After the 2010 vintage of Columbia Crest Grand Estates Cabernet Sauvignon received an 89 point rating and was named a best value by Wine Spectator, I added it to my list of wines to try. Unfortunately, that list is quite long so it took me a while to get around to this one. That is a shame, because this wine is everything that Sourmashed is about. It is a delicious wine that you can buy for $10 at practically ever supermarket in the country. What more could you want from a wine?

Columbia Crest Grand Estates Cabernet Sauvignon is made up of more than 90% Cabernet Sauvignon that is rounded out with a few other things like Cabernet Franc and Merlot. The final product is a rich Cab heavy in dark berries and cherries. The fruit is complimented by a nice bit of earthiness which really completes the wine.

I really enjoy the Columbia Crest Grand Estates Cabernet Sauvignon and wish I had gotten to it sooner. It is everything I want in a bottle of every day Cabernet. It is cheap. It is delicious. It is a wine you should definitely be drinking.

Sterling Napa Chardonnay came highly recommended by an acquaintance of mine who has a rather good track record in my mind with wine recommendations. Everybody likes to recommend their favorites, but a lot of people have different concepts than me of what is good. Because of that, I have a mental checklist of which friends align with my tastes and which don’t. I recommend you do the same. Anyway, such a recommendation led me to this bottle of Chardonnay which I picked up for around $15.

If I had to summarize the Sterling Napa Chardonnay, I would say it is a standard California Chardonnay in profile though an excellent Chardonnay in execution. What I mean by that is the flavor profile is that same as what you see for many bottles of Chardonnay. There is pear, apple, vanilla, and oak and a very buttery wine. However, while the flavors seem to be standard, Sterling does an outstanding job of bringing them all together expertly in this wine.

For those of you who enjoy your Chardonnay with a lot of oak and butter, this is the wine for you. It might be $15, but I can easily recommend that you give the Sterling Napa Chardonnay a try.

The Sonoma-Cutrer Sonoma Coast Chardonnay was a wine my mom recommended. I throw that out there as a reminder that we should always listen to our elders. They have been around for a while, and with age comes wisdom (or something to that effect). In this case, it was the wisdom of a wine recommendation, and it was a recommendation that was dead on the money. The only hesitation I had with this wine was the price. At an MSRP around $25, it is on the very high end of our budget.

While the Sonoma-Cutrer Chardonnay may be expensive, it makes up for it by being delicious. Who care about spending a few extra bucks for something this good? The first thing I noticed was an aroma of honeysuckle with a bit of fruit. The flavors were touches of honey, peach, and oak blended together with some things I could not pick out, and it all led to a lengthy finish.

Sometimes, you need to spoil yourself. You upgrade to the porterhouse instead of having the chuck steak. You get the Goose Island instead of the Miller Lite. And sometimes you need to treat yourself to a bottle of Sonoma-Cutrer Chardonnay instead of something cheaper and not nearly as delicious.

I picked up a tetra pak of Vendange Chardonnay the other day. Why would I ever do such a thing? I can give you at least three reasons. First, I wanted to review Vendange Chardonnay. Second, I always find it somewhat humorous to drink wine from a box, so why not amuse myself? Finally, I wanted an excuse to use the phrase “tetra pak” at least six times in a review. Like I said, drinking only gets you so far and you have to do more to keep yourself amused.

When I first popped open this tetra pak of Vendange Chardonnay, I did not detect much of an aroma. After about five minutes of letting it sit with intermittent swirls and sniffs, I finally got something I thought was apple, but I could have been lying to myself out of a desire to move on to the drinking phase. And when drinking, what hit me was oak and butter. Wow. So much oak and butter were in there that I barely could detect if that apple was still coming through.

I can only think of two reasons to ever buy a tetra pak of Vendange Chardonnay. First, if you’re really cheap, the tetra pak of this stuff is quite a bargain. The other reason is that if you happen to be going somewhere that glass bottles are not allowed (outdoor concert, beach, etc), the tetra pak could be a nice alternative to allow you to not have to skip on the wine.

If you have made it this far in your life without trying one of Bogle’s wines, you are one of the few wine drinkers in America who has not. Bogle is known for making affording, pretty good wines that you can find at every grocery store in the country. The Bogle Merlot is no exception. We picked up this bottle at our local neighborhood Jewel-Osco for around $11.

The Bogle Merlot is made from a blend of grapes from Clarksburg, Lodi, and Monterey, and the wine spends a full year barrel aging in American Oak. The resulting product has a surprising heft for a Merlot. Too many cheap Merlots are light and watery. The Bogle has nice cherry and currant flavors with a bit of pepper rounding it out.

Could this be the best Merlot in the world? No, it could not. However, when you keep in mind that this is a wine you can find anywhere for $10, it wins on cost and convenience. When those factors are taken into consideration, I can recommend the Bogle Merlot.

I picked up this bottle of Middle Sister Smarty Pants Chardonnay for one reason. If you read a lot of our reviews, you’ve probably noticed that I have been somewhat fed up recently with way too many oaky bottles of Chardonnay. Not that there is anything wrong with an oaky Chardonnay, I have just OD’ed on them for the moment. Some kind soul recommended this wine as the answer to my problems.

And they were right! Middle Sister Smarty Pants Chardonnay has practically no noticeable oak flavors whatsoever! It is made from a blend consisting of around three parts Chardonnay and one part mysterious “mixed white varieties.” Middle Sister tank ferments it and does not put it in oak, leading to a much fruitier Chardonnay with flavors of pear, citrus, and apple.

The Middle Sister Smarty Pants Chardonnay is not what I want every time I open a bottle of Chardonnay, but it is a great wine to work into my overall Chardonnay rotation. Sometimes you just want a Chardonnay but you don’t want the oak. On those evenings, this is the perfect wine.

Sometimes you buy a wine simply because it has a striking bottle or because it has won numerous awards. I could completely understand if you grabbed your first bottle of Biltmore Century White Wine for either reason. Having won two double golds and two golds in wine competitions as well as having a gorgeous bottle, this wine is hard to resist.

The Biltmore Century White Wine occupies a fascinating spot in the sweetness continuum. It is sweeter than the Biltmore Riesling, which I found interesting. Most blended whites that I have tried tend to shy away from the sweet. That is definitely not the case here, and the most likely reason is due to the grapes chosen for the blend: Riesling, Gewürztraminer, and Muscat Canelli. This alone makes this a wine worth trying, as you do not often come across such a blending.

The other reason worth trying the Biltmore Century White Wine is that it is quite good. The aforementioned grapes come together ever so gently with a lush floral aroma with hints of citrus. The flavors are all fruit and honey which despite never actually putting fruit on honey in real life, makes a fabulous pairing in a glass of wine.

If you are a fan of Riesling and other sweeter white wines, then I think you will absolutely love the Biltmore Century White Wine. It is a great sweeter white that will be exactly what you are looking for. Dry wine fans, this one’s not for you.

The sample for this review provided by Biltmore Estates.

With a price of only $4, how could I say no to picking up a bottle of Blue Fin Pinot Noir? It barely even matters what it taste like. $4 wine is practically free wine in my book. After all, that is an entire bottle of Pinot Noir for less than I have to pay for a Miller Lite at the bar down on the corner. With a wine like Blue Fin, I evaluate the value like this: would I rather sit at home and have a bottle of this or go down to the corner and have a Miller Lite at the bar? Yep, that sure is a high bar.

So is Blue Fin Pinot Noir a better value? The crux of the matter is how drinkable it may be. And while it isn’t anything special, I find this wine to be drinkable. Basically, this Pinot is a very light red shade with that sucker punch of berries so common to cheap reds. There is nothing subtle or complex here, just berries and alcohol to get you through the night.

I have no problem with Blue Fin Pinot Noir. I probably wouldn’t serve it to company, but when I need a bottle to enjoy by myself while watching a Channing Tatum movie (more The Vow than G.I. Joe: Retaliation), I can turn to the Blue Fin Pinot Noir.

Blue Fin California Chardonnay is targeted to the Charles Shaw crowd. With a price of $4, you are paying a single dollar more than Charles Shaw, though you aren’t spending that dollar with the goal of getting an upgraded wine. You are spending that dollar in order to avoid the perceived stigma of Charles Shaw. If bringing this bottle over to a friend’s home, they might not realize how cheap you are. Everybody knows that Charles Shaw is cheap. Many less people are familiar with the thrifty nature of Blue Fin Chardonnay!

However, if you are bringing this over to someone’s house or serving this to guests, it does need to taste good. Blue Fin Chardonnay, unlike many other cheap chardonnay offerings, has almost no vanilla. Instead, there is a lot of tropical fruit with just a touch of something else that I can’t put my finger on.

That being said, the Blue Fin Chardonnay tastes like a wine that cost $5 or less. It is thoroughly drinkable. It is not swill. Yet it is not a secret-diamond-in-the-rough-super-value-wine. With that in mind, there is a place in the world for Blue Fin California Chardonnay, but it is far from a home run.

For many years, the Black Mountain brand has stood apart at Trader Joe’s as one of their finest lines of wines that retail for less than $10. 30 years, to be exact! In fact, even Consumer Reports named a Black Mountain wine one of the best offerings in the entire wine world for less than $10. While I’ve always enjoyed Black Mountain, I have tended to stick with their Pinot Noir and have not ventured far and wide through their many offerings. Today begins a journey to change that. First on the list to sample is the Black Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon.

Black Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon is a cheap Cabernet, but it does cheap well. That means that it misses out on some of the complexities you will find abundant in $20+ wines, yet it still is quite enjoyable. Black Mountain seems to focus on the dark red fruit and vanilla flavors. That is about all that is there, but the black cherry and vanilla come together delectably!

If you only have $6 to spend and are looking for a wine that will stand up nicely to a big piece of grilled beef yet be just as appropriate with burgers, then Black Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon is the wine for you. Go down to your local neighborhood Trader Joe’s and give a bottle a try!