Finding Great Wines at Affordable Prices

Posted on by Forest in General, Guest Posts, Opinion, Recipes & Food, Saving Money & Finances

This is a guest post from Mara & Ford from www.winning-wines.com

How do you find wines that are the best bang for the buck? Do you listen to friends or ask the salesperson at the local wine store? Often, when evaluating wines, there’s a strong tendency to be greatly influenced by the bottle’s label or a vintner’s reputation. There is a way, however, that you can gain far more objective insights and raise your hit rates for excellent wines at bargain prices.

Each year, there are major wine competitions around the country involving hundreds of wine experts who judge wines in blind taste tests. Often, thousands of bottles are entered to compete for medals. Large panels of expert judges wait in the tasting arena, while scores of back room workers label the glasses, pour them, and serve. When sampling, the judge usually spits out the wine and will occasionally use bread or a cracker to clear out residual flavors from the palate. The wines are served in groups like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, etc. Often, it takes several days to finish the judging.

The sheer enormity of the project can introduce bias, however. Variables such as what time of the day a particular wine is served, the feelings of the various judges, the atmosphere of the tasting, as well as other factors can influence the results.

The best way to smooth out these biases is to analyze how specific wines fared in several competitions. When a particular wine wins medals in more than one competition, the odds increase that this one is a winner.

High marks in several competitions are still no guarantee that you’ll love a particular wine. Judges may value certain characteristics to score a wine higher than its rivals, but that subtlety may not be appreciated by many consumers. Trying wines that achieve solid scores, however, is still one of the most cost-effective methods to help build your personal list of best wines.

You could spend hundreds of hours finding and organizing all these scores, then developing a formula to create a master list. Or, you might find that it’s already completed in Winning Wines: Medal Winners for $12 or Less. This book is available in all e-book formats as well as in a printed and bound edition. See www.winning-wines.com.

Tags: cheap good wine, good wine, Wine at Discount Prices, wine tasting, wine under $12, winning wines