Cheap Wine Champ-Villa Cerrina Montepulciano D’Abruzzo 2024

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Hey welcome. It's still main Dave again, cheapwineplanner.com. Doing what we always do, we write up a review on the cheapwineplaner.com website, and then we plug in our trusty microphone and we talk about it. And today we have the $6.99 Villa Carino Montepulciano Diobruzzo 2024. It's a lot of big words for $6.99. This is a wine that Trader Joe's has had on their shelves for 10 years. Um it's been a favorite. Um I only found out about it a couple days ago because I ended up, I was in Trader Joe's and talking to the guy who runs the wine section. And he said, hey, this is he told me this is $6.99, but it tastes like a $20 wine. And I was thinking, what do a Trader Joe's guy know about $20 wines? But it turned out he's he was right. And another thing I didn't actually know is Montepucciano is the second most planted grape in Italy. I mean, it's not a wine that I think I've ever had on the website before. And we we've been doing this since 2008. And it could have been a long time ago, but nothing recently. And this is one of the most exported grapes from Italy. And the reason why it is, is because it makes a really tasty red wine, a little bit, maybe a little smoky, maybe a touch of spice, really good red fruit, and it doesn't have to be expensive. Um, we'll get into a little bit of how they made it in a second here, but I have to take a sip. For $6.99 one, they didn't just do the basics, they removed the stems from the grapes, uh, put it in a brushed it in the cylinder so they they were very gentle with the grapes. The seeds and everything went into the into the juice, and then they macerated it. And I left a link to what maceration is rather than fermentation, it is a different way to make wine. Um, it's an old way, people have been doing it for a long time. It kind of does the same thing, but it gets a little bit different results. So this $6.99 red wine was macerated, and then they put it into big you see, like in the old in the old cellars, big um big oak barrels use Slovakian oak. Um French oak, which is like the the finest oak in the world for wine, and Slovakian oak are the same, are the same oaks, they're they're the same species. American oak's a different species, but Slovakian oak and French oak are the same species, just one's cheaper than the other. So, you know, well, why would you you know buy the Slovakian stuff, especially in a $6.99 wine, and a a huge cast like that doesn't put a lot of oak flavoring into your wine, it's more it's how it's aged because an oak cast, while it is waterproof, isn't exactly a hundred percent um oxygen proof. So you get a little bit of transfer, you don't want too much, too much is bad, a little bit is just fine. And so you have it here. So this is a $699 mine wine that's kind of made in a proper style. They didn't cut quarters, they made it like a uh multiplugciano, it's supposed to be made. Uh DiAmbruzzo is the Ambruzzo region, it's on the eastern side of Italy, it's on the eastern side of the mountains. Half of Ambruzzo is parks and uh public uh public places, and this is where if you're living in Rome, you go you go for uh winter sports, you go to go skiing, you go up there, and the rest of it's nearer the eastern shore and in the foothills, and that's where you got your grapes. Take another sip. It's got good ripe fruit. There's some blackberry in there, there's like them sour cranberry, which actually sounds terrible, but what the blackberry is maybe some jammy raspberry just to uh just to give you a little hint of something else. Maybe a touch of smoke, some herbs. Not like necessarily hugely complicated, but there's enough going on on the palate to make this a really nice wine. And like an Italian wine, it's a food wine. It's a red wine of experiment. I always hate with when I see people and it's uh have this with extrudiated chipmunk juice, and like what the heck kind of pairing is that? Um, just find find what you normally eat and uh uh and what this could go with. I mean, it's not that hard to pair with food. I mean, it is if you go to a really fancy restaurant, but um pairings should be common sense, and this is a wine that should be paired, though. This is a uh Italian wine that will sip. Sometimes it has um like um Sangiovesi's occasionally will have too much tannins that don't make sipping fun. But if you have a little plate of food, a little bit of cheese, that just that just uh causes the tannins to calm down and it all makes sense. So there we have it. Um uh $699 import that kind of really is good. The Villa Carina Montepulciano di Ambruso 2024. This is a wine worth drinking, it just happens to be $6.99. So there you go, Adios, keep it cheap. This is Domain Dave. I think I got a um a Vouvre from the Lore Valley coming up in a couple days. We'll do that, and until then, I'm in there. Um, Adios, keep it cheap.