Wine – Bill’s Red House Wines Under $15

Wine is the answer!

Now what was the question?

There is a House Wine wine tradition in Western Europe that has just not translated into the US.  If you go into a café, bodega, or trattoria the menu will have a handful of red wines for under €12.  The vineyard that produced those wines is probably less than 25 miles away and there are no plans for export outside their local area.  And these wines are delicious.  The winemaker is not looking to make wines they can sell for €100 or win prizes at international competitions.  They are looking to make the best wines they can from their terroir and have the local restaurants and shops buy all that they can make.  They work hard on making good wine since their customers are their neighbors.  Wines under $15 that are made in the US are almost exclusively mass-produced wines like Cupcake, Barefoot, or Dark Horse and international offerings like Yellow Tail are similar.

My cellar falls into four tiers of wines:

• Tier 4 – House wines under $15
• Tier 3 – Nice wines for under $35, the largest segment of my cellar, maybe aging them for a couple of years
• Tier 2 – Selected very good wines for under $75 that are aging for at least a few years
• Tier 1 – Wines in the $75-130 range that are exceptional (IMHO). I have less than a dozen of them laying down.

Over the years we have found 20 wines that are under $15 that are our everyday house wines, also called Table Wines.  We cook with them, and we enjoy them with simple meals and leftovers.  Ten of them are red wines and those will be the topic of this blog.  Five of them are imported wines, four are from California, and one is from Oregon. 

These red table wines are meant to be drunk young but I often buy them by the case so if a few bottles are on the shelf for more than a year, there is no problem.  I decant all my red wines, especially the table wines.  Because they are young, they have lots of tannin and often an edge to them.  Decanting them and letting they sit in the decanter for 15-30 minutes softens those tannins and lets the wine really open up and makes the wines closer to what we pay $20-25 for.  I will be doing a blog on decanting soon. 

Marietta Old Vine Red (OVR) – This was our very first house wine and a bottle has always been in our cellar for over 40 years.  Not the same bottle 😊.  It is now just scraping under the $15 threshold when I find it on sale, but it will still be one of our house wines when inflation takes it over $15.  We hate the new label with the big OVR on it, but we still love the wine inside.  Marietta is in Sonoma Valley and the grapes for this wine come largely from Geyersville.  Marietta makes nine wines and the three are in the OVR series which are their entry level wines.  We have only had the OVR Red.  I am not sure if the Lot # changes from year to year but currently they are selling Lot 73.  It is predominantly Zinfandel (generally about 80%) with some Syrah, Petit Syrah, and Cabernet Sauvignon added to get the flavor they are looking for.  It is a very good food wine that goes with all red meats.  This wine made the recent Food and Wine Magazine list for Best Affordable Red Wine, $15 and Under, https://www.foodandwine.com/wine/red-wine/best-15-dollar-and-under-red-wines.  It is widely available, and we typically get it from Calvert Woodley in DC where they have the lowest price. 

Chateau Segries – This is the second longest tenured wine in our cellar, over 30 years, and it is also bumping up against the $15 threshold.  We are big fans of Rhone wines, and this is an everyday simple Cote du Rhone wine that we love.  It is 50% Grenache, 30% Syrah, 10% Cinsault, and 10% Carignan with just a little oak influence.  It is a dry wine that is rich and round with black fruit and spice aromas and flavors.  In addition to enjoying it with meals, we also cook with it.  If we are doing a recipe that calls for a cup or more of Cote du Rhone, we don’t want to open a lovely Gigondas or Chateauneuf-du-Pape for that.  And we want the entire bottle of very good Rhone to enjoy with the meal.  In the recipe for the Beef Daub that I posted in an earlier blog, I used 2 bottles of Rhone wine to marinate the beef, cook it in the marinating liquid, and then reduce it for the sauce.  I don’t want to use two bottles of a $50 wine for cooking, but I want to dish to be in sync with the lovely wine I am serving for dinner.   The Segries gives me that same Rhone blend but at a price I can cook with.  Chateau Segries also has a more expensive label called Lirac Cuvee Reserve, but I strongly prefer the taste of the Chateau Segries.  It is pretty widely available. 

Castle Rock Willamette Valley Pinot Noir – Our other favorite red wine is Pinot Noir and this wine from Castle Rock is our basic Pinot Noir table wine for burgers, meat loaf, pork chops and the like.  It also works very nicely as the cooking wine, or the wine that goes into the sauce, when serving a nice French Burgundy with the meal.   Castle Rock makes 7 California Pinot Noirs, one from the Columbia Valley in Washington, and this one from the Willamette Valley in Oregon.  I have not tried their other Pinots.  I suspect they are made in the New World style of Pinot Noir with lots of Jammy fruit and oak, but I could be wrong.  This one is made more in the Old World style of Pinot Noir where the goal is to let the grape show its complexity, not to try to enhance its flavor with things like new oak.  We are Old World Pinot drinkers, and this gives us an inexpensive table wine, around $13, that fits our tastes.  Pick the Castle Rock Pinot Noir that you like most but don’t expect that their wines from different areas will all taste the same.   Castle Rock wines are widely available but not always the Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.  Between Calvert Woodley, Total Wine, and Wine.com I can generally find it.

Coppola Claret – We do not have a Cabernet Sauvignon house wine.  We have flirted with several, most recently Dark Horse, but never found one that we really liked in the house wine price range.   They just had too much edge to them.  Instead, we have gone with two blends that have a significant Cab component.  The Coppola Claret is one of Frances Ford Coppola’s most popular wines and one of his most inexpensive.  It is a blend of 78% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9% Petit Syrah, 6% Syrah, 5% Petit Verdot, and 2% Segailin.  It has 14 months in French oak which gives it some aromas of roasted nuts and vanilla with tastes of clove and caramel.  On the Coppola site it is listed for $21 and Wine.com charges $18 for it but many retailers are more aggressive, and you can find it for $13-14 at Total Wine, Sam’s Club, Costco and others, so it meets the cost requirement for one of my House Wines. 

Ménage a Trois Red Blend –This other Cab alternative combines Zinfandel, Cab, and Merlot in a taste that we really enjoy along with the $12 price tag.  For a dollar or two more you can get their Decadance, Silk, Sultry Red, or Midnight blends and we have enjoyed all of them, probably the Decadence the most.  They also have two Cabs that are excellent value if you prefer the single varietal taste.  Menage a Trois wines are widely available and are in the same category of mass-produced low-cost wines as Cupcake, Barefoot, etc. that I criticized above.  This is one where I think the taste they deliver is a step above those other bulk producers but you should make your own decisions based on your tastes.  The good news is that Menage a Trois wines are readily available.    

Oxte The Silence Red Blend – This wine is a total steal from Trader Joe’s which privately labels this Spanish wine from Axial Vinos and is the sole source for it in the US.  It is just $5.99!  It has a great blend of 40% Tempranillo (the primary red wine grape in Spain), 25% Garnacha, 25% Syrah, and 10% Cab.   In a blind taste test you would put this in at least the $25 price range.  Trader Joe’s has some excellent wines, not “2 Buck Chuck”, at very good prices.  Some like this one they exclusively private label.  Below is a link to a good web site for wine bargains, Reverse Wine Snob, and their list of recommended wines from Trader Joe’s which is how we first found it.  They have a similar list for COSTCO wines.   For yesterday’s Super Bowl we had a large pan of nachos for dinner and this wine was a great accompaniment.  https://www.reversewinesnob.com/search/label/trader-joes/

Lazy Bones Cabernet Franc – This is another wine from Trader Joe’s and even more of a great buy in my opinion at $6.99.  The naked woman on the label has nothing to do with that judgment.  I am not sure if Trader Joe’s has the exclusive on this wine from the California Central Coast but they almost always have it in stock at a great price.  For those not familiar with Cab Franc, a little before the Revolutionary War a winemaker in France grafted the Cabernet Franc and the Sauvignon Blanc grapes together and created the Cabernet Sauvignon grape, now the grape grown in virtually every wine making region of the world and making some of the most popular wines.  In the Bordeaux region of France the three grapes primarily used to make their top wines are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc.   Cab Franc is gaining in popularity as a single varietal providing a variation on the Cabernet Sauvignon taste.  Some Virginia wineries are making it along with some California wineries.  Bottom line – We really enjoy sipping this wine and having it with many different food dishes.  When we think that about the price for it, we are smiling broadly while we drink it.     

Protocolo – This is another long-time resident of our cellar and one that has not had the same price increases that the OVR and Segries have.  Spanish wines are increasingly great bargains for very good quality at attractive prices, even up to Gran Reserva Riojas.  This wine is still $6.99 at Total Wine and Calvert Woodley and $9.99 at Wine.com.  It is made by the Eguren family in Spain with vineyards in Manchuela, Rioja, and Toro.    It is 100% Tempranillo.  It is our first choice as a cooking wine if we are not pairing the dish with a specific wine to serve with the meal and is definitely the cooking wine of choice if we are serving a nice Rioja or Ribera del Duero.   Not strong enough for a Sangria in my opinion, at least for the Sangria recipe that has been handed down in our family for one generation. 

Santa Christina – the last two of our Table Wines are for Italian meals.  Santa Christina is a $10-12 Rosso wine.  The Santa Christina winery is owned by Antinori, the finest winemaker in Tuscany in my opinion.  Interestingly, they do not list Santa Christina as one of their wines on the Antinori website.  The Santa Christina vineyard is on a hilltop near the town of Cortona, not far from Siena.  It has been making wine since 1946.  It is a blend of Sangiovese (the primary grape of Tuscany) with some Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.   The exact percentages differ from year to year based on the harvest.  This wine has pared beautifully with any Italian dish that we have had.  At a third of the price of a nice Chianti Classico Reserva, it is very enjoyable with spaghetti and meatballs, sausage and peppers, or lasagna.  At the price it is also an excellent choice for any wine called for in an Italian recipe.  It is widely available including Calvert Woodley in DC, Total Wine, and Wine.com. 

Monte Antico – A second Italian Rosso, generally a dollar or so more expensive than the Santa Christina.  The 2016 got 90 points from James Suckling.  The name translates into “ancient mountain” and is grown in Tuscany on slopes 1,300 feet above sea-level.  The wine is a blend of about 85% Sangiovese, 10% Merlot, and 5 % Cabernet Sauvignon.   We were introduced to it years ago at a wine tasting.  Late in that tasting there was a half bottle left that had been open for over an hour.  Several of us politely finished that bottle and it jumped out at us how much it had opened up and expanded its flavor profile compared to when we had tasted it from the just opened bottle.  This wine definitely benefits from being decanted for at least 30 minutes.  Rosso wines like this and the Santa Christina can also be called Super Tuscans since that name just means other wines have been added to the Sangiovese in a blend.  It is not any kind of quality designation. 

We have had some other House Table Wines that we just cannot find any more.  Two of them are white wines that I will cover in an upcoming blog.  On the red side we are still in mourning for the Trader Joe’s Nero d’Avola that was $6.  They just cannot get it any longer and I have searched for someone else bringing the wine from that specific Sicilian vineyard into the US, but to no avail.  We have found some good Nero d’Avola wines, including one for $8 at Trader Joe’s but we keep feeling like we are paying more for a wine we like less and that has taken the excitement away from that grape. 

Our 10 white House Table Wines (no, not that White House) will be coming soon.