October 30, 2008

Wal-Mart $3 Wine a Surprising Value

We're always on the lookout for the newest, best, cheapest wines that won't burn our nose hairs out or make us go blind. It probably comes from our days moonlighting over at Cheap Fun Wines, but our motto is "if it's under ten bucks we'll try it." But who'd have thought our next place to go find a good cheap wine was at...Wal-Mart? We thought they'd be way too busy censoring music and movies to have time to make wine, but we guess we were wrong, at least according to this article:

With more than two dozen comments about Wal-Mart's Oak Leaf Vineyards wines on The Dallas Morning News Eats blog, most of them positive, we knew we had to put them to the test. Could a $2.97 bottle of wine really taste better than swamp water? And would it "fool" experienced wine drinkers?

As it turns out, the wines are better than you might think. The chardonnay won a gold medal at both the 2008 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition (chardonnays under $14.99) and the 2008 Florida State International Wine Competition. The Oak Leaf merlot and cabernet sauvignon earned bronze medals in the San Francisco contest.

If it's the same quality or better than good old Three Buck Chuck, we'd love to give it a try. Read the full article, including the results of the blind taste test, at Dallas News.