You don't need to break the bank this Valentine's Day to find a good bottle of wine. To buy better wine for less, I asked our own wine experts for some shopping tips. What they told me might surprise you.
1. Try boxed wine for a crowd. There
are many crowd pleasers out there and you can save lots of money
serving them. A 3-liter box is the equivalent of 4 -750 ml bottles and
can cost as little as $16. That’s just $4 per bottle. We recently
tested some boxed Chardonnays that are definitely worth a try — Black Box, Fish Eye, and Banrock.
2. To decant … or not. Decanting certainly won’t improve a low-quality wine, but it might help an otherwise good wine show its potential by aerating it a bit to help remove slight off odors like reduction smells, or to help “open” a wine.
In addition, some think that an aeration decanting will soften the tannins in a tannic young red wine. The effect is not immediate so it should be done about a half hour before serving.
For
an older wine, the only decanting that should be done is a careful
"sediment" decanting, where the clear wine is slowly poured into a
decanter to leave sediment behind. This is gentle and always done right
before serving as the wine's aromatics are VERY ephemeral. Most wines
don’t need decanting, though.
3. Go obscure. Keith Wallace, the founder of the Wine School of Philadelphia, says you should buy wine made from a grape you’ve never heard of from a no-name brand. Less popular grapes and wine regions tend to offer higher quality wine for less.
“A $15 bottle of Chinon is the perfect replacement for a $30 bottle of Burgundy,” Wallace says. Similarly, our own experts suggest instead of merlot, try a carménère or a malbec. Instead of pinot grigio, try Torrontes, a white wine from Argentina.
