Cheap Wine Blog
(cheap wine articles & info)
Windy City Wine Festival 2018 SEPT 7 & 8
The Windy City Wine Festival 2018 is one of my favorite WINE events of the year and the reason is simple, Location, Location, Location. The festival grounds are wrapped around the northern half of Buckingham Fountain, beautiful during the day, spectacular at night, with the eastern boundary of Lake Shore Drive with a cool breeze off…
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Ritual Pinot Noir 2015
The Ritual Pinot Noir 2015 is 100% Pinot Noir sourced from a Veramonte estate vineyard (Ritual is a Veramonte brand) about 18 miles from the Pacific Ocean in the Casablanca Valley growing region inside the Central Valley of Chile. A quick check of the web showed this Pinot Noir selling for $15 to $20, with it…
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Cheapwinefinder Easter Wine Pairing Basic Guide
Cheapwinefinder Easter Wine Pairing Basic Guide. This is going to be an entry-level wine pairing guide, no matching the herbs and spices used to the secondary flavors of the wine, just the basics. And this is a pairing for some sort of baked ham, along with side dishes that are not overly spicy or exotic….
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City Winery Chicago Riverwalk River Domes
I have a couple of issues with wine bars, the first is when you order wine by the glass they are charging you for the whole bottle, a $11 glass costs them $11 per bottle, probably less there is a bit of profit in there too. So, no matter how great the wine list is,…
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Expo Russian River Chardonnay 2015
The Expo Russian River Chardonnay 2015 is a $9.99 custom private label wine found at Whole Foods. The custom winery that produced the Expo Chard specializes in more upscale private label wine, here the grapes are sourced from the Russian River Valley AVA (Sonoma County, California) one of the elite Chardonnay growing areas in California and the label…
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Windy City Wine Festival
It’s that time of year again, outdoor wine festival season! The Windy City Wine Festival comes to town, Friday Sept 8th (5pm till 10pm) and Saturday Sept 9th (3pm to 8pm), in the middle of Grant Park on the lake front. As usual the fest goers have the northern 60% of Buckingham Fountain (if you’re not from…
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Locations “E” (Spain) Red Blend
The Locations “E” (Spain) Red Blend is a blend of Garnacha, Tempranillo, Monastrell, and Carinena, grown from vineyards in Priorat, Jumilla, Toro, Rioja, and Ribero del Duero. If you noticed, grapes from Priorat go into Priorat wines, grapes from Jumilla go into Jumilla wines, etc., etc., etc. That is – until Dave Phinney decided to do Spanish…
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CHILL – An International Wine & Culinary Event
This Thursday, November 10th, come out to Chicago’s iconic Merchandise Mart to eat, drink and be altruistic at The 10th Annual LuxeHome CHILL. It is the international wine and culinary event of the season! Why? Well, not only do you get to chat with and sample signature dishes from over 50 distinguished Chicago chefs paired…
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13th Annual San Diego Wine + Food Festival
One of the largest and most popular wine and food festivals in the country – The San Diego Bay Wine + Food Festival – is set to start this month for its 13th exciting year. Get your tickets NOW right here and come party at one of the most talked about celebrations of everything food…
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Windy City Wine Festival 2016
The Windy City Wine Festival is coming to Grant Park on September 9 and 10… here is a link for more information and tickets: WINDY CITY WINE FESTIVAL It’s an outdoor end-of-the-summer celebration and what I love about it isn’t necessarily the wine (but the wine is important). First, the site is ideal. The event wraps…
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Sargent Canyon Cabernet Sauvignon 2013
The Sargent Canyon Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 is a $6.99 ALDI’s wine sourced from vineyards in the Central Coast AVA of California. The Sargent Canyon Cabernet is Estate grown and sustainably farmed. So who or what is Sargent Canyon? A quick check with Google shows that Sargent Canyon is a trademark owned by Scheid Vineyards, vineyards and winery…
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Jargon Pinot Noir 2012
The Jargon Pinot Noir 2012 is 76% Pinot Noir, 18% Syrah and 6% Petite Sirah, the Syrah is sourced from the Monterey AVA, the Pinot and the Petite Sirah are sourced from more than one California grape growing AVA. Jargon is one of Trinchero Family Estates (founded in 1974) line of wines, other brands include…
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Roccafiore Prova D’Autore 2012
The Roccafiore Prova D’Autore 2012 is 40% Sagrantino, 30% Montepulciano and 30% Sangiovese sourced from Cantina Roccafiore certified organic vineyards near the town of Todi in the Umbria region of Italy. Sagrantino is a grape that is indigenous to Umbria. Umbria is a landlocked area south of Tuscany and about 90 miles north of Rome….
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2013 Woodwork Pinot Noir
The 2013 Woodwork Pinot Noir is sourced from vineyards in coastal regions of the Central Coast AVA of California. Woodwork is one of The Wine Bars brands of wine that include Snap Dragon, Ensemble, Uppercut and many others. The key to the Woodwork line of wines is their use of oak staves, instead of oak…
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2012 Lander Jenkins Chardonnay
The 2012 Lander Jenkins Chardonnay is one of Rutherford Wine Companies brands of wine, they also produce Rutherford Ranch, Predator and Round Hill wines, among others. The grapes are sourced the Central Coast, the Central Valley and the North Coast, as well as Rutherford Wine Company estate vineyards (and long-term grower vineyards) in Napa, Monterey…
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How To Buy Cheap Wine
How to buy cheap wine? The real answer is: go to a wine shop, grab a bottle off the shelve, head to the check out and hand the clerk some money. There are no secrets, no hidden tips, no mystic fonts of knowledge, you learn about wine, about finding the…
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Wine isn’t complicated
Wine isn’t complicated unless you make it complicated. I routinely hear people say that they do not know anything about wine, who would never think to say that they do not know anything about coffee, tea, beer, vodka, gin or whiskey, even though they don’t actually know much about any of those. But what they…
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Blind Leading The Blind Wine Tasting
I was never much of a fan of blind wine tasting, I figured it was simply an easy way to make a complete fool out of myself. I just knew that at some point I would mistake a Malbec for a Riesling and anyway I want to enjoy a glass of wine, not turn it…
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Cheap Wine Ain’t Cheap
Cheap Wine Ain’t Cheap There are tens of thousands of different labels of wine produced each year, Italy alone makes 7,000 separate wines, you add in the wine produced by every single other wine region and you have a mind-boggling number of wine choices. To take this vast amount of wine…
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Are Value Bordeaux Wines Becoming Consumer Friendly?
I attended a Planet Bordeaux tasting here in Chicago (99th floor of Willis Towers, you were high before the first sip) and to my surprise what did I see? Bordeaux wines with the grape varietal on the label and back labels that included wine maps, pairing suggestions and technical notes, the label actually told you…
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CheapWineFinder State of the Wine Union 2013
Here are a few wine facts: The average price of a bottle of wine sold in the US is between $6 and $7. California wine that retails for more than $14 accounts for only 11% of California wine sales. Connoisseurs, the folks drinking the expensive wines, make up 5% of the wine drinkers in the…
Read MoreTop 5 Things I Hate About Year End Top Wine Lists
1) Ok, I sort of get it when Wine Spectator or one the other big-time Wine publications put out their Top 100 Wines of the Year editions, at least they have a whole slew of reviewers sampling thousands of wines. Some effort went into trying to make sense of this years wine releases and if…
Read MoreBon Appétit Presents Chicago Gourmet 2012
It’s fun, it’s tasty & coming to Chicago this weekend! Bon Appétit presents Chicago Gourmet is all about food & wine with tons of Chicago’s finest restaurants, chefs, renowned vintners, spirit makers & premium breweries from all over the globe. Go check out live cooking demonstrations, expert seminars, gourmet tastings, and book signings by internationally…
Read More9 Random Observations On The Way to 900 Wine Posts
1) When we started Cheapwinefinder.com, 3 years ago, our mission was to help non wine geeks (the 99%), navigate the cheap wine mine fields to find quality inexpensive wines. Finding good, cheap wine took some knowledge, you had to be a cheap wine Sherlock Holmes to find the gems. All that has changed, if you…
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