Cheap Wine is for Many Occasions

Brigette and I have a nice schedule set up, as far as domestic wonder-eating is concerned. She works late during the middle of the week, and we each fend for ourselves (enough said about that!). Friday (sometimes), Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, however, often offer several straight days of great food. Sometimes we find that we will have a nice, light lunch in the late afternoon, as well as the dinner. On those days, if the meal is nice enough, and the shrimp we can get (fresh and very cheap) will make the afternoon special. We find that water, cokes, or whatever (she does not like beer) just won’t do. Our inclination, year round, is a nice sparkling wine, a light one like the Albero or a Prosecco. Well. Three dinners and a lunch with wine. Four bottles in three days on a normal week. (We will not discuss human livers at this juncture.)

I don’t know about you, but 4 bottles a week can get pricy, even if we were making great money. Say an average of $30 each, $120 a week, say 42 weeks a year, is….. over $5,000 a year. Can’t happen.

So, what to do? Give up wine, or at least reduce it to one bottle a week? That means the other great meals we (meaning Brigette) makes have drinks that do not add to the experience? Our meals are really not expensive, for all of the taste and pleasure. Rarely do we spend more than $10 for our food.
Of course the answer is easy. There is a lot of really decent, even good, wine available for less than $10 a bottle. Maybe the percentage of failures increases at that price level, but only a little. There are several good wines for between $5 and $10. People who make good wines, say from a country with a long history in wine like Italy, Spain, even France, do not forget how to make a wine with basic soundness. The wine may not have the complexity and finesse of more expensive wines. They are solidly made, and will work well with well-made, tasty food. The after tasting these wines, perhaps you will be more demanding of the $20 to $40 wines you buy.