This past winter I lost my job and was unemployed for two months. While I certainly tightened my belt when it came to grocery shopping, I just couldn’t cut delicious wine out of my diet completely. I would spend half an hour staring blankly at the bizarre selection, paralyzed with fear. After making several random choices leaving me both horrified and surprisingly impressed, I compiled this guide to choosing the best cheap grocery store wines.

The first step to choosing a cheap grocery store wine is to un-learn everything you have ever known about wines in the first place. All your knowledge of the different grapes, regions, vineyards - out the freaking window! Otherwise you’ll drive yourself crazy reading grocery store wine labels, scanning desperately for anything remotely familiar to your personal faves. Looking for words like Cabernet Sauvignon, Bordeaux, or Yellow Label, only to find words like “Red,” “France,” a yellow label, but with a picture of a juggling monkey riding a unicycle on it.

So the next time you’re faced with shelf after shelf of wines ranging anywhere from $3.99 to $10.00, these tips will help you distinguish the mediocre from the horrible.

The Bottle

The standard size of a wine bottle is 750ml. Anything larger and you’re asking for trouble, and by trouble I mean black mouth. Less is often more, and more can give you a migraine if the less is crap. Try to avoid liter bottles (higher quality wines sometimes come in 1.5 L magnums, but it’s extremely rare to find these in the supermarket), and don’t even think about picking up a four liter box. As a general rule in life you should steer clear of any liquid served in a “bladder sack,” or as the Aussies call it, a “goon bag.”

Screw it!

Historically speaking, nothing says “cheap wine” like the cracking sound of a screw cap unscrewing. But when the 2,4,6-Trichloranisole (TCA) infection is ruining corks and spoiling millions of dollars worth of wine around the world, winemakers are turning towards them as an alternate closure. In an attempt to preserve some semblance of romance and sophistication, the term “Stelvin Closure” is preferred to “screw cap.” Wineries from Australia, Spain, South Africa, South America, Canada, the U.S. and France are all testing the use of screw caps, oops, sorry, Stelvin Closures (rolling eyes) and are discovering that they provide the perfect seal, eliminating oxidation, as well as the flat, moldy taste of wine which has been “corked.” Remember that cheap real estate creates cheap wine.

It’s a popularity contest

A good practical tip to choosing a semi-descent bottle is to check which ones are running low in stock. Overcome the obsessive compulsion to pick from the perfectly organized rows of Chateau Balzack, with all their pretty labels aligned with each other like a tight unit of German soldiers, and reach into the back of the shelf to grab from the last three scattered bottles of Red Beetle.

Dust

Although dust is a sign of aging, and aging is a sign of tasty wine, dust on grocery store wine is never a good sign. A dusty bottle is another indication that the wine is less popular amongst the supermarket savvies. Probably a good chance that the maker was using his bathtub in his log cabin somewhere in isolated Northern Ontario to make the wine,

The Label

As was mentioned before, the better the wine, the more specific the label information. If you know anything about wines you probably have your preferred regions, preferred vineyards, preferred grapes, and preferred pairings with specific foods. Grocery store labels tend to be vague. Here’s a typical example of a premium wine label’s information compared to the supermarket’s version.

Name: Saint-Emilion Grand Cru Classé
Country: France
Region: Bordeaux
Grape: Cabernet Franc
Vintage: 2005
Goes well with: Roasted lamb, spare ribs, salmon, mushrooms, and Reblochon cheese

Name: Chateau Walmart
Country: France
Color: Red
Vintage: Tuesday
Goes well with: Food

As you can see, there’s not a whole heck of a lot to work with here. The more information on the label the better. Also, avoid bottles with the words “house” or “table” on them. These wines should never enter your house or be on your table.

The Percentage

Try to pick a bottle in between the 11% and the 14% range. Anything less and you may as well be drinking Canadian beer, anything more and you may as well be drinking gasoline.

What’s in a name?

Okay, here’s where things get really tricky. Cheap wines have all sorts of crazy names which can throw you off course when trying to pick a winner. Don’t let these names fool you. Many will try to sound similar to popular wines but with lame twists, such as “Goats do Roam” as opposed to Côtes du Rhône, or “Leapfrogmilch” instead of “Liebfraumilch”

Animal names are very often used, but you must disassociate the animal from the wine. Just because it’s called “The Lazy Iguana” or “Monkey Trails” does not mean the wines tastes anything like these creatures. I can understand how marketers create emotional attachments to cell phone companies through the use of cute critters, but I can’t see how naming a wine “Red Beetle” is supposed to appeal to our taste buds.

Here’s a short list of cheap, strangely named wines with surprisingly decent flavors.

Any my personal favorite….

Write it down

Even the connoisseringest of the connoisseurs pick bad bottles of wine from time to time. The trick is to learn from your mistakes, and the best way to remember which wine dissolved your taste buds is to take notes. Write down all the wine’s info, how it tasted, as well as what you ate with it. Most book stores sell wine journals, but you can jot down your notes pretty much anywhere.

And there you have it. I hope this guide will save you a couple bucks and a couple of trips to the hospital to have your stomach pumped, and I hope you can now find the perfect wine to go with your Ramen Noodles or your Mac ‘N’ Cheese. Cheers in your chalet in the woods!