Good one there! Or maybe Friday flight night at your local watering hole. And better wine shops and liquor stores do tastings; hell, BevMo does tastings, well, call it samplings.

There's also that time-honored tradition -- go wine tasting. That might necessitate anywhere from some to a lot of travel for some of you, but look for visitation opportunities when you travel; it ain't all be doing in California, for sure. And look for wine "trails" and "ghettos" and "zones," endeavors of allied wineries to market and get people in. We have a trail and ghetto right here in our little town, Santa Barbara has the Funk Zone, Spokane has the Cork Distirct. Often these wineries are closely clustered and you can even hoof from one to the other, and if not and if worried about the evil Deuce, hire a driver or sign on with a group tour.

 

I'm not a wine connoisseur like a few of you but I enjoy my sauvignon blancs especially the '02 Cloudy Bay.

 

'02 or '12, bear?

 

Just came in to see if anyone mentioned two buck chuck bye

 

It's now Two Chucks, Five Bucks.

 

Two buck chuck is all sugar to make it taste "good". Not a lot of wine making prowess in those bottles. Is all 3rd or 4th pressing leftovers

 

cheap wine gives me a brutal headache/hangover.

I just won't drink it for that reason alone.

but there's definitely some good value to be found in the $15-30 range.

 

2012. Not sure why I was thinking '02... Any recs on something similar?

 

Easthope or Triplebank, perhaps.

 

Chuck comes from a massive vineyard in the SJ Valley. Yields are huge and high in residual sugar, juice quality is nominal, they "cheat" by using oak chips in fermentation, growing and production costs are low, but it's still "wine." Or so I was told by the owner over a round of golf at Vintage Club several years ago.