This is what my mind was going toward. Which I know it’s not domestic. Also, I haven’t bought it in about five years.
An Altesse from Berlioz about five years ago was also dynamite.
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This is what we Board veterans call “thread drift.”
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Im pro grilled cheese and tomato soup thread drifts. But one of each for 4 people? This is supposed to be Murica
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but these should all be found at $20 or under in the States, and all are wines I’m very happy to drink and/or purchase:
Esporão Reserva (white)
Soalheiro Alvarinho
Quinta do Regueiro Alvarinho
Anselmo Mendes Contacto (the Muros Antigos should be even cheaper)
Aphros Loureiro
Quinta do Ameal Loureiro
AdegaMãe Dory (red and white)
Quinta do Vallado (red)
Casa Ferreirinha Vinha Grande (red)
Ribeiro Santo (white)
Taboadella Villae (red and white)
Beyra Reserva (red)
Luís Pato Baga + Touriga Nacional
Filipa Pato Dinâmica (red and white)
FitaPreta (red)
Cortes de Cima Chaminé (red)
Herdade do Mouchāo Dom Rafael (red and white)
Quinta de Chocapalha (red and white Arinto)
Terras do Demo (sparkling)
In the case of the Esporão it’s actually a great mid term ager and I prefer them at age 6-8.
Also, and since several people have talked about value whites being easier to find than reds, the base reds from Borba and Reguengos (the two biggest Alentejo co-ops) are south of $10. I dare you to flush these down the drain.
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I have no problem drinking industrially produced Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. Not often, but the wines are perfectly pleasant and available.
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Perhaps the right price point, but try finding them in US shops.
The article is pointed at people walking into a store and grabbing something, and not making geek-level efforts to search out little known values.
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That’s as may be, but for me that was the most useful post in this thread. FWIW, several of those named are on WDC (NY Warehouse) at < $20.
Oh don’t get me wrong, if I did not have metric tons of wine I would be looking at some of those as well.
2021 Vajra Langhe Neb! Really, really good and terrific QPR.
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Sorry but I am NOT going out to eat with these people. Feel like I would need to get in a fistfight just to get a decent meal…
I think we need to start a “what would you consider a light snack” thread, and secondarily, “how many people would you share a bowl of tomato soup with?”
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Ha, sounds like they went out for coffee and grabbed some snacks while they were there. I’d have lunch with Marcus any day…
Meiomi?
Just to clarify. We represented Esporao at the distributor I worked for.
The wines are very nice and an absolutely remarkable value, but still very much a large ag product. And taste like it. Well executed but not what I am thinking of in a ‘gem’. They make a lot of wine, and my brief interaction with the winemaker didn’t lead me to believe that they are looking for nuance. That said the basic red and white were about $7.50 retail and the Reserva was a solid step up and retailed at $14.00 at the time. But that wouldn’t be the wine I used to attenpt to disprove the article.
For starters: Esporão have impeccable viticulture, and no one in Portugal of their size/dimension has practiced biological agriculture for this long. Like all big producers (they also own Quinta dos Murças in the Douro; not sure they already did back when you distributed them) they are focused on churning out reliable products. There are seas of wine for under 20€ I can buy over here that will give me great transparency of terroir and nuance. Most gets consumed domestically and whatever might be left is probably exported to closer markets than the US. I still maintain that many vintages of the white Esporão Reserva at age 6-8 are, given their price, a mind boggling value, and a wine I have always been satisfied by, which is why I practice what I preach and drink it many times a year. It is certainly not spoof juice, which the article also seemed to allude to.
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Indeed, have you had them with age? As Tomas said, they are absolutely fantastic when you give them age.
We had a vertical of Esporão Reservas some while ago and it was astounding how these wines transformed from rather oaky and quite anonymous modernist wines into wonderfully harmonious, serious and savory wines with age. However, I think Tomas’s 6-8 years is a rather conservative number as I felt that the wines seemed still a bit modern at that age. The whites were starting to be quite nice at around 8-10 years of age, but the reds were still a bit on the polished, modern side.
Easily the best wines of the evening were Esporão Reserva 1999 and Esporão Branco Reserva 2000. It seems these wines take around 15-20 years before they fully transform into these very complete wines. FWIW, these were not just “generic old wines” but wines in which you could see that they were the end product of what we had tasted earlier. We also had a few older vintages that were getting a bit older and more anonymous as they were seemingly sliding slightly past their peak.
I honestly don’t think that’s particularly useful; absolutely zero people who are the target market of this article are going to cellar a $20 Portuguese wine for 8-20 years and I doubt many people on this forum would cellar a $20 wine for 8-20 years. I’m not sure how easy it is to backfill older vintages in Europe but you certainly wouldn’t be able to do that in the US.
I think the data was that 75% of the wine purchased in the US was consumed within the first 3 hours of purchase.
I did not comment whether that Esporão was a good recommendation for a sub-$20 wine for an average non-wino consumer and thus I was not trying to give a useful suggestion pertaining to the topic. I just replied to Marcus commenting on his description of the wine.
And it’s not really my problem if people aren’t cellaring $20 wines. They’re missing out on tons of superb, interesting and ageworthy wines.
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Well, if someone wants to find out how good it is, Vinfolio is selling a 2007 Esporao Reserva Branco for $30.
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But I was just moments ago told that one certainly wouldn’t be able to do that in the US.