And I, fully agree with this post. And especially your last sentence. I find myself more and more looking to Austria and her lovely wines when looking for ideal wines to accompany my meals.

I wish people would get over the cheap Aussie factory wines (usually Shiraz) for their regular/inexpensive wine consumption. They are usually fine, but very predictable and boring. However, while there are some exceptionally high quality wines from Australia, they are also quite expensive. The one area where I see inexpensive, desirable whites from Australia (including under $12) is with Reisling, from the Clare Valley.

And not yellow tail pinot grigio.

In all of our trips to Oz, we found very few whites that we thought were worth mentioning except some Clare Valley Rieslings here and there. Most are, as DullesJason has posted above, quite inexpensive but we have found a few really good ones that are not inexpensive rather they are what I consider to be mid-priced, maybe AUD 20+/-.

Tintero Moscato D'asti. Imported by Kermit Lynch. Low alcohol it makes a nice apertif or goes great with pizza.

Sounds like a similar impression of OZ as we had. Hunter was also okay with whites, but the Clare stood out for me. I don't want to bash Ozzie wines too much. It's the mass produced stuff I bash for its boringness. I had some AMAZING reds (Standish, Wolf Blass, Parker, etc) down under, but that was no surprise. The real revelation in reds was Grenache--quite impressive and much different from the usual shiraz same same.

Back to whites . . . I was just at Macarthur Bevcerages in DC today and picked up a couple of bottles of Domaine Mantrot Bourgougne-Chard, but alas, it is $16, so doesn't qualify for the strict constraints of this topic, but if the OP and others would just spend $4-5 more . . . **sigh** . . . on a deserving bottle of wine . . .

My hero . . . If Flyertalk added a smiley that bowed, I would insert it after Kermit Lynch. Big fan!^ He has my complete trust--never disappointed me. And I love pizza wines.

The real gem is Sangiovese -- superb if you like a dirty style even superior to Italian originals. Something like Pizzini Sangiovese with 5+ years of age (really needs the aging, so you won't find it properly aged on restaurant wine lists for the most part). As for shiraz (which is really superb, when the terroir is developed), there are also cheap mass-produced blends with cab and merlot tempering the shiraz that can be great wines for every-day drinking. Better than anything made in the US for the same price point (but maybe not competitive with Argentina across the board). The Aussie wine problem is fragmented production and lot of excellent small producers who don't get distribution; once you drink any of their wines you won't use "boring" as an adjective for Aussie wines. Yellowtail it is not!

I like your post and largely agree with the way you think about wines and care about terroir, but you've tweaked me on a topic I can't resist . . . my relationship with the wines of Australia.

You can probably tell that I do like a dirty style, though I prefer to characterize it as "earthy," which is basically the same thing, but dirty can sometimes be too dirty. When I was down under on a week-long wine trek last year, I recall trying only one Sangiovese, which was not good, so I will make a point of trying more eventually. Though I find it extremely difficult to imagine how it can be superior to some of the great Sangiovese based Italian wines I've had (including Brunello), even if the Australian versions of it can excellent, as you say.

That's the problem--it rarely is, even with most of the Shiraz that scores well in the major publications. In Australia, my experience is if you want a truly fine wine representative of the terroir, made in a restrained, old-world style, you're gonna have to pay a lot for it. That's fine--there are indeed some truly great ones (Shiraz included), but I've yet to find a sub-$30 Aussie wine where I felt terroir was a core value of the winemaker. Then again, I don't spend too much time searching for it anymore, as I can find greater wines for less in France, Spain and Italy.

Agreed (if you replace "great" with good), but this is exactly what I meant by uninteresting. Sure, if I was hosting a barbecue for 30 people and only 2 of the guests knew much about wine, I'd probably go with a fruity factory fresh :p Aussie Shiraz because they are big people pleasers. But that's not what rocks my palate.

I agree here as well. Aussies do cheap, fruity wines better than Americans. Also agree the Argentine (and Chilean) cheapies are better.

Fair enough--it is a problem for the small producers--I'm sure there are many examples of little guys not getting a crack at adequate distribution. I gave some small producers a chance when I visited the Barossa (avoided the big ones there), McLaren Vale, the Clare Valley, the Coonawarra and the Hunter Valley. But there is only so much time in a day and even the small producers didn't impress me with their Shiraz, except for the great Standish, which is small but famous. What several of the little guys did impress me with is Grenache. Of course I enjoyed the Cabs in the Coonawarra, too.

The Aussie wine problem of distribution isn't the only one. It's the tendency of the majority of winemakers (not all of course) to engage a more international, homogenized, modern style of winemaking, which is big, fruity and showy, and indeed delicious, but utterly predictable. It's the same thing in America, but more expensive. They do it to get the attention of wine buyers, wine reviewers and an increasing number of wine drinkers around the world who love wine but don't know anything better than a fruit bomb. They need to make a profit. I'm not saying I blame these wine producers for that--it's a competitive business. I just want to drink something better. I'm looking for poetry; I'm looking for terroir.

And you find that in Oz with the stuff from the old (150 year old plus) vines and you can multiply $12 a number of times before you come to the sale price of those bottles.

OK, anyone else had an interesting sub-$12 bottle recently? This is a thread on "whites", BTW. :)

Yes absolutely, that summarizes my main complaint with Aussie wines--there are some astonishingly great wines made there and I've been lucky to drink a few of them, but less than a dozen times. I just wish those wines weren't so expensive so I could do it more. In the meantime, I can (and do) get great wines from Europe for far less.

Whoops, sorry. This off-topic digression could have its own thread, and probably should.

OK, $12 whites? Aside from the Gruner Vetliners monitor and I advocate (and people really should seek those out), one of the things I try to do is look for a Chablis, which is a white Burgundy (this Chardonnay), which usually is only good when you get in the $15 or $20 + range, but on occasion, you can find good ones for $12-15. That way to drink good Chablis on the cheap is not to expect yourself to know what's out there. Go to a good wine store and ask a sales associate for help.

Also, I agree with Kate_Canuck in post #10, those are some good ideas as well.

When I really want to stock up on $12 whites, I also look for a Vouvray, which is more often available at $12 than a Chablis. Vouvray is a Loire Valley wine and is made from Chenin Blanc. I can't remember all the names of the producers off my head and I'm out of stock of this at the moment, but wine stores often make these available for tasting, so that's a great way to decide, too.

+1 for Vouvray, it was a big hit at my wedding!

^ Well chosen.

Don't usually drink it but at this price I prefer Nobilo sauvignon blanc.

What did you drink today with your turkey?