5 Affordable Grill-Friendly Wines
Food & Wine
June 4, 2014
by Ray Isle
Grilling season is here the weather’s warm, the charcoal is available, and with any luck you’ve delegated some nearby child to scrub off all of last year’s grilled-on gunk with a handy wire brush. One hitch: according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, prices for beef and pork are up a good notch over last year.
Faced with this, I have the following advice: Buy affordable wine. More specifically, buy good affordable wine. And buy it in bulk, or at least by the case (most wine stores give a discount on case purchases, usually 10 to 15 percent). You won’t have to worry about running out the next time you have a picnic, and the extra dollars you save can be rerouted toward an additional sparerib or two.
2011 d’Arenberg The Stump Jump Red ($13) Chester Osborne at d’Arenberg has a genius for dreaming up esoteric wine names (The Cenosilicaphobic Cat, anyone?), but his rich, peppery, and more directly named Stump Jump Red, a blend of Grenache, Shiraz and Mourvedre, is as easy to like as it is to pronounce.