Buying Wine on a Budget

My dad once said, “It’s a funny thing about wine.  Once you start tasting better wines, which seem to cost more, it’s hard to go back to what you had before.”

When he said this, I couldn’t disagree.  For quite some time, I loved going to places like Trader Joe’s and finding a five dollar bottle of wine to take home and enjoy with some pizza or all by itself.  I thought White Zinfandel was delicious and that Barefoot Zinfandel was the pinnacle of wines.  After all, how could a more expensive wine be better than these? 

Then, one night while dining with some friends, they ordered a bottle of 1994 Heitz Cellars Bella Oaks Cabernet.  Once taste of this wine and the light bulbs all went on at once!  “Oh, so THIS is what people who love wine are talking about!!!”  Everything changed.

I spent a few months after that looking for this particular wine and, after quite a few phone calls and some rudimentary web searching, I surmised that there were only 8 bottles left in the Los Angeles area.  I bought three at the very big price (at the time, for me anyway) of $38 per bottle.  Funny enough, I really knew nothing about wine except that this one was delicious.  Of course, I began to wonder, “Could there be other wines this good out there?”

Thus, my quest began.  I bought everything.  I put the wine on credit cards.  I did whatever I could to learn, taste, experience, and find out about the seemingly immeasurable variety of amazing wines.  It was like taking a trip without ever leaving the farm.

And it was very expensive.  And it probably wasn’t the best way to go about learning about wine.  But it’s what I did and, I did learn some lessons.  And I drank too many of these wines way too soon because I didn’t fully understand the concept of aging. 

Anyway, the most important lesson I learned was that price isn’t necessarily an indicator of quality and taste – at either end of the spectrum. 

With this, I took on a personal challenge to find wines at lower prices that would blow my mind.  Essentially, I set out to get really good wine really cheap!!! 

And I was pleasantly surprised.  It was a reawakening of the wine adventure!  And, as someone who loves food and considers wine a necessary part of the culinary experience, I became reinvigorated about wine and the idea that there were some very good, and some great tasting wines at prices that were mind boggling in terms of the quality that I found. 

It actually became a very fun challenge to set a budget for wine that was considerably less that what I was used to spending and see how much yummy wine I could buy in that range. 

The question is, how does one start looking for really good wine for really low prices?

For me, there are several approaches that one can take.  The positive aspect is that, because we are talking about fairly low prices, less than a 6-pack of domestic beer in many cases, it’s a bit more financially okay to take some risk and do more exploration than if we were talking about bottles in the fifty dollar range.  That said, here are a few approaches, although I recommend trying any combination of them in order to learn where the deals are and get a better idea of how competition can work in your favor.

Random Selection

With this, I’ve gone to the market and simply looked for bottles that were at a certain price point.  For example, if I’ve decided to spend $40 on wine, then I’ll get as many bottles as I can for $40.  I might even mix them up a bit; some Australian Shiraz, Washington Merlot, California Zinfandel, and some Malbec from Argentina.  Most local grocers carry some low cost wines in the $5-7 range that would enable you to pick up half a case or more for $40.  I like this approach because it almost compels the buyer to explore new territory.  In addition, because of the price, finding a bottle that you don’t like isn’t too big a headache.  Finally, most of the wines sold in local grocers tend to be young – perfect for low cost wines that typically aren’t created for aging but for immediate consumption.  Another advantage of this approach is that, with the commonality of “membership” cards, it’s very easy to spot wines that have been discounted, some significantly, enabling you to find wines that ordinarily might fall in the $10-15 range.

Descriptions on the price tag

This is very similar to simply using random selection, except it may involve reading some of the little notes that many groceries will place next to the price tag.  Sometimes these descriptions will include rating information or awards won at local fairs.  My only caution on this is that the vintage on the shelf might not match the vintage on the little description card.  But, like our first approach, this is not too bad since we are not breaking the bank to buy the wines.

Two Buck Chuck

Trader Joe’s sells wines from the Charles Shaw Winery, more commonly known as two-buck Chuck.  This is because each bottle is sold for $1.99.  I’ve tried a few of them and, honestly, they tasted like two dollar bottles of wine – a bit like wine coolers without the fizz.  Occasionally, however, there are surprises!  I’ve tasted a Chardonnay and a Zinfandel a couple of years ago that, although not the most complex wines on the planet, were actually very drinkable and pleasant tasting.  For two dollars, one’s expectations cannot be too high so it’s a nice surprise when one comes along that tastes like it cost, well, shall we say five dollars?

The Wine Warehouse

The internet is a great place to search for wines.  Many wine specialty warehouses provide on-line ordering of their wines as well as the ability to search their inventory during the on-line shopping experience.  This is one of my favorite approaches as many of these stores offer advanced search options which let the buyer focus on particular varietals or regions as well as price and even ratings from some of the more well-known publications such as Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast.  Since I live in California, some of the stores that I’ve used are KL Wines (www.klwines.com), The Wine Exchange (www.winex.com), and The Wine Club (www.thewineclub.com).  BevMo (www.bevmo.com) is also a popular one.  Another advantage of this approach is that the buyer can compare prices and quickly get an indicator of what is possible in terms of price points.  After some research you will notice that the prices can vary from 30-40% from place to place.  Finally, for me, this approach is quite fun – and somewhat educational as well! 

Club Stores

Stores such as Costco and SAM’s sometimes have fantastic selections of wines, even if the number of wines is a bit limited.  They have the purchasing power to have quite a compelling inventory of high end AND low end wines.  They also almost always post tasting notes and rating information.  In addition, the wines are usually organized by varietal and there is usually a section that caters to the buyer who is looking for wines under $10.  One more thing to observe is that Costco sells its’ Kirkland brand of wines which are actually wines from known wineries bottled under the Kirkland label.  They cannot disclose the source of these wines, but some are quite good and gaining respectable scores from the magazines that rate wines.

The Wine Magazines

Wine Ratings are somewhat suspect but, in general, fairly reliable in my opinion.  I can’t say that a 90 point rated wine at Wine Spectator is going to taste like a 90 point wine to everyone who drinks it, since we are all human and wine tasting is a very subjective process.  However, I’ve not had an experience where a wine was rated highly and it tasted really bad when I opened it.  That said, I have actually opened wines that were rated in the high 70’s or low 80’s and found them to be quite good.  Like the stores that have their wine inventories online, the Wine Magazines have a subscription service that is about the same as a magazine subscription which will enable you to do the same kind of searches by vintage, rating, region and even specific wineries.  The prices listed are the retail prices and are not usually very practical except it might help you recognize when markets have elevated the prices beyond what the wine would be sold for at the winery in order to appear like they are giving you a good deal on something else.  For example, BevMo has a 5 cent wine sale where, if the customer buys one bottle from a designated selection of wines, the 2^nd bottle is only 5 cents.  However, the price of the first bottle is a non-discounted bottle so one has to average the cost of both bottles to get the per bottle cost before comparing it to prices elsewhere. Usually it’s a pretty good deal – if you want two bottles. 

Good wine doesn’t have to be expensive.  Occasionally, low cost wines are great and, because they are low cost, stumbling upon a bad one isn’t that upsetting and finding one that is pleasing is a wonderful surprise! 

Cheers!