I’m a huge fan of the French Rhone wines, which is a problem these days. First off, the good stuff has gotten terribly expensive. Things like Chateauneuf du Pape and Gigondas, and even Vacqueyras now . . . and I’m not even going to mention the Northern Rhone. After a few flashy reviews by the world-renowned wine guys, a bottle I could take home 10 years ago for $25, I now have to pay $80-$200. And when I say “have to pay”, I really mean “can’t” and “won’t”, since I just don’t take home those bottles any more.

A second issue I find with the Rhone is what I feel is a somewhat misleading classification system. Not misleading in the way the regions and laws are set up, but mostly in practice. This is most likely my own personal issue, perhaps compounded by decisions by importers of which wines make it to market. To make it simple for this particular argument, there are the premium regions, the AOC regions, like the aforementioned Chateauneuf du Pape, Gigondas, Vacqueyras, Lirac, and so on. Pretty spectacular wines, in my opinion. But also expensive, by the name.

Next up in the designation hierarchy is the Cotes du Rhone Villages (followed by the village name – Ex. ‘Cotes du Rhone Villages Rasteau’). There are some 20-odd villages in that designation, and it is meant to be an intermediary step from generic Cotes du Rhone to AOC status. In theory this should make them better than regular Cotes du Rhone, but in practice, at least my experience, I’ve found the Cotes du Rhone wines more pleasing overall.

Now I am loath to generalize anything in the wine world, since there are so few certainties, being an ever-evolving, living, breathing thing (metaphorically, of course). And what you may have found a known fact one day is a falsehood the next. That being said, I’ll take a regular Cotes du Rhone over a “Villages” any day of the week. Prove me wrong.

Back to this wine in question, this Domaine Paul Autard, had me intrigued. Interest piqued. It boasted the price of $10.95. I hadn’t seen a Cotes du Rhone that cheap ‘inexpensive’ for a long time. Remember that before the economy starting failing as badly as it has, it was ailing before that. (We just added an ‘F’, is all). For a couple years we watched the Euro gaining over the Dollar, and the price of European imports showing the discrepancy. And so, this pushed the cost of my beloved Rhone wines, even the cheap ones, into the not-so-cheap territory.

So an $11 Cotes du Rhone had me concerned. It seemed implausible for a Cotes du Rhone to be that inexpensive, yet not be the bargain-bin close-out wine used for cooking or ending parties. But I have to say, for that little cost, this thing delivers!

The wine had a deep ruby color, and a relatively intense nose with aromas of blueberries (albeit slightly under-ripe blueberries), hints of licorice and anise. Flavors on the palate included black cherries, regular ol’ cherries, those blueberries we discussed earlier, some good black pepper and spice. The tannin was there and the acid was there but lacked a bit in fruit, weakening the impact of the overall body of the wine. But really, it was pretty exciting, for Eleven bucks.

As fate would have it, I found the same selection at a wine bar a few days later and had a second taste. Somehow it even seemed better than before. Maybe it was the different glasses. Maybe it had been open for a day and mellowed. Maybe it was the food. Or lighting. Or music. Because you know, if the wine isn’t tasty enough – change the music.

Yes, I know it’s been a week, and I’m well underway in the Case Project, here. I’ve sampled quite a few and have been pondering the proper way to display the selections. I don’t always take the best notes possible which makes me a bad, bad wine guy. What good is a photographic memory if that’s a visual skill, right? (Actual photographic memory notwithstanding.)

Oh, and by the way, I had forgotten to mention that one more stipulation I had imposed on the project was that these are all red wines. Usually you can find that white wines are less expensive to begin with, and the quality can also usually remain pretty decent at lower price levels. Why is that? It’s certainly another discussion, but I believe a lot of it has to do with treatment.

Many whites are harvested earlier, where they may have a lower chance of rot or later-season weather damage. They don’t take up as much time for fermentation considering there’s little to no need for maceration (leaving on the skins to add flavor and tannin in the case of red wines). Also, they don’t take up the space that red wine does while aging in barrel or cask. This extra cost I usually refer to as “paying the wine’s back rent”. But then, I’ll discuss that at a later date.

So since you can find inexpensive white wines as simply as . . . er . . . (insert metaphor here), we’re going to do all the reds. Inexpensive reds are more elusive and a heckuvalot more variable in quality.

Anyway, I thought the best way to display these wines would be, perhaps, one to three at a time, so a to not overwhelm the page, the dear reader, and the humble writer. In addition to the mad blogging skillz, I’ve also personally shot the photos seen for the bottles, some end up better than others. So let’s get started on whether or not the bottles are deals, or duds. (Sorry. Best alliteration I could come up with on the fly.)

So here we are on the “Value” wine project. How do we select these so-called “value” wines? There are a few parameters we need to set up for this. We have to decide a price limit, an idea of the selection, and where to choose them from.

In the concept for this project, the magical price point to me seemed to be around $10. A few years ago when I had my wine shop, the magic price was $20. Frankly, I think there were a lot more twenties floating around back then, weren’t there? A price at $10 is a good even number and it’s low enough that most folks would be willing to drop that on a bottle of wine. The proof of the value is in the pudding, though . . . I mean wine. Wine pudding. Whatever. Next!

So to help things out on the $10 wine project, I’ve kept in mind that most places will offer a  5%, 10% or 15% discount on different volumes. Half-cases. Full cases. Solid (all one kind) cases. Mixed cases. Whatever the case your case may be. So keeping that consideration, and to give a little flex in the bottle cost, we’ll say average price after discount at $10. Sound reasonable? Good.

At this point we can establish what constitutes “wine”. I know that may seem like the most basic of parameters, but then consider that it would be easy to drop $10 (or less) on a bottle of Schmendal-Schmackson (not actual name) or Three-Dollar-Charlie (also not actual name). These are macro, California overflow wines, and don’t really count towards our goal.

With that in mind, I decided to avoid the megahuge grocery outlets which are filled with the big-brand wines stacked in huge displays at the end of every aisle. Grocery giants have corporate schematics and standards that tell them which wines to carry and how to organize it, so a store in Boise has the same setup as the store in Eureka or Baker City. Sure, that’s not always the case, as many stores have wine stewards that can hand-select a few things for the shelf openings, depending on regional demand. That’s another story.

Let’s just start with the local wine merchant. A selection made by just a guy who knows wine, and the availability in the area, unaffected by pressures of big-name wine producers. Well, relatively unaffected, anyway. Besides . . . the little guy around the corner needs help the most in this economy, right?

So I went to Vino in Sellwood and filled myself up on a case of wine. Bruce there at Vino offers a 10% full mixed case discount. I grabbed everything that sounded interesting that was around or under the $10 mark. After it was all over and the smoke had cleared, the cost of this case after discount: $105.25, or $8.77 per bottle! Is it a value? Well, let’s find out.

Welcome to the recession! Everyone is talking about it. Most of us are feeling the pinch of it. Everyone is busy pointing fingers as to who caused it, who is going to solve it, who is making it worse, and who is capitalizing on it. And I, for one, am really tired of all of it. It kinda makes you want to drink, right? That’s why we’re here.

When it gets to the economic nonsensical hoodoo that is going on like right now, the bottom line for the rest of us is how to keep things in our lives as normal as possible while still saving a buck here or there. How that relates to wine is the ongoing argument of “value”.

This has long been a point of contention to me. Back, years ago, when a lot of wines from Chile were appearing on the market, the buzz on the grapevine was about how great of a value they were. However, upon the sampling of these dirt-cheap imports left me gasping, “Yeah, a great value since I didn’t want to pay a lot for my industrial-strength machinery degreaser.”

Alright. They weren’t all that bad, but in the sampling of these “values” had me considering just the basic idea that, in paying $2 more than the cost of these Chilean bottles of ‘meh’, you could net something far, far better. The real point being: what good is a “value” bottle of wine if you don’t really want to drink it? At all?

Of course, value is something different to all of us, and that’s a longer debate I will gladly pursue at another time. Before you pass judgement on my theory here, think of the cheapest wine out there. An amalgam of these wines might be something like Thunder-Mad-Train 50/50, or something like that. It’s some pretty nasty stuff. It may or may not have had actual grapes in its origins. But it does have alcohol. It does have “flavor”. And it’s only 75 Cents for a full bottle! Say it with me, now: “What a ‘value’!” Does that paint the picture pretty well?

I thought the time was ripe to have a little examination of these “budget” wines. I had shied away from the “values” for years since, to be frank, if you can pay a wholesale price, it kinda ups the ante when it comes to “value”. So my goal for the next couple weeks is to try a bunch of these cheaper wines, and report back on what’s decent, and what’s degreaser. Stay tuned. More to come.