don’t have to spend a fortune to drink good wine.

I love wine, and I hate “cheap” wine, but there are some good cheap wines. You don’t need to spend $50 a pop to get a drinkable red.

I was just in a small Italian food store, in Brooklyn, and I came across 2 Montepulcianos. Each bottle was only $10, so I figured it would be worth a shot. I grabbed both, they bagged ‘em up, and I was off. When I got home, I quickly cracked one open. It’s good, and definitely drinkable. I would decant it though.

Here’s an extremely valuable trick: If you have a known, hardly drinkable, cheap wine, decant! Decant the wine for 1 day, for particularly cheap wines. Decanting is leaving the bottle open for some time, or pouring it into a decanter. If you’re not sure what a decanter is, look it up. Basically, it’s a glass bottle with a bulbous base. The ideas is this: Add surface area to the wine’s surface so oxygen can get to it. A wine will mellow out the longer its opened. Mellow out means that the Tannins (that bitter feeling on the back part of the tongue) relax a bit. A cheap wine is marked by two things: The strong, overbearing tannins, and that notable red mouth and teeth. Though decanting will solve the taste problem particular to a cheap wine, you’re on your own with the red mouth problem. Not all cheaper wines make the mouth red. In fact, I’ve only come across a few.
I’ve found that there are far more good, inexpensive Italian wines than there are French wines. Italian wine is a pandora’s box of variety though. It takes years to learn the ins and outs of the Italian varieties. You usually can’t go too wrong with a Valpolicella or a Montepulciano. If you MUST get a French wine, and don’t want to pay out the ass, get a Chataneuf-du-Pape, as opposed to a Bordeaux of some sort. (That tip was given to me by someone I know, an author and wine connoisseur: Peter Meltzer)

So if you’re looking to save a little, and still enjoy your wine, spend no more than $20/bottle. Trial and error is the key here. It’s the key to learning about wine…Period. Experiment. You can always decant a nasty bottle to make it an enjoyable afternoon sip.

Good Luck!

…and remember, “A glass of wine a day, keeps the doctor away”. That was the right quote right? ok maybe not, but it’s certainly contextual here..

Cheers to your utter inehbriation!

Adam Shields

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