Panilonco Merlot Malbec Reserva – Trader Joe’s Top Picks Wine #4

60% Merlot and 40% Malbec from Colchagua Valley, Chile.

Available exclusively at Trader Joe’s. Purchased for $4.99.

From the bottle:

“This smooth red combines the ripe fruit flavours of Merlot with the rich blackberry notes of Malbec to give an intensely fruity, soft full flavoured wine.

Delicious on its own, this wine is the perfect partner for roast lamb, steak, barbecued meats or with cheese.

13% Alcohol”

While we’re all about cheap wine here at Reverse Wine Snob, we’re also realistic. There’s plenty of really bad cheap wine out there, especially when you start talking about wine under $5. It’s amazingly hard to make a quality wine for that low of a price – the cost of the bottle, cork and label eat up a good chunk of that alone. Add in the cost of shipping, which is all the way from Chile in the case of today’s wine, and there’s not much left.

And all this doesn’t even factor in the cost of the wine itself, the most important part! And then there’s the awful three tier distribution system in our country which fills distributors’ pockets at the expense of consumers and the wineries themselves. (See here and here for just two of many recent examples.) Add to that the retailer’s margin and it begins to boggle the mind that a wine could possibly be priced so low.

All this to say that when we find a good, quality wine that is able to overcome all these obstacles and sell at such a low price point we have to give it props, even if it’s not rocketing to the top of our rating scale. But that’s the beauty of our unique rating system — because it only costs $5 it doesn’t have to score as high of a Taste rating as a wine that costs $15 in order to qualify as a recommended buy.

The 2012 Panilonco “Chief of Lions” Merlot Malbec Reserva from the Errazuriz Ovalle Family and Vinedos Marchigue begins with pleasant aromas of plum and other ripe dark fruit including a little cranberry and a bit of wintergreen. This easy-drinking, medium-bodied wine tastes smooth and simple with lots of plum, blackberry and grape jam along with a hint of spice and even a few earthy notes. It could use a little more acidity and a longer finish but for $4.99 this is a surprisingly drinkable wine that is likely to be a crowd-pleaser.

Available exclusively at Trader Joe’s.