Cheap Wine

Got a La Finca Malbec from Trader Joe's last night. I was impressed. It was a nice little wine, nothing overpowering, nothing to stop you in your tracks, just a nice Argentinean wine. At $4.99 I would certainly do it again.

I hhad a bottle of Lucky Duck Chardonnay and I liked it. I taste tested against Winking owl which I really like and LD was very close.

Charlie Shaw did something I'm not happy about. Their Chardonnay has changed drastically and not for the good. For years my wife and I have loved this cheap but very good, dry Chard. Picked one up the other day and noticed there was no year on the bottle. I don't ever remember having a bottle of 2buck chard w/o the vintage on the label. It's not that it was a bad bottle of wine. It certainly was not Chardonnay. It was sweet and lacked the flavor of the past wines. It seemed to me like they took a hodge podge of left over grapes and tossed them all together and bottled it for sale. I'll never again buy a bottle of wine w/o a vintage. I don't care how cheap it is.

No year means its NV or non vintage so it can have new stuff, old stuff and everything in between. If you like a good Chardonnay on the cheap see if you can find any of the Columbia Crest "Two Vines" series of wines. They can usually be had on sale for ~$4.99 and at some stores if you buy 6 you get an additional 10% off.

Two Vines has become my go to top off wine. Its good enough to drink on its own and cheap enough to use to top off with.

Thanks, Mike. I'll give Two Vines a try.