Last night I had to attend one of those "have to" parties. It was with people I don't like but the wife made me go

Being the ever so nice guest I brought them wine. WalMart wine to be exact. I took both a white and a red. We opened the white - what crap. Who knew that the low cost persona of WalMart carried over into their wine.

I paid $2.97 for that bottle, it could have at least not tasted like turpentine.

Anyone have any suggestions for cheap swill that I can buy as gifts when I really don't want to give one, or I really don't even care if the person is alive or dead. My budget is sub-$5 - preferably sub $3. If I wanted to spend more, it would be on me.

Two-Buck Chuck?

Never had it myself, but it can't be too bad, since Teh Intarwebs is full of people claiming just how delicious and how much of a great value it is.

Unless millions of people like the taste of turpentine (which I'd believe)...

I know the stuff you're talking about. I bought a bottle of the red and threw out most of it. Mrs BV bought a bottle 6 months later, having forgotten the previous experience and we had to throw it out. I'd recommend a cheap bottle of sweet wine, Ruinite perhaps. The excess sugar usually overcomes any off flavors.

Cost Plus World Imports.

Electric Reindeer is palatable.


Sometimes.

you could just go with yellowtail..or if you're close to a trader joe's try Black Mountain, JW Morris, Bear's Lair, Trader Moon, or Trader Joe's Coastal. The quality is a step (or three) up from Charles Shaw wines..even if some of those are made by Bronco

Couple other TJ suggestions:

Honey Moon
King Shag

Thanks for the suggestion of Cost Plus reindeer wine. Unfortunately there is no TJ's near me so I can't get two buck chuch.

I will head to Cost Plus later this week and see what I can blow $3 on

More on Wal-mart wine:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/dinin...their-own.html

Ok, now that's scary...

You shouldn't have chosen the retsina.

BevMo has some $2 wine Pacific Peak or something, that doesn't have the bad rep of 2BuckChuck. It's not better, just lesser known and everyone knows 2Buck is 2 bucks.

You could also try Big Lots. And don't forget those supermarkets that have bad wine and those carriers where you buy 4 or 6 and get 10% off.

The Del Mar Fair San Diego County Fair has a gnarly hobby show every year. One year the winner was the collector of wines all below $2 (price tags still on.)

But wait! You're a FTer. Rack up some miles to France or Italy, go to any wine shop and politely ask what they would recommend in the 3 Euro range. Amazingly, they will turn up some relatively drinkable stuff. The Italians tend to be more charming when confronted with this request.

I had a blind test at my house earlier in the year with folks that dont know too much about wine. The 2 buck chucks scored pretty high, IIRC the white scored #1 amongst them. I had wines from $2-150. Yellow tail as mentioned above scored high as well. Not my liking, but the cheap ones fare well.

People's palate changes as they drink more wine. Initially most people like the "soft drink" wines (hence the creation of wine coolers and the "southern comfort" wines). Tastes slowly change as they drink more wine, and it shifts to drier and deeper wines. Most casual drinkers consider the really expensive wines to be swill (both red and white) and greatly prefer under-$10 wines to over-$100 wines. A happy situation for all concerned.

The problem I have with a lot of the really cheap wines (stuff like Little Penguin, etc) is that they add too much sugar to the wines and I think it makes them too sweet.

I don't consider myself a wine snob (although I wish I could afford to drink stuff like Opus One every day...but that would put me in the poor house). I do think there are lots of very good value wines and quite drinkable, in the $10 to $15 range and they don't add a lot of extra sugars.

Ugh, I agree! I couldn't even finish half a glass of the Yellow Tail cab that a friend forced on me. FAR too sickly sweet.

I agree that $10-15 is a good range for decent (not outstanding, but very drinkable) wine. As a native Paso Roblan, I'm partial to the Estancia Keyes Canyon Ranches cabernet sauvignon that I can find locally for $13 (and when I want to treat myself, their Bordeaux-style meritage sells for just under $20...though you can't find the very good 2002 or 2003 vintages in stores anymore). Several bottles I picked up on an Eastern Washington wine tour with a few other FTers were in that same range and have come out excellent.

I do enjoy nice wines like the Silver Oak Napa cab (not Alexander Valley), but at $95, I wouldn't say it's $80 better than a good $15 cab.

But I'm very suspicious of anything below $10. I'll have to try the Two Buck Chuck sometime, though, just to see if I'll be pleasantly surprised or grossed out. Of course, they're gonna have to open a TJ's here first...and likely they'll mark it up to Five Buck Chuck and claim "transportation expenses"...

(BTW, interestingly, Walmart doesn't sell alcoholic beverages up here, though I haven't tried the new SuperCenter out in Eagle River...)

it's not just sugar that's added to those sub-5$ wines