Fine Wine,
Tight Budget
Yes, Virginia, you can find a bargain this holiday...

By Jonathon Alsop
December 17, 2004

There must be at least a thousand different factors and conditions that go into making a really good bottle of wine. After the soil, the sun and rain, the list just keeps growing. Think about the angle of the soil to the sun, wild versus store-bought yeast, all the winemaker's art, those heavy barrels.

Sometimes, there's literally too much stuff going on in a bottle of wine to point out one thing that makes it great. This explains why, when challenged with the question "So what makes this wine so good?", wine lovers break into pre-verbal utterances of big words: "Wine so... lovely... sublime... lymph." It's like trying to explain why you love your girlfriend: she's just so... great.

At the end of the day, a really good bottle of wine must pass two tests: quality and price. Quality equals how much you think the wine should cost and price is how much it actually does. Run the two numbers through a calculator and you have QPR: Quality/Price Ratio.

If a bottle cost $10 and tastes like $25 to you, its QPR is 2.5. A $10 bottle that should have been $7 has a .7 QPR. Any wine you wish you'd never bought regardless of price gets 0. No matter whether you shop in the $10, $20 or $30 range, you always want the highest QPR possible.

In nature, an extreme of the quality-price continuum occurs among less-expensive wines in a super vintage when the quality level spikes and the price of cheap wine can't adjust. 2000 was a fantastic year in Bordeaux, and the best wines grew tremendously expensive, into the hundreds of dollars. At the same time, my favorite $12 Bordeaux (Chateau Recougne, from Classic Wine Imports, 781-352-1100) stayed at $12 but started tasting like $20 for a whole vintage.

We have a similar situation now with the amazing 2003 vintage from all over Europe, but especially from France. 2003 was extremely hot, the grapes got very ripe, and the wine is just super overall, from the top to the bottom of the chain.

Thanks to some unfortunate domestic and international wine market conditions, France is hurting. There is a glut of wine right now with very low demand and falling prices. While this may be bad news for French wine makers and people who do business with them, it translates into great buys on the awesome 2003 vintage in the wine shop nearest you.

They say a rising tide lifts all boats, but in the case of the great European vintage we're enjoying now, prices are being left behind. You can get a great bargain if you just aim low.

2003 La Vieille Ferme Cotes du Ventoux (about $7, distributed nationally, imported by Vineyard Brands, 205-980-8802)

Fifteen years ago when I first started writing about wine, La Vieille Ferme (lah vee-YAY fairm) was also $7, so go figure. Almost everything about this rustic red wine has changed over the years except the enduring $7 price point.

Cotes du Ventoux (coat dyou vonn-TOO) is a little-known region inside the more famous Cotes du Rhone (coat dyou RONE) in southern France. Mount Ventoux rises from the valley floor and dominates the local landscape. Grapes grow all up and down its slopes and hillsides, and the wine is almost always blended from multiple black country grapes like grenache, syrah, carignan (karen YAWN), cinsault (CHIN so) and others.

This year's La Vieille Ferme is deliciously fruity, fresh, juicy and bright. It has good spice, lingering smoke and wood flavors, and plenty of body to go great with food. It tastes happy and carefree, like the way our relationship with the French used to be.

The 2003 vintage sports a new and improved label as well as a screw cap. I know some people find the cork classier, but I believe screw caps are a godsend. When you put a bow on this bottle, tie it on nice and high to cover up the cap if you need to.

La Vieille Ferme is now owned and run by the Perrin family, makers of the ultra-famous Chateau Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape (about $55, if you can find it). QPR for the $7 sibling is 1.57 by my calculation, thus triggering an automatic buy order.