Row of Wine BottlesDarren Falkenberg
Running a little behind with your Valentine's Day plans? Nothing says, "Love ya, baby," like a good bottle of wine. But surely no one wants to spend a bundle on booze, especially when it's down the hatch so quickly.
My husband's rule of thumb for choosing wine is going for cheap brands that have only one or two bottles left. His rationale is that if everyone else is buying it, then it must be good.
If you're looking for a more informed opinion, though, wine expert Tony Aspler's website is a good place to start. Every week, Mr. Aspler (also known as "The Wine Guy"), tastes all the wines stocked in the Vintages section of Onatrio's LCBO wine stores, and chooses three that he thinks have a good "price-value ratio."
When it comes to finding reasonably-priced wine, Mr. Aspler notes that countries or regions where wine-making is more expensive will pass along the cost to the consumer. For example, wine from regions like Ontario tends to be more expensive because the land costs more and there aren't the massive vineyards that you would find somewhere like California.
"In Ontario ... you're not going to find really extraordinary wine for $10," he said. "They don't have the economy of scale they do in California. Big companies like Gallo offer quite good value for what they're doing because they have this enormous scale and they can make very palatable wines quite cheaply."
Try places like Portugal, Chile and Argentina, where it's less expensive to make the wine, and you'll get good wine for lower prices. South Africa, in particular, is a hot region showing great value, Mr. Aspler said. He cited the Obikwa Cabernet Sauvignon 2011 in particular as a "terrific value" at only $8.95. (The review on his site says the wine has "dense purple colour with a smoky, earthy blackcurrant and pencil-shavings nose; full-bodied and soft on the palate with jammy red fruit flavours." Food match? Burgers or pizza.)
You can get a fix on hot trends in reasonably priced wine by taking to Twitter or Facebook too. Mr. Aspler says that social media has democratized wine, and made it easier for people to find out what others are enjoying.
"Instead of reading wine columns and listening to experts, people are talking amongst themselves, saying, 'I had a great bottle of Fuzion the other day,' and people are buying it," he said. (He's referring to cheapo, under-$10 Fuzion Shiraz-Malbec -- it went viral a couple of years ago, leading to sellouts in stores and massive demand, despite that fact that many critics found it to be mediocre.)
And those wines with the weird and wacky names? Resist the urge, Mr. Aspler says.
"It's very easy to be seduced to pick up a wine called Puking Vulture, but those are very faddish. You want to look for wines with a track record," he said.
Say you have a thing for French wine - Can you go Gallic without going broke?
Edward Finstein, " The Wine Doctor," says when it comes to French wine, you're going to pay a premium for anything with France on the label. But by paying attention to what's else is on the label, you can better get your money's worth.
"If you buy a wine that says 'Product of France,' the fruit comes from the entire country, and the wine's not going to be that great," he said. "You can buy something from a particular region, like Burgundy, or a particular village, like Côte de Beaune and even something that says 'Chateau,' 'Domain' or 'Estate' on the bottle, which means the fruit that went into that bottle comes from one piece of land and one property. They are generally better quality."
When it comes to Italian wine, Mr. Finstein recommends wine that is marked IGT, or Indicazione Geografica Tipica, which tends to be more reasonably priced than its competitors. "You don't have to go with DOC [Denominazione di Origine Controllata]or DOCG [Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita]" he said. "This category [IGT] for value for the dollar, is phenomenal."
Like Mr. Aspler, Mr. Finstein recommends Portugal as a "big, overlooked country" when it comes to good-value wine, and not just for port.
"Also, some of the Slavic countries like Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia. Even Greece, if you want to go further east, there's some great wines coming out of there," he said.
If you really want to work hard, choose a bottle with a year on it, Mr. Finstein says. Then Google to find vintage charts for any wine region or country, which will tell you the quality of the grapes that year.
"If the quality of the fruit was better [that year] the quality of the wine will be better too," he said.
If in doubt, I say just skip the wine and go for a tasty lager. Beer is the way to this gal's heart, anyway.