This is Premium Content for BWU$20 subscribers. We’re providing it for free to show you how our Best Wine Lists work. They’re shortlists of our TOP 40, which we update every month: Best Wines Under $10, $15, $20 and $25, Best Sparkling, Best Boutique, Best Cool, Best Cellaring (all under $20). You can subscribe HERE for $30 a year, or you can grab 4 weeks of our BEST BUYS WEEKLY mailer for free HERE.

Updated May 2015

The autumns winds are howling, and we’ve gone out of our way to find some really exciting big reds that will warm your insides and won’t break the bank. The wines are listed by variety, each in ascending price order, with direct links to the merchant(s) with the best deals. We update the list monthly, so you’ll always find quality big reds at the best prices across Australia.

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Wineonline.com.au sent me an email with this note. When I checked the results, the wine that won second place overall was listed as DB Reserve Chardonnay 2013. Some inquiries confirmed that this is the export version of de Bortoli’s humble Deen Vat 7 Chardonnay.

So who are these people who have so deftly confirmed what I’ve been saying for so long? That you can get terrific wines for less than $20, and even $10?

The idea of this competition, says the website, is ‘to bring together the world’s best Chardonnays in an elegant setting- the Château des Ravatys, the wine estate of the Pasteur Institute. The ambition of this international confrontation limited to Chardonnay wines is to pick out the best wines on the basis of their intrinsic quality …

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Australia’s oldest family-owned winery

Yalumba is a wine company I’ve always had a soft spot for. It’s the oldest wine company in Australia that is still intact, and still owned by the Hill-Smiths. Yalumba has also been an innovator, both in terms of new territory and new varieties: Viognier, Roussanne, Vermentino and Tempranillo.

Yalumba’s Signature Blend red has a long and illustrious history, and is unique in celebrating the key employees and family members that made the company what it is today, every year. Christobel Hill-Smith was honoured this way back in the seventies, when Yalumba made an elegant Cabernet Shiraz in one of the wettest vintages on record. Initially it was labelled FDR1A but, after it collected many gongs and plaudits, Yalumba released the wine as Christobel’s blend.

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We keep running into this issue, and we will show crass examples from time to time. I’m not saying we’re more consistent than the rest, but these examples show how hard it is to find consistent reviews.

Last Horizon Pinot Noir 2013

Destemmed and cold-soaked for 6 days pre-fermentation before 10 months maturation in mainly used French oak. The bouquet is expressive, but it is the palate that sets this wine apart, the fruit coating the mouth with red and blue fruit flavours that run from the tip of the tongue to the lingering aftertaste that won’t go away, Tasmanian acidity cunningly woven through. 95 Points James Halliday

A quietly powerful Pinot with a very good , youthful hue and a complex potpourri, dreid herb and forestry bouquet. Medium bodied, focused and intense, it has superior depth and flavour. Elegant, long and refined. 94 points, Huon Hooke, Gourmet Traveller Wine, 100 Top new releases

Clean, fragrant, stone fruit meets green grass scents in the bouquet. Pretty simple, but communicates the variety and region well. Crisp, tangy, zingy to taste with electric, citrussy acidity and a light menthol character finishing off the wine. Not a lot of depth, but a lot of refreshment factor. 86 points, Mike Bennie at the Winefront

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Or is it a $37 Shaw & Smith or a $150 Penfolds RWT?

The judges at London’s 2014 International Wine Challenge said it’s the Shaw and Smith 2012. The cream of Aussie wine reviewers at Gourmet Traveller Wine said it’s the Penfolds RWT 2010. The judges at the Visy Great Aussie Shiraz Challenge 2013 said it’s the Pepperjack Shiraz 2012. What does GOM of Wine James Halliday say? He provides a list of 7 wines that are very hard to buy – more on that further down.

Let’s start with the good news

Saltram’s Pepperjack Shiraz 2012 took out the trophy for best Shiraz at the 2013 Visy Shiraz Challenge with a score of 19. It is often discounted to $17 and is still widely available – our kind of wine. Second place went to the Ingoldby Shiraz 2012, with a score of 18.8. We liked the Pepperjack and scored it at 92 points, we liked the Ingoldby a lot less and gave it 89.

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Best Wines Under $20 is optimised for Buying Online

We receive many glowing testimonials, but we also get emails from subscribers deploring their lack of shopping choice in country areas. ‘We only have a Dan Murphy’s where I live,’ said one, ‘so we have no real choice.’ Another asked: ‘Can you suggest a good retailer in North Queensland?’ A third said: ‘Your site seems to favour Sydney Retailers. I live in Melbourne.’ Actually, we provide links to 6 Melbourne Retailers and several in Adelaide and Brisbane, but that’s missing the point: Buying Online gives you easy access to virtually every wine retailer in Australia.

Big Benefits if you live in the Country

Our site is designed for easy online ordering, with direct links to the retailers with the best price. All our Best Wine and Best Buys lists include live links to merchants so you can buy online. It no longer matters where those merchants are based, since almost all of them will ship wine anywhere in Australia using couriers like AusPost or FastTrack. Buying online gives you:

1. Choice: access exactly the same wines as everyone else, regardless of where you live
2. Convenience: no need to travel; order from anywhere and have it delivered to your front door
3. Independence: purchase online from major and independent retailers, and vineyards directly
4. Savings: buy wine at the special prices we find, and get free or low cost freight

Free Delivery to your front door

Here’s a short list of independent merchants who deliver for free or next to nothing (some of these guys will ship your beer and spirits as well). Virtually all have a ‘free returns if not happy policy’, which takes the risk out of buying wines you may not be familiar with.

MyCellars is based in Adelaide. The website makes my eyes water, but each wine listing shows the available reviews for it. They deliver orders over $250 for free across the country, and orders of any size for free to BWU$20 subscribers – use the code BWU20 at the checkout. You don’t have to buy a dozen here – you can buy 2 bottles and there’s only one price, and delivery is free. How easy is that?

Winestar delivers for free to 98% of the country for a dozen or more, from Melbourne. Each wine listing on the site include available reviews for it. This is an online only set-up.

Winedirect in Adelaide offers free freight on any order of 12 bottles or more, and $7.50 for anything less than 12 … anywhere in the country, including Tasmania.

Different Drop – based in Sydney, specialises in boutique wines that are hard to find elsewhere. Offers free shipping for any orders > $150 to most East Coast locations, and $9 for orders below $150. Surcharges apply for shipments to Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

Kemenys, the biggest of the independents is based in Sydney. Good mix of big sellers and boutique wines at sharp prices, most of all under the Hidden Labels. Excellent website and phone order service. Delivery cost is $10 a dozen to most locations.

OurCellar is a small Sydney-based merchant with an interesting range and some very sharp prices on selected specials. Delivers anywhere in Australia at reasonable rate, details HERE.

Winesquare (used to be Sixty Darling Street). Prices are for mixed 6-packs, and they ship anywhere in Australia but subscribers tell us that deliveries can take some time. Big range including imported wines. No shipping terms on website – call 02 9098 8600.

Winelistaustralia delivers $200 + orders for free, again from Melbourne. Owned by the di Pietro family, which has been in the wine business for decades.

Winesellersdirect is Melbourne-based and offers free shipping on dozens or more. Prices are very competitive.

Cloudwine is another Melbourne based merchant that specialises in interesting boutique and imported wines. They have a separate site for imports, the European Winestore. We have not dealt with them but subscribers say they’re both excellent.

Vintage Direct – Nicks is also based in Melbourne, and has been in the wine business for decades. Huge range of wines, including many direct imports, free delivery for orders over $200.

Wineonline – also in Melbourne, interesting range including boutique and imported wines, competitive prices, frequently offer 10% off. Shipping costs vary.

With most of these guys, the goods take just 2 – 3 days to get to east coast cities, and 5-7 business days to more remote areas. Why on earth would you go to a liquor store and schlepp cases of grog home?

You can even buy from Dan M’s online, where delivery will cost you $7 a case. But be warned: there’s no central warehouse, so wines can arrive in dribs and drabs when sourced from different stores (by Dan M).

Please Note: If you can point us to similar wine merchants – good range, competitive prices and excellent service – in Brisbane, Perth and Darwin, please drop us a line at info@bestwinesunder20.com.au

Kim

10 years ago Merlot got a bad rap in the film Sideways, where Miles said this to his friends: ‘If anyone orders Merlot, I’m leaving, I am NOT drinking any (expletive) Merlot!’ The movie made a strong case for avoiding Merlot even if all the dirt and derision that was heaped on the poor variety was never justified.

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March 2015 Update

Decanter featured a fascinating tasting last year, which served up some real surprises. That Margaret River won the bake-off is no surprise, since we’ve been saying for a while now that this is where the best Aussie Cabernets come from. In this tasting, Margaret River demolished Coonawarra scoring no fewer than 8 in the top 10 wines.

Perhaps it’s also not surprising that some of these wines are no longer or not yet available down under. Sadly, the winners aren’t anywhere near our $$ sweet spot this time. The two outstanding wines (both scoring 95+ points) were

• Leeuwin Estate Art Series Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 – $60 at AusCellarDoor
• Woodlands Cabernet Sauvignon “Alex” –  $115 at Cracka

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Not another 95 point Halliday $20 bargain

I read today’s mailer from Bert Werden at Winestar with interest as I do most Tuesday mornings. I can’t remember a Tuesday when it didn’t start with a 95 point Halliday sub-$20 bargain, but today the mailer was headed 97 Point Tyrrells & Barossa GSM Vs Rhone.

It didn’t begin the usual way either, but with Bert talking about an email from a subscriber who was ‘critical of our wine choices in The WineStar Journal citing that we “always went for high pointed wines”. Tongue in cheek, I asked in reply if he preferred we promoted the low rated, overpriced and those performing poorly at our own tasting.’

‘The gentleman clarified that, while he disagreed with high ratings on some wines by some critics, he disagreed with low ratings on others. Indeed I totally agree. For every wine that is overrated, there is another that is underrated but we rarely hear about those …’

That’s our job: finding great wines you rarely hear about

Bert adds a strange twist before he dives into his usual sales spiel: ‘I could count on one hand the number of times this decade that I have rated a wine higher than mainstream wine commentators.’ I don’t recall ever seeing his ratings in his weekly mailer, but I think he’s saying most of the scores from the other guys are inflated yet he’s happy to use them to flog his grog.

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It’s like the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes: you look into their eyes, and you realise it’s too late

Most of the smaller wineries out there are pretty easy to deal with. You call them up, speak to a friendly and sensible person, and a box of samples arrives a few days later. Some wineries have baulked at our name, saying they’d prefer not to be associated with a wine site that focuses on the lowest price. That leads to interesting conversations, like: ‘I’ll go and buy some samples and write about your wines anyway, and I’ll point to the source with the lowest price.’ Some of them still haven’t worked out that there’s nowhere to hide on the internet highway.

Right from our humble beginnings almost 2 years ago, I took a different approach from other wine review sites. We didn’t ask every wine company and distributor for samples, but only the ones who made wines that fit our quality/value criteria. It’s given us some fascinating insights into the way some of these outfits operate. Revenge is a dish best enjoyed cold, according to the Godfather, so here are our top trophies:

1. Trophy for the most obtuse wine company: Robert Oatley

It took Darren Jahn ages to respond to my phone messages and emails. When he finally did, he wrote that our website said we bought our own samples, so what did we want from him? I pointed out that we buy some samples and receive many others from selected wine companies. Could he please help with a few samples? He wrote me another obtuse email, again after much time had passed, so I asked him again, pretty directly: yes or no? He emailed back and said he’d send us some samples.

None have turned up to this day. I emailed Darren a few weeks later and asked what happened, and got no answer. I emailed him again but still no answer. I rang the company and asked if he had left. No he hadn’t, would I like to speak to him? Another message bank, another message that was never returned. I crossed Robert Oatley off my list. I don’t need to beg or grovel for samples, and there are lots of other wineries out there.

2. Trophy for the most opaque wine company: Treasury Wine Estates

I called head office in Melbourne and asked the lady at reception whom I should speak to about wine samples. She pointed me to a page on the TWE website and said I should record my request there, and the relevant people would get back to me. I did that and got an automated message that said: someone will be in touch with you real soon. I got the same automated message the next day, but no one ever got in touch. I mentioned the experience to a friend in the trade and asked him if he had a contact at TWE. He just burst out laughing, and he didn’t stop laughing for some time. I got the message.

3. Trophy for the meanest wine company out there: McWilliams

My initial requests for samples produced a box of wines under $10 from the Hanwood range and the  Evans & Tate Classics. Now McWilliams makes a whole lot of wines in our $5 – $25 price range, from Catching Thieves and the Evans & Tate Metricup range to Partisan wines and Mount Pleasant wines and Yarra Valley wines and more, so I asked young Danni to send me a few more samples.

Of late, she has complied with my request, one bottle at a time, so I wrote her  and the sales manager a note along these lines: I think I’m being generous with plenty of plugs for you guys on my website and in my weekly mailer, but you’re being pretty mean with samples … you make a lot of good wines between $10 and $25 street price, and I’d like to review more of them. What am I doing wrong? Is it something I said or wrote?

The answer was another single sample bottle and an email that ignored my question entirely. Clearly McWilliams set tight budgets for samples.

4. Trophy for the most recalcitrant wine merchant: Bert Werden at Winestar

I asked Bert to send us a few samples – of wines we couldn’t find anywhere else – since we give him a lot of links in our Mailer and Best Lists. He said No, even when I offered to buy samples at cost, as we do with a few smaller merchants. And he said No when I asked him to waive the unbroken dozen condition on some of his cheaper wines (so I could buy single bottle samples).

I asked him why he showed less flexibility than a government department, and he wrote back: ‘I was explaining why we are unable to waive the minimum purchase policy we have for low priced wines and in addition sell these to you at cost – let me know if I have misunderstood? I totally understand you have an arrangement with other merchants and it may preclude us from being mentioned on your site.’

As Rex Mossop would’ve said, I was flabberghasted. I never suggested that I’d stop giving Winestar plugs on BWU$20 if he didn’t do me favours. We don’t work that way, but I’m happy to give him this well-earned prize.

5. Trophy for the most ungrateful wine merchant out there: GLUG (David Farmer)

If you’ve got lots of miles on the clock as I do, you’ll remember Farmer Bros, the first national wine retail operation run by David and brother Richard out of Canberra. The dream run ended in the mid-nineties, and a few years later David popped up in the Barossa buying/blending and selling wine under his own labels. I’ve supported Farmer’s little GLUG operation, I’ve promoted his wines after buying some samples, I’ve shared coffee with him in the Barossa, I’ve sent him feedback from subscribers who rave about his wines, and I’ve asked him for some samples. I copied his staff and sent the email twice, but got no response from any of them. None. Zip. Zilch.

6. Trophy for the most unresponsive winery in Australia: Mountadam

Yes, I know. I keep raving about their wines, the Chardonnay most of all. I work harder for them than their PR agency. I’ve asked them for samples by email, I’ve left phone messages for them, but never heard a single peep out of them, digital or analogue. Mountadam is a mount that does not give up its secrets.

We pride ourselves on our independence at BWU$20. We have no affiliates and take no kickbacks, and it works the other way too: I’ll continue to recommend good value wines wherever they come from. Much better to hand out trophies than to hold a grudge.

Kim