The Idea
To find out if it is possible to drink great wine without breaking the bank, and without developing a pretentious aura. After reading about all the health benefits of wine, my wife and I decided we should drink wine more often, but quickly discovered how expensive this can be. This set us on a search for great, inexpensive wine that we could drink most days with dinner, but not totally blow apart our budget. To our surprise we found there is a ton of really good, inexpensive wine out there (despite what some wine snobs might say)!
The Process
Drink lots of inexpensive wine and rate each one!
Much of the wine I review is available widely at places like Costco or Trader Joe's but some will be harder to find. Never fear, check out my articles on where to find the wine I recommend and how to buy wine online for some helpful hints and advice that will have you sipping the good stuff in no time.
Now that the site has become rather popular most of the wines that we review are free media samples, which is definitely a nice perk. Rest assured we are still 100% independent and we treat all wine the same, whether we bought it or not. As always, our reviews are based on the whole experience of drinking the bottle, usually over two days, and how the wine changes. No one sip tasting notes allowed!
The Ratings
All wines will be rated on two factors: Taste and Cost. Being analytical by nature I've come up with an algorithm that combines both of these into one Overall Rating.
The Taste Rating
A simple scale from 1-10. I'm endlessly confused by the 100 point rating system. If you have 100 points why are 80% of wines between 85 and 94?? Simplify, simplify, simplify. This rating is subjective so your opinion may vary.
The Cost (Value) Rating
Again, a 1-10 scale, but as price goes up, the rating goes down.
The Overall Rating
In order to score really high, a wine must be cheap and good. The more expensive the wine gets, the harder it is to get a high score unless the Taste Rating is off the charts, which is the way it should be, right? We're trying to maximize our dollars here!
The Recommendations
8.3 - 10: Bulk Buy! Buy as much as you can
7.0 - 8.2: Recommended Buy (by the bottle)
6.0 - 6.9: Give it a second chance?
<6.0 Skip it
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Lastly, while you are here be sure to check out the latest Top 10 list for my favorite wines! You can also find all my reviews in the Wine Ranking Chart. You can sort by type of wine, cost, rating, etc. and create and save your personal shopping lists in the interactive spreadsheet.
