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Comment by antirez | Hacker News Reader

This article is the contrary of everything I believe about wine :-) In Italy with 15 euro a bottle you can purchase one of the Italian Great Wines, not an everyday wine, like a bottle of Siant Michel Appian or similar very very good wine. What starts to be blurry is what you get with a 150 euro bottle compared to a 20 euro bottle... But in the 10-15 range there are awesome wines that you don't find if you descend in the 5-7 euro range, for example. Around 7-10 you can still, if you have the skills and drive, find good wines, but in the same range there is also garbage. Now, does it make sense to drink garbage? If you ask me, never in your life. So I drink 10-20 euros wins at home, alone, if I want to drink wine. Don't drink cheap wine, nor bad coffe, or trash food. Drink and eat less maybe, which is going to work for your health. Life is too short.

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> in the 10-15 range there are awesome wines that you don't find if you descend in the 5-7 euro range

I'd second this, and say that the most interesting and various wines can be found around the 15 euro mark.

In Australia (Where red wine snobs like myself abound) the best local wines are usually around the $20 mark. You can pay hundreds of dollars for Grange, but if you're going to spend that money I'd prefer to go for something like the Wild Duck Creek Duck Muck (Awesome wine, way too expensive).

My current favorite is actually the Artigiano Primitivo from Puglia in Italy. $17 at the local bottle shop, and absolutely brilliant :-)

For those interested in Californian Zinfandels I'd highly recommend looking into Primitivos:

"In 1993, Meredith used a DNA fingerprinting technique to confirm that Primitivo and Zinfandel are clones of the same variety. Comparative field trials have found that "Primitivo selections were generally superior to those of Zinfandel, having earlier fruit maturity, similar or higher yield, and similar or lower bunch rot susceptibility.""

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinfandel#Relationship_to_Primi...

Thanks for the hints!

Totally agree with you, didn't know you were also a wine fan. In Italy I would drink "Andrea Occhipinti" and other natural radical stuff all day long... here in the states their bottles are around 25 USD, but in Italy they are way cheaper, and the work of artists.

French wine can be found among the same lines, just have to check less 'popcorn' regions, like Jura, Beaujolais, Loire and Languedoc.

In short, the price of a wine, is not correlated to it's quality most of the time. Like the cover of a book is not correlated with what's written in it. The most exciting wines being made today, the most radical guys, in search of true terroir, are making wines that are not that expensive.

PS: Gallo's wines are shit, avoid those chemical bombs.

Totally agree with you, since you mentioned Occhipinti, there is another Occhipinti in Sicily making natural wines which is worth to check, "Arianna Occhipinti": http://www.agricolaocchipinti.it/ (sorry terrible site). I've mixed feelings about natural wines since they are of very mixed quality... but those ones are fine IMHO.

Hahaha, I quickly googled for Occhipinti and found Andrea. I totally meant Arianna! Super nice stuff. A beautiful italian wine in a similar style is "Vino di Anna, Palmento", give that one a try if you can, also natura. :)

Cheers!!

Doesn't all red wine taste the same if you combine it with cola? :-)

As a fellow Italian, I agree wholeheartedly (even though a Great Wine is probably more toward 40-50€ imho).

But Italy is a privileged place to buy wine.

Living in London, I noticed that cheap wines (5-10£) are truly awful and it's almost impossible to find good cheap wines. Also, European wines tend to be worse than African and South American ones (no idea why: maybe Italians keep the good stuff only for them?).

I agree. Once you develop a taste for wine the difference between a cheap bottle and $10-$15 bottle is noticeable. Perhaps I drink too much wine.

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