Dave Nelson

​Finding good pinot noir for under $30 is a tough task, but there's hope, in the form of a positive trend arising from our nation's recent, ahem, financial difficulties: Top wineries have been releasing value-priced bottlings. When we spot a pinot noir that fits this profile, Gut Check involuntarily reaches for our corkscrew.

Today's offering comes from Copain Wines, and the hand of talented winemaker Wells Guthrie. A producer of high-quality pinot noir and syrah since its inception in 1999, Copain made a deliberate stylistic change in the direction of their pinot-making with the 2006 vintage.

Unhappy with how previous efforts were standing up to age, he began picking earlier, aiming to get ripe fruit with less sugar. (If you want to geek out, Wells has published a four-part video on YouTube that explains it all.) For a producer, particularly one whose wines garnered a lot of "points" from the vinoscenti, to abandon a commercially successful path because he is not satisfied with the wines requires major cojones.

So we know Wells has balls. But has his effort borne fruit?

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Vineyards in Austria

​Austria is well-regarded by wine cognoscenti as a source of extremely fine riesling and the iconoclastic signature white, grüner veltliner. Austrians are a proud bunch, and only about 20% of the nation's vinious produce escapes their borders. Of that, a whopping 3% -- or only 0.6% of Austria's total production -- reaches these shores.

Despite its wholly justified reputation as a producer of world-class white wines, Austria turns out a respectable amount of tasty reds as well. The U.S. sees even fewer of these, but thankfully for those of us on a budget, many of the reds that do arrive are on the value end of the scale. Super-importer Terry Theise and Austrian (German, too) specialist Bill Mayer are the best sources.

Today, we put a 1-liter value-priced zweigelt to the test.

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Dave Nelson

​Inexpensive isn't the first adjective that comes to mind when one thinks of Bordeaux. Despite the fame and accompanying ridiculous prices of the red, white and sweet wines of the big-name châteaux, France's Bordeaux region actually produces a virtual ocean of wine -- about 150 million gallons in 2009 -- much it released at the "value" end of the market.

Like low-priced offerings from many regions, these come without the pedigree, but also usually with less ripeness, less oak influence, and lower alcohol levels. In a poor year (weather matters more in Bordeaux than in California), this can result in weedy, shrill wines, but in decent years, good values can be found.

Today we'll try a value-priced white Bordeaux with a bit of age on it...

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Hey! Tiny bubbles in the wine! Now this is a moscato we could get outside of!

​No wine captures spring in a bottle better than a good moscato. It's a fresh, lightly carbonated glass of fruit and flowers. Yes, it's on the sweet side, but really just enough to make it a perfect match for the first ripe strawberries and melons of the season. Plus, there's usually plenty of acidity to balance. In fact, it's entry in the Oxford Companion to Wine refers to moscato as "the perfect breakfast wine."

Moscato d'Asti, the most commonly seen moscato in the U.S., hails from the land surrounding the city of Asti in Piemonte. This region in the northwest corner of Italy is also home to some of Italy's brawniest, longest-lived red wines, Barolo and Barbaresco, yet it also produces the delicate, low alcohol frizzante wine from the moscato bianco grape.

There are high quality moscatos from other areas of Piemonte as well, and today we give one of 'em a try...

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While South Africa is no longer entirely unknown as a wine-producing nation, many know it only by the Goats do Roam line of value-priced varietal wines. Those can be decent, despite the punny name, but the country actually has a long wine tradition.

The Dutch brought a passion for the grape when they arrived, and documented production dates back to the late 1600s. A large wine trade was built up with England during one of its many wars with France, but the industry dropped into international obscurity during apartheid.

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The view near Stellenbosch, in South Africa. Would you buy wine grown near here? Gut Check would!

​When it re-emerged, the world discovered a unique voice built on three varieties. For white, South Africa offered sauvignon blanc and steen, the local name for chenin blanc. On the red side, it featured the obscure red grape pinotage, a cross between pinot noir and cinsault (a blending grape from the southern Rhône) that is hardly grown anywhere other than in South Africa. Other international varieties have moved in as export efforts have expanded, with credible versions of syrah, merlot and chardonnay entering the market.

Today we're giving steen a go...

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When is a Valpolicella not a Valpolicella? When it costs nine bucks and contains a generous measure of merlot.

​Given that we live in the United States, you'd think U.S. wines would dominate the value category -- shorter shipping, no currency fluctuations, no import duties, etc. -- but they don't. In fact, cheap U.S. wine tends to be some of the most uninteresting out there. At best you get a technically correct, clean wine, but you're not apt to find anything with character for less than a ten-spot (unless you're of the opinion that reeking of oak chips = "character").

For our money, the best bangs for your value bucks come from Europe. France, Italy and Spain all crank out truly engaging offerings in the $10 range. While Spain has been many a critic's value darling, most of the red Spanish cheapies are based on grenache, which has a tendency to get very ripe, masking whatever character might be lie beneath.

Italian reds offer better odds. Somehow, wines from Italy always seem to have an ineffable Italian flavor to them -- a bit herbal, a bit earthy -- even when they're made from ubiquitous varieties like cabernet sauvignon or merlot.

Which brings us to this week's "Thrill or Swill?" contestant...

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Dave Nelson

​When Bon Vivant Wines, Riverfront Times' pick last year for "Best Wine Shop," closed in February, it left a gaping hole in the area's Beaujolais selection. Well-made Beaujolais has the capacity to meld seamlessly with a wide variety of food, and to slake the thirst of warm St. Louis days with a captivating combination of fresh, juicy fruit (no, not Juicy Fruit) flavors and moderate alcohol.

Unfortunately, most Beaujolais remains irredeemable swill. Vineyards are over-cropped by greedy growers selling to large companies or cooperatives, resulting in dilute wines that producers dump sugar into to increase the alcohol content (the official line always being that it is done to extend the length of the fermentation to get "more" out of the grapes). The fermentation is carried out by selected yeasts that produce their own trademark fruity esters to replace the lack of fruit flavors in the grapes themselves.

The result is a headache in a bottle, and a lingering aftertaste of having consumed a wine "product."

When we recently spied a bottling from a topnotch Beaujolais producer, we couldn't resist...

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Dave Nelson

Hmmmm, no vintage? Wonder what that might mean...

​Most people who are concerned with what they eat and drink are on board with buying from quality local producers. In Missouri this concept frequently comes to a screeching halt when it comes to wine. A picnic at a winery on a warm spring day? Sure. But a Missouri wine with a fine meal? Not so much.

Missouri certainly has a storied history as a wine-producing region, but it hardly sets most geeks' hearts aflutter. Factoids about Missouri being the second-largest wine producer before Prohibition (note that little is ever mentioned about the quality of the wine 90-plus years ago), or that Augusta was the first AVA recognized by the federal government (a quirk of timely bureaucratic filing and processing) nicely fill space on marketing brochures, but it's what is in the glass now that matters.

Too often, unfortunately, many Missouri wines suffer from a variety of sins -- too dilute, overly oaky or just plain weird. But there are good ones out there, wines that truly deserve a place at your table. This uncertainty, of course, make Missouri wines excellent candidates for "Thrill or Swill."

Succumbing once again to our weakness for a bargain, Gut Check bit on a recent offering from a Missouri winery at an attractive price from our local Schnucks. It wasn't what we expected, but not for the reason you might expect....

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Dave Nelson

​The Loire Valley in France is home to some terrific wines, with some of the most horrific names in all of winedom. Bourgeuil, Bonnezeaux, Pouilly-Fumé, Saumur-Champigny -- all can be tongue twisters. (Even Chinon and Muscadet can present some pronunciation challenges.) That said, the sheer quality and versatility of these wines deserves a few moments of French language lessons so that you can order, discuss or demand them proudly and without fear.

Today's lesson in pedantry is Savennières (say it with us: sah-veh-NYAIR), a tiny appellation on the Loire near the city of Angers, just 80 miles from the Atlantic. How tiny? The portion of the appellation actually planted with vines is about half the size of Forest Park. Despite its diminutive size, Savennières produces a benchmark, powerful dry white wine.

Let's pop a cork, shall we?

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Dave Nelson

Does glass shape affect aroma and flavor? Today's wine four different ways: (from left) pinot noir, large all-purpose, small all-purpose, cabernet sauvignon.

​You've gotta love the French ability to call it how it is. Once upon a time, aramon was the most widely planted red grape in all of France, which you'd think would lead to it being a national treasure. But it was so heavily grown that it was known as pisse-vin. Yep: "piss wine."

These days a quality-conscious producer will shoot for a yield of about 2.5 to 5 tons per acre. Good ol' pisse-vin was notorious for yielding as much as 25 tons per acre. While there's some debate when it comes to pinpointing the quality/quantity threshold, 25 tons an acre is well beyond it.

Not surprisingly, aramon has fallen out of favor.

So when we spotted an amaron on the shelf at a local wine store, we bought it.

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