The A-list (+ one!)

I love wine (DUH) and you know I love a good deal (also DUH). Today I offer three wines that start with the letter "A" (oh great, now I hear the voice of Grover in my head...). In an earlier blog posting I talked about finding a great deal on a yummy wine called Aconga. The blend is 80% Malbec and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon and the 2009 evidently scored 85 points from Wine Enthusiast magazine. The best thing? With your Kroger Plus card, the price is only $3.99 (though it's only $3.88 at the Mcfarland/Hwy.9 Kroger in Alpharetta)! One thing to note, however, there seems to be a limited supply of this wine so you better stock up quickly!

My second A-wine is actually called A by Acacia. Like many other producers, Acacia has several different product lines. Their single-vineyard products are their finest (and most expensive), but you can find the more reasonably priced "A" line in stores and restaurants. Their Pinot is great (around $20) but I love the A by Acacia "Red Blend" (much lower-priced, at around $10 to 12) as it is a Syrah based wine. You won't find it everywhere but it is worth looking for (or trying at restaurants).

My 3rd (and favorite of the 3!) A-list wine is called Apothic Red. I also blogged about this one previously (as did Gil Kulers with the AJC) and I can't get enough of it! Excellent fruit, but not a full-on, in-your-face 'fruit bomb'. Apothic LOVES spicy foods and is widely available ($8.73 at Sam's, around $8.50 at Tower and even Kroger had it for under $9 a few weeks ago!). Syrah and Zin? YUM!


Bonus wine--a week or two ago I was in the Alpharetta Costco, wandering through the wine aisle. A nice blend caught my eye--a bordeaux blend with 34% Cabernet Sauvignon, 33% Cabernet Franc and the final 33% Merlot. As the price was $15, I thought what the heck, I'll buy it (really, you had me at 33% cab franc). You may have read this old blog post about friends in the wine biz (and my 'heroes'), so you know how happy I was when I saw the names on the back of the bottle--Highway 12 Vineyards was co-founded by the guy who gave me my first job in the wine industry, Paul Giusto. Check out their website and try the wine--the winemaker is Michael Sebastiani (bet you've heard that last name before?) who I also worked with at Viansa ages ago. Kudos to them; the wine was awesome as well! Cheers!