Brother-in-law stayed for a night a couple of weekends ago and came with possible the nicest bottle of red I can recall having; Yalumba ‘The Scribbler’ 2012.

It’s £15+ a bottle which is between twice what I’d normally pay for a bottle.

Is there anything that comes close at, say, closer to a tenner or do I just need to MTFU and accept that wine as nice as that does actually cost as much as that..? Is it like bicycle components; cheap, light, strong – pick two?

Yours,
A Wine Novice

Price is irrelevant, do you like the taste is the only thing that matters.

And based on your comments, your ‘bar’ isn’t sat very high so just buy a Rioja for a tenner and you’ll be fine. 😉

Shop at M&S for wine and you’ll rarely go wrong. They do all the hard work of filtering out the crap, for you.

A tenner-ish gets you some lovely offerings.

EDIT: You may already be aware of this!

Just back from Menorca, drank some lovely red Rioja that was €3.60 and a beautiful Rioja Blanco for €3.20 – or both less than £3.
Easily nicer than Rioja’s costing 3x as much in the UK.

My favourite tipples in the wine realm are meaty Italian reds, in the main. Sadly that usually means a trip to V&C when in Edinburgh and that’s never a bargains visit 🙁 Nice though!

You should try whisky – though I suppose pound / unit it’s probably better odds !

The Argentine malbec from aldi is rather tasty if you like full reds.

Didn’t touch the malbec my cousin brought back from her 6 month trip round Argentina/Chile. £140 a bottle but you could savoured everrrry drop

Also malbec for 6quid is excellent.

I love the Rioja from there too.

I now buy infrequently from naked wine it’s always a nice surprise.

Marques de cerano gran reserva (black label) Tesco. Sangre de toros reserva, co op.
Thank me later.

The wife has taken to ordering in bulk from Spain. The end result is bottles costing about 3 quid that are really quite lovely

Not sure if you can get it in the UK but here in Swan Valley and Margaret a river some wineries sell a sparkling red. Served cold its bloody lush on a hot day.

Got any links durhambiker? That sounds v interesting.

Interested in that durhambiker, would love some more of those Rioja Blanco’s I was drinking last week.

Yep, spill the beans.

I’m liking the sound of Mr Woppit’s ‘Big House’ – will see where I can get it!

aphex_2k; Brother-in-law lives in Perth WA and we’ve been to a few wineries on the Margaret River… Vass Felix I remember fondly!

Thanks for all the suggestions.

+1 for M&S, although it’s often cheaper to buy online than in their stores.

http://www.vinissimus.co.uk/en/

Reasonably quick delivery too. Ordered a couple of boxes to sample a few different wines, mainly because we were struggling to find any decent white rioja over here.

Theres so many down in Margs. Swan Valley is about half an hour from Perth cbd. Good cheese and olives too. Feral brewery makes a lovely beer – hop hog. Total yum.

Reasonably quick delivery too. Ordered a couple of boxes to sample a few different wines, mainly because we were struggling to find any decent white rioja over here.

Personal favourite Spanish white is Rueda Verdejo, from the shop you linked to:

http://www.vinissimus.com/en/vinos/regiones/index.html?id_region=rue

A great everyday wine and at £3.99 it is for me 🙂

IME some more expensive wines usually have more depth and subtlety to them but not always.

most aldi wines are also decent for the money – so much so I regularly change my mind when in tesco having a look at their wine, just hold on till next time in aldi!

My red of choice when funds allow:

Daffy; that looks and sounds right up my street..!

Dunno about M&S the so called 7 quid bottles in their 10 pound meal deals can be pretty ropey.

I’m not usually much of a red wine drinker, but this really knocks my socks off.

The 2010 is superior to the 2011 by a considerable margin and I’ve not yet had the pleasure of the 2012.

These are mine, although they’re slightly over your budget.

These are mine, although they’re slightly over your budget.

Wish I had your patience and self-restraint too!

First time i’ve heard anyone like white rioja. If ypu ae ordering white from Spain go for an Albarino.

The corks and contents of those bottles would benefit from being horizontal, Mr Nutt.

The price does matter. Using Bordeaux wines as an example if you buy ordinary ones the grapes were probably picked by machine from vines of vraible age, pressed, fermented, shown an old barrel and bottled. Pay for a “cru bourgeois” and the grapes were picked by hand from mature wines (pickers cut out the mouldy grapes, slugs, leaves etc. that could taint the wine), there’s then a further selection before careful pressing, fermentation and maturing in new oak barrels. You get what you pay for up to a point. That said a cru bourgeois from a Chateau on the same hill as Chateau Latour costs about 15e. I’ve no idea which I prefer as I’m not prepared to pay Latour prices to find out.

I’m currently working through two cases of St Emilion and St Estephe (grand cru naturally). Wine fairs in the local supermarket are bad for the wallet but surprisingly pleasant when it rolls around to the evening meal. Can’t complain at under 20e a bottle.

I also had a fantastic Barossa Valley Shiraz recently which was a gift but way too expensive for me to buy for day to day drinking

The Bouchard Aine Et Fils Pinot Noir from Sainsburys is a very nice wine for the money IMHO. £8 a bottle but often on offer – it’s 2 for £12 at the minute.

I operate on the premise that for any bottle of wine of any quality, £5 of the price represent the bottle and distribution costs.

So, that makes a bottle at £6 really a £1 bottle, a £15 bottle is a £10 etc.

Which means, and my personal experience backs this, that there is a significant jump in quality from a bottle of wine priced at £6 to one priced at £12. More that £6 worth of quality.

And, if you buy a bottle of wine that costs less than £5, then they should be paying you to drink it. That is my policy anyway. I rarely shop under the £15 mark, I’m not rich, but some people spend that on a taxi home after a night at the pub so I see it as value for money.

Believe me, the hangover is a lot less awful on decent wine, so there is another gain. Its a win all around really.

P.S – and in The Colonies you can buy Yalumba in a box. Colonials are a lot less snobby about Chateau Cardboard and you can get some good wines in a box, just saying like.

£5 of the price represent the bottle and distribution costs.

20% is VAT and there is £2 duty per bottle, so a £5 bottle only has £2 to buy the wine, ship it to the UK, bottle it, distribute to supermarkets, pay for shelf space etc and try and make a profit!

Very partial to

and slightly cheaper

Footlaps – sounds like I need to revise my price range upwards. Goodie !

I have had some really excellent wines at the £5-8 mark and generally consider the law of diminishing returns set in at anything over £12-15 rather quickly.

For a buying newbie a quick rule of thumb tester(and no pun intended) as to whether a bottle will be any good is to, as you are intelligently reading the label, stick your thumb into the indent at the bottom of the bottle. Generally speaking the deeper the indent the better the wine (red only).

Good reds produce more sediment and the deeper indent catches this more effectively as you decant it. Also, such bottles cost more to make (more glass and more complex) so tend to get reserved for the better wines.

Oh dear god.
Yes it can indicate a decent wine, but also mutton dressed as lamb. You have to justify spending that much on glass.
Though I did score a La Collina Syrah for $25 because it didn’t have a price & the bottle had a punt you could lose your hand in. Went back & bought the last 2 bottles after dinner.

I would say hunt out a good independent wine shop, which can be a challenge in itself but worth it. If they don’t give you friendly informative non-pushy advice, they aren’t a good shop. if they push ridiculous wine prices on you, they aren’t a good shop.

D Byrne’s of Clitheroe are a great example of a good indy, if you are driving distance of there. depends where you live of course.

(ok an independant will struggle to sell you anything under £6 but if that is your pricepoint then the answer is Aldi, Toro Loco which is my default budget red)

Yes I was thinking that sounded like witchcraft. Magnetic wristband anybody ?

All very subjective – you get to learn what you like – price is just one indicator. And as dannybgoode says, decanting a red helps too.

My local wine shop does an awesome tasting every year, get yourself along to one organised by a local privately owned shop, not a big chain.

We had two weeks in France in August and some of the wine over there puts similarly priced stuff over here to shame. Managed to bring a couple of boxes of half decent stuff back. Would have liked more but couldn’t fit any more than that in the car with all the camping kit. Might have to forget some surplus items next year so I can fit more wine in.