A Wine Lover's Weekly Guide To $10 Wines - A Greek Dessert Wine

This review marks a double first. It's our first sweet wine, and our first Greek wine. Given the wine's sweetness a full serving is quite small. Don't, we repeat, don't ever drink full servings of a wine like this. You will definitely regret getting sick and drunk on dessert wines. When you think of Greece you may be thinking of Retsina wines, wines tasting of resin that still represent a major section of the Greek wine market. You won't find any such wine reviewed here, and not because of the price.

Samos is a small, mountainous island in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Turkey. Its inhabitants have been making wine for well over three thousand years. The Muscat grape is a relative newcomer, probably introduced in the Sixteenth Century. These grapes were grown on the slopes of Mount Ampelos at a height of up to half a mile (less than a kilometer) by a local cooperative founded in the 1930s. The wine reviewed below is their base product; their top of the line is the Samos Anthemis. Usually my quotes are limited to the marketing materials but exceptionally I'll quote one of my favorite wine reviewers, Tom Stevenson, "One of the great sweet wines of the world...are all superb, perfectly-balanced, rich, and mellifluous wines..." If you agree with Tom, you are in for one real bargain.

A Wine Lover's Weekly Guide To $10 Wines - A Cabernet Sauvignon From Bulgaria

This is our first bargain wine that comes from Bulgaria, a country which produces many low cost wines. In fact, Bulgaria was once the world's fourth largest wine exporter. It had been the most reliable wine producer in Eastern Europe. Bulgarians have been cultivating vines for over three thousand years and producing wine for most of those years. After Bulgaria was ruled by Turkey, its wine industry came to a halt and only restarted after World War I. The producer Domaine Boyer was the nation's first private wine company after 1991 and is a major player. Cabernet Sauvignon has been a quite important Bulgarian grape for decades. This country has had quite a reputation for inexpensive wines. Let's see about this wine.

I Love Organic Wine - A Dolcetto From Italy

The Piedmont region of northern Italy produces many great wines, but none of them are based on the Dolcetto grape. Dolcetto means little sweet things in Italian and is the most popular red grape in Piedmont. There are seven Dolcetto wine designations based on small zones all tucked into the southeast of this beautiful region. Only an expert can tell them apart. I can think of many Piedmont wine tastings much more exciting than trying to distinguish among seven Dolcettos.

A Wine Lover's Weekly Guide To $10 Wines - An Argentinian Kosher Merlot

Our previous wine came from Argentina. Maybe this explains why we are reviewing another Argentinian wine, one that is kosher to boot. The Mendoza region is Argentina's most productive wine area, responsible for some two-third's of the country's wine. One of Mendoza's best zones is the Uco Valley where the days are hot, the nights are cold, rainfall is hardly abundant, and the growing season is long. The Andes Mountains are close by and supply the water.

Today's wine comes from Finca La Celia, founded in 1890. Its name comes from the founder's daughter, who took a very active role in the winery's expansion. The winery makes a wide variety of wines on its 600-hectare (about 1500 acre) kilometer-high (about three fifths of a mile) vineyards.