Bill's bio

I'm a 60-year-old resident of Sonoma County, California.  My interest in wine started when I was a graduate student at UC Berkeley in the early 1970's.  My advisor had a 600-bottle wine cellar and was very generous in holding wine tastings and imparting the fundamentals of collecting wine.  His interest was primarily Napa Valley and California wines.

Although I like white and rose wines, my favorites have always been red wines.  One of the things I learned early on was that good wine and high prices were not always correlated.  For example, for any type of wine, if you select the four best wines you can find at four different price points (e.g., four Cabernet Sauvignons at $12, $25, $50 and $75) and ask 10 reasonably astute winedrinkers to taste them blindly, you can usually expect to get some interesting results.

Personal tastes vary significantly, of course.  But many times the lower-priced wines will compare favorably with the higher-priced wines.  Sometimes I even prefer one of the lower-priced wines, although usually one of the higher-priced wines edges it out (but usually not by a huge margin).

As demonstrated by this blog, my quest is to find reasonably-priced wines that are very good or even excellent.  I tend to focus on California and France (mainly Bordeaux and the Rhone Valley).  Living in Sonoma County, I visit about 30-40 wineries each year in Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino Counties.  I also usually attend a couple wine festivals every year where it is possible to taste many wines.

California wine is very good.  Most times, it is also fairly expensive.  Red wines under $25 are in the minority, but some good value-priced wines can be found.  Although I've explored wines from Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Chile, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand, I definitely have limited knowledge of wines from those areas.

IMO the best values are to be found in the very best vintages for specific types of wine -- like 2005 for Bordeaux and 2007 for the Rhone Valley.  Searching for quality among the lower-priced offerings in the best vintages can yield some true gems.