I sure love a good glass of wine, don't you? The only problem is that these days it's hard to justify spending much on a bottle of fermented grape juice what with the economy being in the toilet and all. In an attempt to justify our continued oneophilia, Julia and I have taken up a new hobby: trying to find the best wine at the cheapest price. It's actually been pretty fun. There are lots of good deals to be had in the world of wine right now and plenty of lesser-known producers making great wine that doesn't yet command much of a price tag.
But like any hobby, drinking inexpensive wine is more fun when you make it a competition. As such, in March of 2010, we hosted Cheap Wine Challenge '010: a Celebration of Delicious Value.
Some three dozen people were present, with 23 bottles entered for judging.
As guests arrived, wines were placed in an opaque, numbered bag to conceal its identity and each guest was given a scorecard and five (5) star stickers. As guests tasted the anonymous wines, they awarded these stickers to the bottles they felt were most deserving-- one each to five different bottles or up to three (3) stars to a particularly amazing bottle.
At the conclusion of the voting, the number of stars each bottle received was divided by its price in dollars. The winning bottle was Trentatre Rosso, receiving 12 votes and sold at $5.99, brought by Ken Luecke. Ken's prize was three of our favorite cheap wines to take home with him.
Fast forward five months...
While enjoying a tasty bottle of cheap wine with dinner the other night, we were struck with an inspiration: since the event was such a huge success, and we *still* love inexpensive juice, we decided to finally jump on the blogwagon (before it rides off into obsolescence) and publish our adventures in cheap wine drinking. Additionally, maintaining this journal will also give us something to do during the long Wisconsin winter. We might even expand into beerblogging or cheeseblogging. Well, let the fun begin...
Cheers,
JPH + BAH
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