For my next taste test experiment, I am ranking five cheap red wines. With wine available at so many different price points, how do you know which one to buy? I often buy a bottle just because it’s pretty.
I may be a savage, but I drink red wine refrigerated. Cabernet Sauvignon is preferential to merlot because it’s dryer and it doesn’t make my mouth pucker. Besides Cabernet, I like a few other red wines including Pinot Noir, red Zinfandel, and certain red blends if they aren’t too sweet. I occasionally add sugar fruit candies or a slice of fresh ginger to improve a sub-par wine.
My favorite white wine is Chardonnay. I prefer it over Pinot Grigio, Chablis, or Reisling. However, I have a very specific taste preference in Chardonnay: I like Chardonnay expensive, and aged for years 🙂 in oak barrels. With Cabernet Sauvignon, I’m not as picky.
I hope I can steer you in the right direction for choosing a decent cheap red wine. Here are my rules: 1. The wine has to cost around $3.00. 2. I’m sticking with Cabernet Sauvignon for consistency. 3. I’m rating bottles only, no cans/boxes/etc. 4. I’m using no candy or additives to make it taste better. Here goes!
#5 Charles Shaw 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon (AKA Two Buck Chuck). $2.99 at Traders Joes. This wine was such a disappointment! The cork chipped off into the bottle, and it had a painful bite and no discernible aftertaste. I drank half of one glass, and poured the rest of the bottle down the drain. I got no heartburn or wine headache, so I’m guessing it was made with care but sat around too long in the Trader Joes warehouse. It might have been a good wine in 2018, but by 2020 it went south. I may try Trader Joes wine again, but I’m waiting a year or two.
#4 Pacific Peak Cabernet Sauvignon. At $2.97, this is the cheapest Cabernet Sauvignon you can buy at Total Wine & More. My first impression was, “wow, this is not terrible!” But please do not confuse this with a good wine. Perhaps it was the biting into a fresh lime front-end flavor that makes me question the plausibility of this wine, like a ton of citric acid was added to give it more bite.
A few hours after drinking it, based on the feeling in my stomach, I was convinced I drank vinegar, even when I told myself, “No, you drank wine.” This wine’s score decreased even more the next morning when I received an additional bill in the form of a wine headache. I poured the rest of the bottle down the drain.
#3 Winking Owl Cabernet Sauvignon. $2.95 at Aldi. I was pleasantly surprised by this wine. It tasted great! It scored better than the first two wines because I didn’t dump it out, and it didn’t give me a raging headache the next day. However, it scored a bit lower than the top two wines because I don’t think the brand is consistent every year. I tried it a few years ago and it wasn’t as good!
#2 Big Sipper Wine. $3.99 at Total Wine & More. The cork was drenched with wine, but that didn’t seem to affect the flavor. This wine was surprisingly good with both a good front-and and back-end flavor. Oddly, it tasted even better after sitting in the fridge for five days. If it were available at LIDL or Aldi I’d buy it again, but there are so many options at Total Wine that I probably wouldn’t seek it out.
#1 Sierra Pines Cabernet Sauvignon, $2.99 at LIDL. This wine is consistently great! The flavor gods got it right with this one. It had a full-bodied, rich flavor. To my admittedly untrained palate, it tasted like an expensive red wine. If I had to drink one cheap wine for the rest of my life, it would be this. It even tasted good after sitting in the fridge for 2 days, but by Day 4 you might want to use it for Sangria, if you have any left.
Whine On!