Current Wine Bargains!
 

This should be a sticky thread really. Couldn't be arsed searching for any old ones.

Not sure if Carrefore price regionally (don't think so). Currently on the red wine shelf is a very excellent La Mancha 2005 Cosecha Crianza at just €1.69 a go. Dominio De La Fuente. Bolder and better than it's branded Estola counter part and half the price.

Very nice and very strong :)

Any more nominations?

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

Oh dear Lord! :blink:

And I saw a Vintage Aston Martin the other day on sale for just €1000. Nothing AT ALL fishy about that.

Why do Brits not get the fact that good wine costs????? My Old Man does the same. He is chuffed to bits if he finds a wine cheap - and brags about the fact. He thinks that currently Lidl and Aldi are the best wine merchants in the world - simply because he never has to pay more than €1.50. When he comes to Spain, the locals round here can never understand his wine habit. No matter how much we all try to introduce him to decent wine (and not expensive either) he can't get it!!!

You carry on LP thinking that your Crianza is great for that price - I assure you, a Crianza at that price is probably worth exactly every cent you paid for it.

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

I remember Oz Clarke saying on the box one evening that a good wine is "if you like it, don't matter what it costs. If Lambrusco rocks your socks then it's a good wine," I personally quite like Lambrusco and I also like Faustino de Autor Reserva.

Thanks for the tip TLP I'll have a little shifty along the wine rack when I'm next out shopping.

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:curse:bloody wine snobbery,does my head in!!!!...my local sells me a bucket of red for 60 cents,and it's the bizz!!!!!....ffs!!! I buy cartons of 20 litres for 18 euros,and it's FAB!!!!!....give it to a wine freak,they would think it cost a fortune :mad:

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A gal after my own heart, trouble is the box stuff gives me a craking head in the morning;)

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:lol:...that's 'cos you dont know when to stop ....I hear ya! :D

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I'm enjoying a nice little vino tinto at the moment, Liria 2007 off the shelves of murkydonna region.:thumbup:

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Well I am with Forteleza here, all these cheap wines are full of additives.

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You can buy a good organic wine for a resonable price, :unsure: having said that I have only ever seen one organic wine here in Spain.

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What :ohmy: even the bricks in Aldi ? (55 cents a litre :rofl:)

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:thumbsup: :p I'd give you karma for that post Cleri but I have to spread it around a bit first :D

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

Go on about snobbery all you like the bottom line is this.

You are in love with the price not the wine. If money was not an issue for you and you could drink gallons of the most expensive wine (without necessarily knowing the price and going on taste alone) you would.

Christ, I can go to Lidl and get a 10 cent can of beer and convince myself it is wonderful because it is so cheap. The reality is it is substandard - end of.

To do the same with wine is almos sacrilige.

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:thumbup:

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

Rubbish!!! I live in the middle of the wine route of Portugal....when it is exported it costs a fortune in Uk...I can buy it here for cents.
I have drunk wine in Italy at 100 quid a bottle ( in my former life)....it really wasn't much better!

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

Using Portuguese wine as a yardstick doesn't exactly fill me with confidence!!!!

Plus Valdepeñas wines - normally used as a cheap table wine for menu del día because of its poor quality - sell for loads in the UK. I always laugh when I hear Brits tell me of this great Valdepeñas wine, when I know it is just awful - cheap but awful!

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

:lol:...you are the typical wine snob...you know nothing about Portuguese wine...
where I live,I get very good quality wine at very cheap prices...I like it,END OF....blindfold me,give me a wine that is 100 quid a bottle and one of my local ones for 1.20 euros....yeah...the more expensive may be a little nicer,but really in the grand scale of things,it's not THAT much better....we just don't produce wine that is awful,simple really :)...and unlike Spain,if you go to a local restaurant and have the house wine...it's good!!!,really good!,for 2 euros a litre jug....god I hate people who think that prices make something good...wake up and smell the roses!

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

Hey, Touchy. I didn't knock Portuguese wine. Just said you using that as your barometer didn't fill me with confidence. I am glad you feel free to 'hate me' because my opinion differs to yours. I am also curious as to how well you know my knowledge of wine from various regions as to give me such a glowing reference!!!!

However, given that I will say this. I like a hamburger. I LOVE a Burger King. I know it's crap but I like it. Yet I can appreciate the differance when an Argentine Novillo is put on my plate and I would not expect to pay the price of a Whopper for it - and if that was the price advertised I would not trust it.

You are clearly a person - sorry for the personal generalisations but as you opened the floodgates... - who just thinks wine is an alcohlic drink, just as someone else might see beef as merely a food. It doesn't matter the quality as long as you like it. Good for you. Personally, if I'm going to drink just any old crap just to drink, I'll go with a cheap beer. If I want to drink something that will tickle the tastebuds, and will compliment the food I'm eating at the time, I'll choose a wine appropriately. And this does not mean going for the €100 bottle. There are loads of excellent wines out there between €5 and €10.

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:rofl: I don't think I hate you!
My point is...it's not crap!!!! just because it's cheap,it doesn't make it crap,I live in the middle of a huge wine producing region,so of course it's cheap....that doesn't make it crap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'd bloody kill for a burger king :(

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

I've always found the house wine given with menus in Spain to be perfectly palatable - often better than the "cheapo wine" you get in UK supermarkets. If it wasn't the restaurant would soon find the locals boycotting the place. Local wines can often be surprisingly good, even if they don't travel. However it is true that if you want a better wine, then ask for Albarino, Rueda (for whites) or Rioja, Ribera, Navarra etc. Incidentally (a bit of a side track) I've found the best tapas in Spain to be found in Valladolid (yes, I've been to both Catalunya and the Basque country, but the tapas in V were far superior, at least to my taste), and I put it down to the fact that it's situated in or close to the best wine producing areas in Spain.

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

Heres a nice little guide for you. ;)

http://www.thewinedoctor.com/regionalguides/spain.shtml

Check out what your Spanish wines you have found would cost you in the UK. Prices shown are per case.

http://www.nickollsandperks.co.uk/search.asp

Your guide to Valladolid where the nosebag sounds divine. :lol:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valladolid

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

Got some Argie "Beyt Hayayin Chardonnay" for a € a bottle from a friend in the right place and it is the dogs goolies.

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

Ooh er.....
(1) Good idea it being a sticky. Someone take note. At least two of the wines in this thread were in one I started yonks ago, we're to some extent all repeating ourselves (must be all the wine & burgers:rofl:)
(2) Ahem. I don't think very many of us think it's the price alone that's the most important thing. Also I think as (was it Cleri) said, given a nice wine to complement food you can certainly tell the difference. But being expensive, whether 5€, 10€ or 35€ & above, doesn't necessarily make it nice
and the same goes the other way.... being cheap (and yes, you can get a half decent glug at less than 2€) doesn't necessarily make it crap.
Additives appear, unless some actual expert tells me differently, in ALL non-organic wines so it's not as simple as that. Sure there are crap bricks. But I've tried the blind trial game with OH, who's a Protos fan. That Dominio del Fuente from Carrefour - while NOT fooling him it was a Protos, nor even really a true Ribero del Duero - DID gobsmack him for taste/price. Mind you having said that I suspect the latest offering isn't as good as last year, I had two glasses last night & can feel it this morning, not as smooth by a long chalk.

(3) Liria, Mercadona - :thumbup:
(4) If money was not an issue for you and you could drink gallons of the most expensive wine (without necessarily knowing the price and going on taste alone) you would, said Forty. Well that's probably true; but money is an issue (even when you've got a few bob in the bank, sometimes being careful's how it got there:rofl:) and as with buying your Aston or your Kia, or whatever it is, you have to weigh up pros and cons and for many of us the pros are value for money - obviously you could say for taste alone, a 20€ Ribero or whatever would give you stonking value. However 20€ is a meal, or even two. (or three:lol:) So you pays your money & takes your choice. And I'd rather drink Carrefour at home & pay over the odds to have something better/special when we go out, thank you very much!

Oh and btw, 'the reality is it is substandard. End of'. Has anyone ever done you a blind trial Forty? Lidl beer rocks!

Btw#2 - Novillo? if you've not tried bife de chorizo or bife de lomo or asado de tira on Argentine soil you don't know you've lived! (foodsnobs of the world unite;)

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

We are too hissed off with the wine snobs.
We buy our wine from the neighbours for about 1 € a bottle. There are no chemicals or additives in it. It is no reserva just a good honest young wine.
if you want to see a definitive wine guide to Spain this is the best link we have found.
http://www.espavino.com/index_en.php

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

I'm with Cleri on this one.

I live just half an hour away from Soave and other well known Veneto wine making towns. The soave wine is cheap because it's local, it's not cheap beacuse of an inferior quality.

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You go buy a bottle and try it. I suspect they've priced it wrongly. Believe me - I know my wines and this one is an absolute bargain.

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Good post Fiona, we did blind wine tasting where I used to work, one evening every 3 months, everyone would buy a bottle of wine wrap it in tin foil and then we would taste each wine and talk about it and rate it on a scale from 1 - 10. Most times the cheaper wines won out, there are some fantastic wines out there for everyday drinking, day to day JFB and I go for wines that cost up to 2.50 but we have been known to push the boat out on special occasions. As I have said before a good wine is based on the fact if you like it then it's good, no matter how much you pay for it.

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Back home in the UK, in Morrisons the wine was 10% off for 6 bottles, occasionally we would buy 6 bottles and when we got home open a bottle whilst putting the shopping away. Then we would open a second bottle, just to see if it tasted better or worse, then a third............it usually progressed to having crackers and cheese with the wine and the shopping took ages to put away. We always had a laugh and even had a score sheet for the wine, ranging from 1 (bad) to 10 (good) after a few glasses though we changed the scores as the wine tasted better the more we drank :rofl:

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

Novel way to put the shopping away. I must try that.

I usually tell myself to get a job done first and then and only then treat myself to a nice glass of wine.

I must try it your way in future. I'm sure it makes a lot of household jobs last much longer but be far happier in the doing.

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We only did it occasionally....when the devil was looking over my shoulder :rofl:

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yeah - I was just thinking ................ you either drink a bottle very quickly .......... or you are very very slow at putting the shopping away ............... or you get sidetracked :p

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It always made it more fun :lol:

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No it does not, if you want to pay over the top prices because of a brand name you carry on mate, wine snobs will pay silly money for a wine that tastes like vinegar and because it is expensive they think it tastes super.
Use your brain and your taste buds, superb wine does not have to be expensive and if you are stupid enough to pay over the odds for a wine when you can get a similar wine that tastes as good without the designer label then more fool you, Oz Clarke reckons the best t wines are the ones from independent small wineries that are not massed produced.

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:thumbup:

I live close to Saumur. Saumur wines have an 'appellation'. They cost a little more because of it. So, when the wine fayres are on, I taste what the smaller cavistes are offering. Good wines from around €3 to €5/bottle, usually on a par with the 'classy', more well-known wines around €10. I can be just as happy drinking the € plastic bottles. Wine's a stupid industry anyway.

Friends brought us a bottle of their home-produced wine last year. Shit alors, what a fantastic drop that was....

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

Buy what you like.
Quaff what you like.
There is, in life ,an awful lot of snobbery.
I've met enough folk who think that because the've paid more it must be better than a cheaper version.
We used to do the same product in different wrappers. One priced for the snobs, one priced for the price sensitive folk.
Every body was happy and their relative values (or pretensions) were satisfied.......ergo everyone's a winner!
:thumbsup:

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

Totally agree with you, but hey ignorance is bliss for some.;)

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I think you can generalise that the more you pay the more likely it is to be a good wine and the less you pay the more likely it is to be a duffer.

There is of course a huge overlap which is why some cheap wines are really good and some expensive ones are naff.

At the end of the day it's a question of whether you like it or not, not what someone else thinks.

All I would add is that Spanish wines are made from more different grape varieties than any other wine producing country and it is the grape variety that gives different wines different flavours. In some respects the area of production is less relevant.

Almost all Spanish wines show the grape varieties on the label and if you find, for instance, that you like a Sauvignon Blanc or a Grenache, then look for wines made from the same grape as it is more likely to suit your taste - it is particularly noticeable with Rosados.

Lidl do actually sell some really good, extremely good value wines. This is mainly as a result of their huge buying power and almost all their wines are specially selected and bottled for them. The same applies to the large supermarket chains.

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

I agree- the best wines (or at least the ones I likes the most) always came from the pueblo of the local bodega, or found in the Pueblos them selves (When I lived in ZGZA I always loved going to Cariñena for their full bodies tintos)

I wish we could find such deals here in the US, though Spanish wines are becoing easier to find and prices are coming down. Lately we have been getting a lot of Campo Borja, Borsao from Zgza, and Garnacha from Calatyud and Cariñena for $6-8/bottle...nice to find so far away from 'home'.


Will have to visit Valladolid next trip...I thought Donosti's tapas were the best!!

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

Think it's more a case of inverted snobbery on this thread.:huh:
We drink mainly cheap wine but have a treat now and then and can tell the difference. If you are so adamant that the very cheapest is best how can you tell as you won't taste anything else. Someone mentioned Potros, one of my favourites. A few years ago such a good one came out it was all sold straight away. Spanish only drink the cheapest wine because they mix it with Casera ,when they are out they order at least a cheap Rioja.

Re: Current Wine Bargains!
 

What about ' new world' wines ? NZ for instance?

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NZ produce wine :eek::lol:?

When we first came here we used to buy wine which cost around €3 a bottle as normal, sometimes up to €5. They were all good, rarely had a bad bottle.

A few months ago we were recommended Fin Del Rio which we get from Mercadona at €1.99 for a ltr bottle. It is excellent for day to day drinking, and now most of the neighbours around here drink it as well. We have the odd bottle of more expensive wine as a treat, but why pay more if you find a wine you enjoy!