Tasting Question

First time poster, long time reader.

I am hosting a wine tasting for millennial couples who are largely beer drinkers, but curious about wine. They want to have some understanding of red varietal differences.

So what are your favorite varietally true wines in the $30 range. It would help if these are relatively available. I don’t want intellectual exercise wines, I am trying to keep it fun. I am thinking Gamay, Pinot, Syrah, Zinfandel and Cabernet. That leaves a lot of room for future tastings. Thanks

I love doing different varieties for newbies. It’s something we often avoid with experienced tasters who are “above that” unless we’re doing high end stuff. But seeing a newbie get excited about being able to see the difference between varieties is a blast. For some reds with obvious differences relatively true to variety and region:

• Bordeaux (Cab/Merlot): some of these are now over $30 but all good value - Cantemerle, Sociando Mallet, Meyney, La Lagune, Rochemorin
  
  
  
• Rhone: a Cotes du Rhone (Grenache/Syrah) - Grand Veneur Champauvins, Saint Cosme Deux Albion, Charvin Le Poutet
  
  
  
• Zin: Ridge may be above your price point unless on sale, but they’d be first on my list. Otherwise Dashe, Biale, many others to choose from
  
  
  
• Pinot: Burgs may be tough to find in that price range but plenty of Willamette Valley options - Patricia Green, St. Inmocent, Biggio Hamina, Drouhin

Great suggestions. I would just add:

Bordeaux: You could find lots of cru bourgeois well under $30 that would serve this purpose. Widely available ones include Potensac, Ch. Cantemerle, Ch. Larose-Trintaudon, Ch. Greysac.

Rhone: Guigal Cotes du Rhone (50% Syrah, 40% Grenache, 10% Mourvèdre), Jaboulet Parallele 45 (60% Grenache, 40% Syrah)

Zinfandel: Ridge East Bench Zin can be had for well under $30 in most markets and is very representative of good zin. Likewise, Bedrock’s Old Vine Zin, which is usually under $25.

Pinot: If you want a Burgundy, Drouhin’s basic Bourgogne red, Laforêt, goes for less than $15. I haven’t had it in a long time, but it was always pretty potable.

Another approach would be different grapes from the same region. In Piedmont, you could pick a good, well-distributed producer like Cavallotto or Vietti and have their Nebbiolo d’Alba, a dolcetto and a barbera – all quite different.

We haven’t discussed whites, but a sauvignon blanc against a chardonnay (or two chardonnays, one oaked, one not) would be eye-opening.

Then finish off with a sweet German riesling to blow their minds.

Greg, when you say you’re looking for something “reasonably available” (and that makes perfect sense in these circumstances that you are), what kinds of options do you have in the reasonably available category? Do you mean at the supermarket, or Costco, or at a BevMo / Total Wine type store, or do you have a proper wine store you can shop at?

Let us know what kinds of places you are willing to shop, and we can probably better give you suggestions that are more likely to appear those places.

The overall idea sounds great, but of course, there is a huge spectrum of wine quality out there even at a given price point, so hopefully we can steer you to some wines you can find which will be more likely to interest the group than just generic/commercial whatever wine.

There are too many possibilities to single out just a few for those particular grapes, but if you wanted to show them something more interesting, you could do worse than tasting them thru the various cru wines from Georges Duboeuf - Morgon, Fleurie, Juliénas, Chénas, Chiroubles, Régnié, St-Amour, Moulin-à-Vent, Brouilly and Côte de Brouilly. Same grape, different areas, and it’s a lesson in how the land matters when everything else is held constant.

Greg, I’ll second John’s additional suggestions, and I don’t know how I could have left off Beaujolais. GregT’s recommendation to compare different Beaujolais crus from one producer is also a lot of fun and in your price range. The differences are more subtle than those between different varieties.

Please not Duboeuf! They’ll equate gamay with Double Bubble.

This is typical… The guy asks for simple, varietally true wines and the responses go off the deep end. Most Bdx are blends aren’t they? - and I didn’t know that a Rhone blend was a varietal either?

Your replies are super helpful, thanks. My imagination is seeded.

This group, like many in US, is likely to purchase a Meomi Pinot because of superior marketing and assume that is a typical example of Pinot. That’s what I am trying to avoid. Another thing I’m trying to avoid is intellectually interesting wines that are unpleasant to most.

I have good, not great, options for purchasing here in Cincinnati. I think its getting too warm to ship. My options are wider with new world wines here. Plus I have my own wine which includes a fair amount of Old Vines / field blend Zin (the usual suspects Bedrock, Carlisle, Ridge); a fair amount of Oregon pinot and some cali; Some cab (Napa and Paso), some syrah (US and rhone), some Italians that need more time. I know next to nothing about Beaujolais but want a good representative village wine. This will allow me to go from light to full bodied nicely. I am tempted by a Bordeaux blend but that may be a future tasting.

I found this 100% syrah labeled as a CdR from Chateaumar cuvee vincent that I liked (I had never heard of it before this spring) For my palette a nice sub $20 rhone.

I want to stick with varieties as that allows them to work with very recognizable differences. I, like you, David like to introduce people to wine. I am hoping for many more tastings probably a white varieties tasting as the summer heats up

If there’s even a decent wine shop near you, I would go there and ask for their suggestions. That would be a lot easier and just as helpful (for your purpose) as trying to track down a bunch of specific wines people suggest here.

Good point. It’s a matter of trust i suppose. You guys aren’t selling anything and probably know more than the guy/gal at the wine shop. Sometimes I run into people who seem to have actually tasted what they are selling, but in my experience they are the exception not the rule.

^ this

It should be relatively simple to find typical varietals (depending on your definition of typical). One idea you might want to mull over is separating it into old vs new world. In general, I find it difficult to host events (especially with non geeky wine friends) when new and old world wines are mixed.
I did an event for my non geeky wine friends and for each varietal we tasted one old world and one new world (blind).
Alternatively you could do old world reds first, then your second event could be new world etc.

Hope that helps

I second this. A good local wine shop is a great resource.

1. Is there some obvious reason why no one in the state of Ohio advertises on Wine-Searcher? I get a handful of ancient hits from something called “Hyde Park Gourmet Food & Wine”, but that’s about all.

2. As a general rule of thumb, I would NEVER walk into the average wine store and ask for advice on what to purchase. The great wines will always sell themselves, and when a “mark” walks into the store, every salesperson is under the strictest of orders to unload the least sell-able & most over-priced wines onto the mark.

You never enter a retail outlet [a wine store, a clothing store, an automobile dealership] without knowing precisely what it is that you intend to purchase, and at precisely what price you will agree to purchase it.

Which might explain the answer to my question in 1): These stores don’t want you to know how sorry & overpriced their inventories really are.

Apparently they want you to be a clueless dupable mark.

In terms of actual wine suggestions, around here, at sub-$30, you’d be looking at:

RED

1. Southern Rhone [general vicinity of Gigondas]
2. Languedoc
3. Argentinian Malbec & Malbec blends
4. Chianti Classico [but probably not CCR]

If you see any 2015s from Gigondas/Languedoc , then grab them.

On the other hand, the 2016s from Gigondas/Languedoc won’t be ready until about 2066 - they all taste like barrel samples right now [if you can even keep them in your mouth long enough to “taste” them].

Sadly, we just don’t see much Australian Shiraz anymore.

And “I don’t want intellectual exercise wines” rules out the reds from the Loire [and, for that matter, from Greece].

WHITE

1. German Riesling
2. Loire Melon [Muscadet, Muscadet Sevre & Maine, Muscadet Sevre & Maine sur Lie]
3. Sauvignon Blanc [Slovenia, Germany, New Zealand]
4. Maybe an entry-level Gruner Veltliner from Austria

If you were in California, you might be able to assemble an interesting tasting of un-oaked California Chardonnay [at less than $30 per bottle], but I doubt you’d be able to find very many of those wines in Ohio.

In the right market, you could also do some fun tastings with Prosecco, or Moscato d’Asti, but, again, I don’t know whether you could assemble those tastings locally.

And if it were 20 years ago, you could even pour Champagne.

But the Good Ship $29.99 Champagne sailed a long time ago [although sometimes we’ll still see a swallowable champagne at $39.99].

EDIT: We also see some Petit Chablis & Macon for sub-$30, but they sell out very, very quickly. You can’t just walk into a random store and find them - you have to be following your emails religiously, and be prepared to pull the trigger when the email arrives.

When is the tasting?