If you’re heading out to do some wine shopping, you might find these 3 quick tips helpful to spot the wines that taste twice as expensive as they cost:
1. Look for wines from warm regions, like Argentina and Chile. Often the cost of production is cheaper because winemakers aren’t battling disease, rot and weather as much as cool climate producers do. Therefore, there’s less crop loss and lower costs for production.
2. Seek labels that have illegible gothic script and impossibly long names that are difficult to pronounce in the liquor store (or anywhere else). Few people can read them, so they don’t buy the wines and demand doesn’t push up prices. Think German Riesling.
3. Try grapes that aren’t well-known such as Portugal’s tinta roriz and tinta barroca. They make great wine but don’t have the “brand awareness” and cachet of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and chardonnay. Therefore, producers must compete more aggressively on price.
These insider tips come from my new book Unquenchable. At the end of each chapter, I include several of these savvy shopping tips for the wine region that we visit, the best wine labels to buy, food matches, online resources and books to read.
I’ve just posted new reviews of the wines mentioned above as well as those from other regions for your shopping list.
