You know what I would recommend? If you will be trveling to France soon, or even if you are not, get yourself a copy of Andrea Immer's book, Great Wine Made Simple. The emphasis in this book is on tasting, rather than just in memorizing lots of extraneous information...take a look and see..

Also, make use of the restaurant people when you are in France..ask them the same question..what wine would they recommend... And don't be ashamed about not spending big money on wine..Take notes when you get one you like in a restaurant and ask the staff where it is sold in the area..

Above all, don't worry, as the article says, about those descriptor words like "tobacco and walnut notes.." Most people that use those words just do it to impress and they are kind of laughed at within the business.

>get yourself a copy of [the] book, Great Wine Made Simple.

Who can afford to drink great wine?

I want a guide book to good wines under $12 in a small town in rural Georgia.

OK, I'll go all the way to Athens, GA.

((I))

As I said, take a look at the book. Some people do not always equate greatness with price and Andrea covers many inexpensive wines.

Here is a link to the book I recommended above:


http://www.amazon.com/Great-Wine-Mad...987&sr=1-1

Damn that long URL, Escrunchy!

:-(

Please don't take the "higher alcohol is always better" suggestion. High-alcohol wines are "hot", and while some of them are trendy in the very high-priced brackets, the alcohol burn overwhelms the flavor and the aroma, especially for cheaper wines. Any wine over 13 or 14% is, to my taste, overextracted and overalcoholed. Wines this high used to be difficult to find; now it's getting harder to find them lower than that, even in wines that have always traditionally been 12-12.5%, like Beaujolais. Bordeaux used to always be 12.5%; now it's usually 14%, and I think suffers for it.

Finding a good wine at 6 Euros is hit and miss; the more you spend, the better your odds when choosing at random. But if you learn a little bit beforehand, you'll increase your chances even at the lower points. I had a fantastic bottle of generic 2 Euro Provencal rose out of a Monoprix several years ago!

ekscrunchy,

As I said before use http://tinyurl.com for Pete's sake. Your long link is partial and worthless, except to throw the margins of this thread into outer space.

We bought all our wine from Monoprix on our trip last month, all of it below 6 Euros, none of it bad. We liked all the Cote du Rhones, Brouilly (sp?), Bordeauxs, and white wines from Alsace. Tried a different one every few days.
Enjoy!

The link worked for me, and my screen still looks the same. Lighten up, kids!

Funny, my screen is ok, too. I know probolems can happen when you post a looong URL, but usually not when I do it. I have posted many times such long URL's (e.g. my photobucket albums) but it showed ok, at least on my screen, split automatically in parts.

Yes, and the link worked for me. Both the first 2 lines (blue and underlined) or 4 lines altogether (you can copy and paste) got me the same page.

I agree with fnarf; wines with high alcohol content need many years to calm down.

Is there a risk that wines with higher alcohol % have in fact been "fortified" by adding sugar to achieve these higher numbers?

There is always a risk of hanky panky, as scandals in the past have illustrated. But not something you should think about..

I would not pay much attention to the alcohol content..there are so many variables besides the number it will not mean all that much, unless you are looking for low alcohol young whites..just my opinion..

In a word, yes. Chaptalization (adding sugar to the grape must) is a common practice in France, particularly parts of France where the sugar percentage of the natural grapes is highly variable throughout the year, generally speaking the cooler areas. Not allowed, but tolerated.

Places where the temperatures are beastly hot all the time, like most of Australia, are very unlikely to chaptalize, though there are all kinds of other "adulterations" that are possible. Irrigation, for instance; in France that's considered an unspeakable abomination. Hot places don't need to add sugar; there's plenty (too much, really) already.

Determining whether or not a French wine has been chaptalized or not is a mug's game; you'll never find out anything for sure, though everyone in the country can entertain or bore you for hours with conspiracy theories about their neighbors -- "my hairdresser's cousin's fiance saw them deliver the sacks at midnight". It doesn't necessarily mean the wine is bad, either.

It truly depends on one's taste. I'm more of a dry flinty white wine person and a dry Burgandy style wine drinker.

Next week my wife and I will be in Provence. We're taking a pleasant bottle of Seghesion Zinfandel to our French host. It's not a common varietal in France and is usually perceived as a treat.

I've studied enough wine and have tasted my share (and probably yours also)so I have a pretty good idea of what is not going to be bad.