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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

The reason is simple: people drink it with the wrong foods

March 2015 update

I used to wonder why Aussie Riesling isn’t more popular, until I realised that it was the work of our wine and food writers. Yes, the same people who shake their heads and lament that Riesling isn’t more popular. The answer is dead simple: they match it up with the wrong foods.

I’m talking dry Aussie Rieslings here, typically 12 – 13%, fine-boned but flavoursome, packed with fruit but dry on the long fine acid finish. In this style, I reckon Australia makes among the best Rieslings in the world. NZ and Alsace are our main competitors, but their Rieslings tend to be dearer than ours. The better Rieslings from Germany and Austria come at a higher price again, but are made in a different style: more delicate, and off-dry.

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Young & Rashleigh distribute interesting wines, mostly to restaurants, and their trade tastings twice a year are a chance to get to know some not so well-known labels. One problem for us is that some of these wines can be very hard to find in retail outlets.

Astrolabe Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2014 – $21 at Dan M’s (still stocking 2013). Astrolabe is a serious maker of Kiwi savvies, and the basic Marlborough SB is a great expression, with tangy gooseberries the dominant flavour. The 2014 is very crisp, dry and clean finishing. Top notch savvy.

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ALDI made headlines recently for scoring gold medals with affordable wines – Six of Aldi’s cheap wines judged among best at Sydney International Wine Competition. The driver behind ALDI’s success is Jason Bowyer who has spent most of his life in the wine trade. At ALDI, he’s been fortunate enough to embark on  what is the company’s first venture into online retail anywhere in the world.

ALDI’s formula is to deliver quality and value at prices that often make the competition wince, and Jason is following that principle with wines that made a few of us shake our heads last night as we tasted some current and future stars. Jason travels the world to find wine makers he can establish long term relationships with, and he’s done a remarkable job in a very short time. Here are a few of the gems:

One Road Eden Valley & Padthaway Chardonnay 2014 – $7 at ALDI. The perfect drinking chardy, rich and round and full of flavour, not too dry so will go down a treat with everybody. 89 points. BUY.

Loire Valley Sauvignon Blanc 2013 $8 at ALDI. This has some genuine gooseberry character on the nose and a bit on the crisp palate, fades a little on the finish but no one’s going to grumble at this price. 88 points. BUY.

The Pond Pinot Grigio Chardonnay 2014 – $7 at ALDI. The website is on the last of the 2013 but Jason says the 2014 is now in stock in store. One quarter Chardonnay to give the Pinot Gris a bit more authority. It worked remarkably well – not much Pinot Gris character here but it’s a good drinking wine. 88 points. BUY.

Peter Mertes Gold Edition Mosel Riesling 2013 – $10 at ALDI. This wine made our Friday Fix a few weeks ago. Last night, it was  a perfect foil to the pork belly. The touch of sweetness was an asset, and flavour was surprising for a German Riesling.  90 Points. BUY.

A.C.Byrne & Co Le Premier Margaret River Chardonnay 2014 – $13 at ALDI. Jason brought along a Vasse Felix Filius Chardonnay 2014. The two wines showed similar finesse and youthful acid, but most of us preferred the ALDI article. It just needs a year to settle down and full out. 91 points. BUY.

Neve South Island Pinot Noir 2013 – $8 at ALDI. The current vintage is 2011 and is $7. The 2013 we tasted won’t arrive until April. It’s clean, it’s drinkable and it’s vaguely recognisable as a Pinot Noir. Quite an achievement at this price point. 87 points.

Cote Du Rhone Village 2012/2013 – $9 at ALDI. Made from Grenache, Shiraz and Mourvedre and a pleasant enough light red with pizza or pasta. Jason brought along a Guigal Cote-du-Rhone 2011 as a reference point, and it was a much more convincing rendition of the theme. One of the few wines that didn’t convince me.

Tudor Central Victorian Shiraz 2013 – $13 at ALDI. I’ve raved about this gem before as well, and it really is a class act coolish climate Shiraz, full-flavoured with finesse, and a real bargain. 92+ points. BUY

Blackstone Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 – $20 at ALDI. This is a terrific Cabernet but it’s a great big huge red. Not my kind of Margaret River Cabernet but big red lovers will think this is heaven. 93 points, just to show I can push my personal preferences aside. BUY if you like them big.

Qiwilia Maule Valley Merlot 2013 (Chile) – $7 (arrives in (April). This worth looking out for. Much more refined than our Merlots, an elegant wine with notes of green leaves and tobacco supporting the cool fruit.

Piedra Negra Mendoza Reserve Malbec 2012 (Argentina) – $9 (May arrival). Another winner, one of the best Malbecs I’ve tasted. Interesting and multi-layered, not too much fruit and plenty of herbs too. Can’t wait to try a sample once the wine arrives.

Corte Carista Prosecco DOC – $10. A real crowd pleaser, light and fluffy but rich as well without too much sweetness. Should arrive by June, but some is available in stores.

Kim

If none of these 10 points matters to you, this website isn’t for you

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1. Trust. You want independent advice you can rely on. We take no kickbacks and have no affiliates. We tell it straight.
2. You know what you want. We don’t sell wine; we just show you where to find the best wines and the best buys.
3. Quality. You’re tired of mass-produced fare, and looking for more exciting wines. We find interesting wines of surprising quality for as low as $10.
4. Value. You expect value for your money when you buy wine. We select the wines we recommend for their high quality to price ratio, i.e. for their exceptional value.
5. Convenience. We publish shortlists of the best wines under $10, $15 and $20, plus the best sparkling wines, big reds etc., and we update them every month so you can enjoy good wine instead of hunting around for deals.
6. Homework. You don’t buy important things without doing your homework. We help you with that through our weekly mailer of great deals, our no-nonsense reviews and our shortlists of best wines.
7. Confidence. When you buy wines to share with friends and family, you want to make sure they’re going to go down a treat with them. We love finding wines people love.
8. Shopping online. You have better things to do than schlepping around cartons of wine. We provide links to retailers and wineries with the best prices who deliver to your front door (and many do so for free if you buy a certain quantity).
9. Choice. If you live outside the major city centres, your wine choice is probably limited. We show you how to increase your choice, how to buy at city prices in the country, and how to get free delivery too.
10. Real people. You like dealing with real people you can talk to. I live in Sydney, and you can call me when you need to.

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Kim Brebach

The $20 Wine Guy