According to a website that monitors online wine pricing worldwide, the only place where you can purchase the 2016 Pike Road Chehalem Mountain Pinot Noir Xander Taryn Vineyard is the winery at $50 per bottle. Our price, $24.99! It is a superb Oregon Pinot Noir from the highly successful 2016 vintage and it's showing beautifully right now. James Suckling agrees with us rating it 92 points, saying: "This offers a very plush, succulent and deeply flavorsome array of bright, red-cherry flavors and a lithe, juicy and elegant feel on the palate. Superb focus of fine red cherries here. Drink now....

I went on an online hunt about ten days ago searching for a really excellent, really affordable Cabernet Sauvignon with no preconceived notions about where that Cabernet might come from. Napa, Sonoma, Australia, South America, Bordeaux, Italy, Washington State - it was a worldwide search with the only requirement that the wine be exceptional and reasonably priced. The result was the 2017 Catena Cabernet Sauvignon Agrelo Vineyard from Mendoza, Argentina (I assure you I was not influenced unduly by our Zoom tasting with the winemaker, Nesti Bajda, a couple of months ago, but I do remember remarking on how remarkable...

Peter Sisseck is widely regarded as Spain's most important winemaker and his flagship wine, Dominio de Pingus Pingus, made from Tempranillo in Ribera del Duero is perhaps Spain's most extraordinary wine. Unfortunately, the suggested retail for Pingus is $850 - it's worth every penny but out of reach for most wine lovers. There are two important differences between the Pingus and Sisseck's second wine, Dominio de Pingus Flor de Pingus. Average production - 4,000 cases (still a miniscule amount) of Flor de Pingus, 500 cases of Pingus. And the grapes for Flor de Pingus come from rented vineyards while the...

We have been out of the 2016 Gaja Ca'Marcanda Bolgheri Rosso Magari for several months now so we were very pleased to be offered the 2017 vintage. It's the latest in a string of successes for this wonderful blend of the Bordeaux varietals Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Petit Verdot. It is medium-bodied with pronounced tannins (at this young age) and scads of black currant fruit. This wine is a testament to the genius of Angelo Gaja and his family - an extraordinary and balanced wine from a very hot vintage which was problematic for a lot of less gifted...

Nicolas Catena - and now his daughter Laura - is a home run hitter in the world of winemakers. Whether it is the $10 Tilia wines, the $15 Catena Appellation Series wines, or the $300 single vineyard Malbecs and Cabernet Sauvignons, his wines always over-deliver for their price point. And this is especially true of the Tilia wines. The 2019 (remember that the harvest is six months earlier in the Southern hemisphere) Tilia Malbec-Syrah, only $9.99, is a perfect example of this. It combines the lush dark fruit of Argentine Malbec with the stony minerality of Syrah for a GREAT...