Good Wine and Money

I appreciate a good wine.

BUT I also have to admit that I have a taste for some very inexpensive wines — a few — which feels vaguely embarrassing in a world that likes to treat price as proof of sophistication or value.

I can’t even talk about wine the way experienced people can.

I’ve never had a mind for niche information. I’m far from encyclopedic. I was a note-taker in classes. I memorized just enough to pass French vocabulary quizzes. Not excel.

Whatever other people seem to have available for all their facts and information, I’m just hanging on to get through my life some days.

So the problem is this:

I cannot make myself prefer the expensive bottle simply because it is expensive.

Price should mean value.

Right?

If the cheaper wine is fruitier, rounder, more satisfying, has enough grip without gripping, and leaves me wanting another glass — or, occasionally, the entire bottle — then that is the wine I like.

Should I like it?

Am I crass?

Moi?

Do I offend?

(Ducky reference. You either know or you don’t.)

I can appreciate complexity.

I’m complex and contradictory at times!

I can appreciate craftsmanship.

I can even envy it.

I enjoy pairing flavors and noticing how they play off one another.

A rough wine?

Let’s take out some fruit, some cheese, some olives, some dark chocolate, some slices of sausage.

Let’s see where the grip ends and the fruit begins.

BUT I know when a wine hits all the right places for me.

And sometimes, inconveniently, it costs eight to twelve dollars.

I do wander the aisle and try the $20 bottles.

I’ve loved a more expensive one once in a while.

I’ve been treated to an expensive wine here and there in my life.

I’m willing to admit I may be naive.

I may be ignorant.

But still.

I know what I tend to like by now.

I like a red with ripe fruit and some weight, enough acidity to keep it lively, and enough tannin to give it structure without drying out my mouth.

I like a wine that still tastes like fruit, works with food, and leaves a clean enough finish that I actually want another glass.

I enjoy noticing what happens when wine meets chili, steak, chicken, bread, something sweet, or something briny.

I like how one wine can soften a meal while another suddenly makes a flavor sharper, richer, or more interesting.

I am not pretending to be a sommelier.

I just drink wine often enough to know when something works for me.

And Alamos Malbec, 2024, works for me.

It is generous without being syrupy, fruity without tasting sweet, and has enough grip to feel like a red wine without turning the whole experience into a mouth-drying endurance test.

And there are other things I notice that rarely make it into tasting notes.

Does my stomach like it?

Do I wake up regretting it?

Does it leave me feeling dried out, stuffy, headachy, or generally as though the wine and I had an argument sometime during the night?

With this one, for me, the answer has consistently been no.

And no matter what I plate, it seems to behave itself.

I still have other wines hanging around.

Blends I enjoy.

A New Zealand wine I save for a nice charcuterie-board night.

But for simple pleasure, this Alamos Malbec has become remarkably reliable.

So reliable, in fact, that I have started worrying it will disappear on me like other inexpensive reds I have loved — MotherVine, Natural Root — smooth, fruity, unfussy wines that simply vanished from my shelves one day.

Not fancy.

Not expensive.

Accessible.

Concerningly accessible.

Shouldn’t the best things be harder to find?

And yet here I am at 7-Eleven on a Friday evening, picking up what may be my perfect bottle on the way home.

Is that even okay?

LOL.

Well.

It is what it is.

And Alamos, about those 91 points?

Are you sure you didn’t mean 95?

Please don’t raise the price.