The supermarket Great Wall of Wine is the Rubik’s Cube of wine buying, with hundreds and hundreds of bottles to choose from, confusing pricing, and no one to ask for help. But it is possible to buy quality wine at the grocery store, and you don’t even need to know much about varietal or region. Just keep these grocery store wine tips in mind:The cuter the label, the more simple the wine. This means there is little balance or interest. Instead, they’re what producers call easy to drink — red wine with lots of sweet fruit and almost no tannins, and white wine with almost honeyed fruit and the minimal amount of acidity necessary to make it palatable. Whether these wines are good or bad isn’t the point; rather, is this the kind of wine you want to buy (or avoid)? If it is, then these labels are a clue.Who makes the wine? This is almost impossible to tell, since most of the wine in the grocery store usually comes from a dozen or so producers — our friends at Big Wine — and they would prefer you don’t know.

So look for something like ?The location that follows usually identifies the parent company, so that many Gallo-owned brands say Modesto, Calif. line may have a company name similar to the name of the multi-national that owns the brand, so that CWUS is part of Constellation Brands. A more complete list is in this post.Decipher the back label. Pay attention to the choice of words, and not what they mean. Simple, less interesting wines rarely describe themselves as fresh, clean, or earthy. Rather, they use terms like rich, plush, luscious, and even roasted. Also, chocolate and caramel show up more often than not, especially in very ordinary red wine, along with badly written homages to oak — vanilla bean is one of my favorites.Beware older vintages with steep discounts, especially if the wine wasn’t made in the U.S. This is often a sign the wine has been sitting in a warehouse, sometimes for years, and is more likely to have gone off. The supermarket, which may have bought the wine for pennies on the dollar, doesn’t care if it’s spoiled;

who returns bad wine to the grocery store? One rule of thumb: Be wary of white wine older than two years and red wine older than three. A Featured Post, Wine advice Best Marsala wine to use for cooking? Does anyone have any opinions on the best Marsala wine to use for cooking? best online wine store in europeStudies show that drinking a glass or two of wine every day (particularly red) can lower your risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and even cancer. best wine cooler drinksI for one take this research very seriously, religiously pouring myself two glasses every evening, whether I’m thirsty or really, really thirsty.buy international wine online australia

Trouble is, such preventive health care can be expensive. And, in this case, it’s not even tax-deductible. So I’ve made it my mission to maintain a list of inexpensive wines I’d happily drink every day, just in case my doctor orders me to. best wine list in chicagoClick for our favorite 10 red wines that won’t leave your budget bleeding red.best red wine not dryHere’s to great wine and good health.best cheap rose wine uk Francis Ford Coppola Rosso, $8 Rosemount Shiraz/Cabernet Blend, $8 Beringer Founder's Estate Cabernet, $9 Robert Mondavi Meritage Private Selection, $9 The Show Cabernet Sauvignon, $11 Hawk Crest Cabernet, $12 Sterling Cabernet Sauvignon Vintner's Collection, $12 337 Lodi Cabernet Sauvignon, $14

Louis Martini Sonoma Cabernet Sauvignon, $15 Keep this field blank Enter your email address You may unsubscribe at any time. FREE Shipping on orders with at least $25 of books. Each week you'll receive seven new simple, healthy meal plans. Our food experts create easy-to-prepare recipes featuring real food your whole family will love. Good, Better, Best Wines "They're big, they're out there, but they're not all the same. This book cuts a sure course through the ocean of popular wines. Carolyn's enthusiasm and stylistic panache tells you what you need to know -- and fast." --Andrew Jefford, columnist for Decanter and The World of Fine Wine magazine "...most wine reviews are aimed at higher-priced, small-production wines that often can't be found....  Her book rectifies that by comparing big brands by price (up to $15) and grape variety." --LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Sacramento Bee "This book is a fabulous resource.    "It's about time someone of Carolyn's' caliber stepped forward to champion these humble yet satisfying wines.

The first paragraph alone is worth the price of admission." --Richard Best, The Frugal Oenophile "Arriving at a time when consumers are looking for reliable quality wines at economy prices, this book is a timely and unique guide, and is the first ever to rank popular big-brand wines." While wine snobs are swirling and sniffing expensive wines that are tediously hard to find, the rest of us are just drinking wine. Big brands can spell terrific value but you need to know which bottles to buy. That's where Good Better Best Wines comes in. It's small enough to pop in your pocket and take with you to the shop. And it's user-friendly enough to flip through on the fly. Big brands use economies of scale to produce good value wines with easy-to-understand labels, limited vintage variation and broad distribution. These advantages are a winning combination with today's time-pressed wine consumers faced with tens of thousands of wine choices, who are more conscious than ever of their wine budgets in today's economy.