Inexpensive wines can maintain their charm

Not long ago we completed a tasting in which every one of our favorites rated Good/Very Good or better and cost $11 or less. Ka-ching!

To start at the beginning:

We guess there are some really rich people out there who drink very expensive, precious bottles of wine every night. In our experience, though, even people who love wine and have plenty of money are still always looking for house wines: straightforward, inexpensive and tasty wines that require little money to buy and little effort to enjoy. These are the kinds of wines to keep around at all times simply to pop open and enjoy when you get home from work.

A few months ago, before a performance of "Cyrano de Bergerac" on Broadway, we dropped into our favorite pre-theater restaurant, Joe Allen, which has a short but carefully selected wine list. We chose an inexpensive Montepulciano d'Abruzzo from Italy. We weren't sure what we'd find. Montepulciano d'Abruzzo has been out there forever, but it has never had much of a profile. Maybe that's because it's often sold in 1.5-liter sizes and segregated with the jug wines, maybe because it's inexpensive and sometimes kept on a bottom shelf, or maybe because its name invites confusion. Montepulciano d'Abruzzo is made from the Montepulciano grape in the Abruzzo region; Vino Nobile di Montepulciano is made from the Sangiovese grape around the town of Montepulciano in Tuscany. The wines are unrelated.

So we poured this inexpensive red and, especially with John's meatloaf and Dottie's calf's liver, it was wonderful. We don't mean wonderful in a hear-the-angels-sing, change-your-life, deeply-complex-perfection way, but wonderful in an easy-to-drink, charming-adult-beverage way. As you can imagine, we immediately decided to see if there were many examples out there and, if so, conduct a broad blind tasting.

We quickly found a large sample from four states. Some were from well-known, giant winemakers like Citra, while others were more obscure. Most were packaged in regular bottles, but we bought a few in larger bottles. We did not set a price limit, but none cost more than $20. (We know there are some examples out there that cost more than that, but we didn't see them.)

We drank the wines in blind flights over several nights and …

Yes, we just said "we drank the wines" instead of "we tasted the wines." This was an amazing thing. Night after night, we found that instead of swirling, sniffing, tasting, spitting and moving onto the next wine, we actually came back to wine after wine for another sip. Sometimes it seemed like we forgot we were conducting a very serious professional tasting and just started talking to each other with glasses of wine in our hands, like we used to do when we were wine civilians.

This was totally unexpected and, like our experience at Joe Allen, totally wonderful. These wines were so charming, so easy, so drinkable that they seemed like a part of our family as soon as they were opened.

The wines were generally pillow soft, with raspberries, blueberries and sometimes blackberries on the nose and in the mouth. They tasted like real, just-picked, crisp fruit, fun and simple, and in that way reminded us of Beaujolais. A few were ruined by oak -- it's as though the slight frame of the wine just can't handle it -- and a handful were slightly sweet, which destroyed their charm. Ultimately, though, the line between the good ones and the better ones was surprisingly clear: It was all about minerals. Wine after wine was fruity and fun, but the ones that also offered smells and tastes of minerals stood apart, time after time. The minerals gave the wine depth, made it more than pleasant grape juice, and also left a dry and drying finish that called out for food and/or more wine.

Interestingly, in fact, our very favorite, Valle Reale "Vigne Nuove," was fermented in stainless steel and never touched oak. To do that, the vintner must have tremendous confidence in the land and the grapes -- the wine is bare, there for all to see -- and this is a total winner, as charming, real and honest as can be. The importer, Winebow of New York City, says 25,000 cases were made, of which 4,623 cases were imported and distributed in 21 states. We paid $9.95, a real bargain for such a delight.

Our other favorites included Castellana (Cantina Miglianico) 2006 ($5.99), Citra, 2006 ($4.85), Farnese (Farneto Valley), 2005 ($7.99), Il Conte, 2006 ($6.49) and Rubiro (Villa Cervia), 2004 ($11). As always, it's impossible to know which bottles you might find. Overall, we'd say that these are an excellent bet, especially young, considering the low prices.