Last month I decided to do something different and to organise a blind tasting of wines that sells for less than 30 CHF.
The five wines we tasted have been freely picked by the participants to the event among the ones they prefer in this price range.
My goal was to test one of my long-held believes that between 20 and 30 CHF the best price-quality ratio is to be found.
Since all the wines were from different regions and made with different grapes, we also tried to guess the origin.
The five wines we ended up tasting were:
- Les Romaines 2017, a wine made with Gamay grapes in the Canton of Vaud in Switzerland by Les Freres Dutruy. It sells for 24 CHF.
- Grandeur 2018, a Barbera produced by Michele Mascarello in Piedmont under the denomination Barbera d’Alba Superiore. It sells for 28 CHF.
- Van Ardi Reserve 2014, a wine made in Armenia using the ancient grape Areni Noir by Van Ardi. I bought it in Yerevan for 14 USD.
- Château Haut-Bages Libéral 2013, a Bordeaux Cinquièmes Crus that sold En Primeur for 22.30 EUR.
- Septima Gran Reserva 2015, an Argentinian wine made by Raventós Cordoníu with a blend dominated by Malbec. It sells at Coop for 19.95 CHF, but I both it for 9.95 CHF while on a 50% sale.
Here how it went, according to the judgement of myself and the three friends that joined me for the experiment.
The ranking was very heterogeneous and depended a lot from the personal taste. There was neither a clear winner nor a clear loser. Although no wine really stands out, on average the wine that gave us the most pleasure was the Argentinian Septima Gran Reserva, followed by the Armenian Van Vardi.
After this tasting I‘m not able to confirm my assumption that between 20 and 30 CHF the best price-quality ratio is to be found. The two wines we preferred actually sells for less than 20 CHF.
Regarding the guess of the origin: we didn’t get any wine right…
After the tasting we enjoyed the wines with spaghetti carbonara. Although we finished as usual dinner with some cheese, this time we didn’t empty all the bottles. Considering that we started the evening with some sparkling wine, six bottles for four would have definitely been too much.
These wines were not as good as the ones we tasted in other occasions. What didn’t change at all was the very pleasant people that shared the tasting and enjoyed once again each other’s company till late at night.
Country: Armenia, Argentina, France, Italy, Switzerland
Region: Aragatsotn, Bordeaux, Mendoza, Piedmont, Vaud
Grapes: Areni Noir, Barbera, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, Gamay, Malbec, Merlot, Tannat
Type: Red
Vintage: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018
Producer: Château Haut-Bages Libéral, Les Freres Dutruy, Michele Mascarello, Raventós Cordoníu, Van Ardi,
Price range: Medium (15-30 US$)
Pascal’s Enjoyment Index: 3/5