Okay, answering this Message 26375007 here because that's where it belongs:
While I admit I can be picky, it's not about my having a "bec fin" or "gourmet" (or whatever you want to call it) palate when it comes to wine. I'm actually a cheapskate, and tend to stay fairly low in the hierarchy. Plus, my tastes tend to run to the simple. I have no problem drinking, say, good high end Burgundy if someone else is buying, but mostly I'm looking for clean, honest, and affordable wines. My problem with the sub $10 world is that most of the wines at that price point tend to be industrialized phony wines, and on top of that they tend to be made to please a certain wine critic whose preferences, unfortunately, don't happen to coincide with mine.
In actuality, I find $10-$15 to be the sweet spot. In that range you can even find drinkable California (e.g. Hawk Crest), and an abundance of excellent wines from such diverse regions as the Finger Lakes, Germany, Loire, Languedoc, and Italy, among others. With distressingly rare exceptions, the producers selling to the sub $10 market seem to have decided to compensate by boosting the alcohol, adding sweetness, and otherwise tarting up wine that would probably be just fine if they left it alone. That just doesn't work for me. It didn't used to be like that, and I fervently hope it will change in the future. |
