Best Value
Some deals are just too good to pass up. Our Best Value category digests that rarest of breeds: Top-rated products at prices that are incredibly appealing. We include products across the board in this section.
Top Best Value Posts:
Top 10 Bourbons Under $20
Wines of Lula Cellars, 2018 Releases
Jim Beam Distiller’s Cut
When one thinks of Tuscan wines, one usually imagines Italy’s most renowned reds, including Chianti, Brunello di Montalicino, and Super Tuscans. This makes sense since 86% of the region’s wine production is dedicated to red wines. But that leaves 14% unaccounted for, and the region produces some very nice whites and rosés, which we’ll be…
Maggie Campbell has been making and blending rum for decades, first at Privateer and then at Mount Gay. Now she’s running her own operation, American Cane, which is a Louisiana-based blender with two rums on the market. Banter is billed as a “revival rum,” designed to be a no-nonsense, “low-drama,” good-value pick for cocktailing. There’s…
The pair of Raven wines we are trying today were made at the Maison Wessman winery in Limoux in southern France and are the result of a collaboration between winemaker Róbert Wessman and JJ Julius Son, lead singer and songwriter for the popular rock band Kaleo. Collaborations between celebrities and wineries aren’t new anymore, but…
With summer in full swing, every bar needs a healthy stock of rose wine to keep folks cool, hydrated, and happy. Rather than the usual Provence or California roses, consider this offering from Attems, a rose made from pinot grigio in Italy’s Friuli region. Ramato is a wine style exclusive to Friuli pinot grigio, wherein…
Scharffenberger is a Mendocino-based winery that specializes exclusively in sparkling wines (all ideal for pairing with sister operation Scharffen Berger chocolates). We’ve covered these wines periodically through the years. Today we take a fresh look at the two flagship nonvintage bottlings as well as a vintage blanc de noirs picked in 2019. NV Scharffenberger Brut…
We’ve been covering Paso Robles-based Harvey & Harriet‘s red wine blends for a few years, but somehow the white blend from this Booker Wines label has eluded us. Blended from an exotic mix of Chardonnay, Albariño, Viognier, and Pinot Grigio, it’s a wine that promises all kinds of action. Let’s see how well it delivers.…
With Irish whiskey still on the rise, new brands are popping up left and right. Case in point is John L. Sullivan, produced by an outfit called Good Spirits Bottling. This small batch Irish, named after the last bare-knuckled boxing heavyweight world champion, is distinguished by being aged in “single use” Bourbon barrels. Now, most…
Josh Cellars Seaswept Sparkling is tailored for the intersection of brunch, summer, and a playlist starting with anonymous, synthetic downtempo beats and somehow ends up with a sea shanty singalong before the table is cleared and the Uber home arrives. A blend of 50/50 Chenin Blanc and Colombard, it opens with an easygoing brightness of…
Campo Viejo is an iconic part of Rioja, a place where wine has allowed ample time to permeate the landscape, economy and local culture. It’s been quite a few years since we’ve had anything from the winery, so it’s time to revisit and check out its flagship offering. The nose on this Tempranillo does everything in…
New Zealand’s sustainable wine story is easy to tell because the numbers do most of the talking. Launched way back in the mid-90s, Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ) has grown into an internationally-recognized, industry-wide certification program covering all aspects of vineyard operations. The headline figures are hard to ignore: 98% of the country’s vineyard-producing area…