The other day I was riding in my car and I
received a call on my cell phone. It was my
friend Lee, and I could tell by the urgency in
his voice that he needed help. "Mike", he said, "
I'm at the grocery store and I've got to find a
good cheap wine, any suggestions?"It turns out
that Lee had a date that night, and didn't want
to "bomb" on his wine selection.

I get asked questions like this frequently, so I
decided I'd write this article and try to address
people's concerns over selecting good cheap wines.
First of all, for our purposes let's define "
cheap." Now I could go on and on about individual
definitions of the word "cheap" as it pertains to
wine, but I don't want to bore you. So, for the
sake of these discussions, let's define "cheap"
wines as wines priced in the 5.00-12.00 per
bottle range.

"Good" is a subjective term. So when we describe
a wine as "good" what we're really saying is that
the wine is acceptable to the majority of people
who drink that type of wine. I wouldn't know a
good Merlot from grape juice because
I don't drink Merlot. So, tip#1 is to try several
wines in the 5.00-12.00 range in the category of
wine that you enjoy.Determine which of these
wines tastes best to you. O.K,O.K, my friend Lee
didn't have the inclination to start tasting
wines in the grocery store, so what could he do?

My first suggestion is to stick to well known
brands, preferably some of the larger vintners in
California. Brands such as Robert Mondavi,
Berengers, and even Sutter Home are dependable.
These large wineries have both exclusive,select
vintages, which tend to be pricey, and large mass
produced vintages. Berenger's Stone Cellars
variety and Mondavi's Woodbridge variety are mass
produced, but reasonably priced and good. Fetzer
is another good, reasonably priced California
winery. Gallo, the grandfather of all mass
produced wines, has recently introduced it's "
Gallo Of Sonoma" varieties of wines. These are
quite good and easily fit our price range. Wine
Spectator magazine has an excellent feature
titled,"Great Wines For Under 20.00." Check it
out!

Ah yes, don't let me forget box wines. Box wines
have improved tremendously in the last few years.
This improvement is probably due to wine's
increased popularity. At any rate, one can pick
up a "box" which is usually the equivalent to 4
bottles of wine, for under 20.00!!Check with
Boxwines.org for reviews of various box wines.

Hopefully, these few suggestions will be of help
to you the next time you're entrusted with "
choosing the wine."Apparently it helped Lee, he's
been dating the same girl for 2 months now!

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