Wine for the "Uneducated Palate"

[patsfangr]

First, the caveat. I make no pretense about my level of understanding of the finer points of wine. I'm just an everyday Joe who couldn't begin to describe a wine in the eloquent, sophisticated terms of the connoisseurs. While I have, at certain occasions I've attended during my life, tasted some very expensive wines served by others, I have never paid more than $20 for a bottle of wine (champagne excluded) in my life. So please, since I've acknowledged that, please don't waste everybody's time by taking shots at me, and those who share my wine ignorance, in response to this post. If your gourmet tastes cause you to gag at the very mention of cheap wine, please have the courtesy to simply ignore this thread. Thank you.

Now on to the reason for this post. I do enjoy a glass or two of what is, for ME, a "drinkable" red wine now and then. Due to the fact that I am not able to distinguish the difference between one wine and another once I find something that is drinkable for me, I refuse to spend a lot of money on a bottle of wine. It would truly be a waste for me. So I seek the cheapest wine I can find that just plain tastes good to me.

Until recently, my favorite red wine here was Mont Claire Bin 5, their Shiraz; which sells for a whopping 299 baht per bottle. But I regularly try other red wines that cost 200-300 baht more than that to see If I can find one that I find so much better that it's worth changing. I found one a couple of weeks ago. It comes from, of all places, Thailand!

The wine is from the KBH (Knight Black Horse) Winery. It's their Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz blend called Wolf II. It sells for 329 per bottle, and I really like the taste of it. I also find that it doesn't leave a bitter aftertaste, which some red wines do for me. Foodland, where I usually buy my liquor, doesn't carry it. I found it tonight at Big C Extra; but it's probably also available at other sources that carry Thai wines as well.

So, has anybody tried this wine? If not, and if, like me, you are able to enjoy a cheap wine that tastes good, I recommend that you give this a try; then tell us what you think. Of course, that will have to wait a couple of days now, since you won't be able to buy alcohol until Thursday due to the Buddhist holidays.

Also, let's use this thread for suggestions of other cheap wines and champagnes you've discovered that we "peasants" can enjoy with our burgers, ribs, BBQ chicken, and Subway sandwiches! Let's set an arbitrary ceiling of 1000 baht per bottle for wines; 1500 for champagnes.

Again, please just keep this a simple discussion among us simple folks, and spare us the arrogant cliche put downs. Mods, your help would be appreciated in monitoring this.

[craigt3365]

It's great you are focusing more on taste as opposed to price. But what you are drinking is not wine.

http://wineandabout.com/business/fruit-appearing-shelves/

Bump your budget up to 600B or so, and you can find some ok wines. Friendship has some great deals from time to time.

Thailand is a terrible place to live if you like wine. Unless you are rich! LOL

[puukao]

I have never bought a bottle under $300 USD, and I have bought thousands.

Sometimes I fly to the vineyard.....

Please, it is your body, only put in the best!!!!

[yogi100]

I'm very partial to a drop of wine with some meals.

Friendship does a 2 litre bottle of red wine for just 320 baht, it used to 280 baht but its undoubted popularity has probably caused this price increase.

If white wine is more to your taste Family Mart and 7/11 sell Siam Sato at the very affordable price of 32 baht for 70ml bottle, it's very similar to Liebfraumilch.

[KittenKong]

Thailand is a terrible place to live if you like wine. Unless you are rich! LOL

Even if you are rich it's a terrible place. Wine does not appreciate the Thai climate at all, even in bottles. God alone knows what sort of conditions most bottles have to put up with on their journey from the cave to your glass.

[oxo1947]

Pat----buy the larger version of mont Claire , you can get up to 8 litters at Makro now, then if going out to BYO a BBQ....or just.dinning at friends house. etc. Buy a Carafe with a sealed top----I got one in Robinsons---looks good does the job well..................

[craigt3365]

Thailand is a terrible place to live if you like wine. Unless you are rich! LOL

Even if you are rich it's a terrible place. Wine does not appreciate the Thai climate at all, even in bottles. God alone knows what sort of conditions most bottles have to put up with on their journey from the cave to your glass.

Yes, one hour at normal temps in Thailand, will kill a bottle of wine. I've gotten several cooked bottles. Just storing the bottle in your cabinet will kill it in a short amount of time. Not much of a worry for the fruit wines though! LOL

I do believe Central's store guarantees some bottles are transported properly.

[Henryford]

Pat----buy the larger version of mont Claire , you can get up to 8 litters at Makro now, then if going out to BYO a BBQ....or just.dinning at friends house. etc. Buy a Carafe with a sealed top----I got one in Robinsons---looks good does the job well..................

Even better is the 10 litre box from Tescos. Why look anywhere else?

[craigt3365]

P.S. fruit wines made here in Thailand don't list all ingredients. You have no idea what's going in. For example, one adds eggs and milk during the fining process. These are 2 of the world's top 8 causes for allergic reactions.

[giddyup]

I have never bought a bottle under $300 USD, and I have bought thousands.

Sometimes I fly to the vineyard.....

Please, it is your body, only put in the best!!!!

My taste buds peak at $3.99.

[patsfangr]

*SIGH* I knew the wine snobs couldn't resist. The "fruit wine", which is "not a wine", called Knight Black Horse Wolf II contains "some unspecified amount" of "cabernet sauvignon shiraz grapes"; and has an alcohol content of 13%. Whatever it is, at 299 baht per bottle, I find it tasty. I'm sure that if I chose to drink several glasses of it (which I don't), I'd also find it as intoxicating as a "$300" bottle of "real wine".

[namatjira]

Nearly all wine sold in Thailand is for the uneducated palette......

[yogi100]

*SIGH* I knew the wine snobs couldn't resist. The "fruit wine", which is "not a wine", called Knight Black Horse Wolf II contains "some unspecified amount" of "cabernet sauvignon shiraz grapes"; and has an alcohol content of 13%. Whatever it is, at 299 baht per bottle, I find it tasty. I'm sure that if I chose to drink several glasses of it (which I don't), I'd also find it as intoxicating as a "$300" bottle of "real wine".

If you got them to have six sips out of a glass of 300 baht red wine and six out of one costing 4 times the price and asked them to say which is which they'd never get it right.

[DoctorB]

*SIGH* I knew the wine snobs couldn't resist. The "fruit wine", which is "not a wine", called Knight Black Horse Wolf II contains "some unspecified amount" of "cabernet sauvignon shiraz grapes"; and has an alcohol content of 13%. Whatever it is, at 299 baht per bottle, I find it tasty. I'm sure that if I chose to drink several glasses of it (which I don't), I'd also find it as intoxicating as a "$300" bottle of "real wine".

But, the OP tried to open a discussion about wine. You may be correct in what you say about Black Horse being tasty and intoxicating, but it is not wine; it's fortified fruit juice, as is Mont Claire. In effect it's a tax avoidance scheme. You could open a very interesting discussion about how to make a drink of fruit juice fortified with spirit but you couldn't call it a wine column.

Incidentally, I remember during the late 1990s there was a vogue here for so-called Scotch Whiskies at around 250 baht a bottle (I forget the brand names) but closer scutiny of the tiny print revealed them to be some sort of part processed spirit being dumped from the EU by one or more of the big drinks conglomerates and finished off here; in effect it was a whisky style drink; admittedly no worse that Sang Thip, Mekhong etc.

I would respectfully suggest that for a discussion about real wine then a basic starting point would be the Aussie labels. No real wine is cheap here because of import and excise duties but they are as good as you are going to get unless you start paying for the high priced European labels.

[humqdpf]

At the end of the day, whatever you find drinkable and whatever your body can put up with is what you can drink. And good for you if you can knock back cheep wine in Thailand with no ill effects.

But given the fact that Thailand charges high tax on foreign wine and the wine has had to travel huge distances from overseas, it is highly unlikely you will get a decent bottle of wine cheaply in the Kingdom. Most likely when you buy a cheap wine in Thailand, you will get some terrible plonk that is full of chemicals, some of which act as flavour enhancers - the more chemicals, the more likely you are going to get a hangover or some other nasty effect. Ironically, if you want to buy a decent bottle of wine that is not going to break the bank, head to Laos where they don't overdo the taxes and seem to have a tradition of drinking wine (maybe from the French times) and have a number of shops in Vientiane that stock good stuff.

Yes, in certain parts of the world where they grow grapes and make wine, you can get really cheap fantastic wine with no additives but this is not going to be the case in Thailand. But if your body can take the chemicals of a cheap (300 baht) wine in Thailand, good for you. For me, if I drink wine in Thailand, I always go high-end and therefore only drink it occasionally. Going high-end, even if you know your stuff, is not going to guarantee you a decent wine but it at least ups the probability of it being drinkable by my standards.

[Muhendis]

Nearly all wine sold in Thailand is for the uneducated palette......

Yup! I'll go along with that. I did notice that my local Makro had some Jacobs Creek at reasonable price.

[charliebadenhop]

There is a nice red Aussie wine that Tesco sells, called Laughing Bird.

Comes in a very large bottle and is only B399. I have had people over for dinner and they said "Wow, nice wine, what is it."

Give it a try.

[carlyai]

You've buggered up my day. ?

What's wrong with mountclair red celebrations?

How do you know it's full of chemicals and just a fruit juice with additives?

I need some proof to stop drinking my two glasses a day.

But, there again, that could explain why I feel sick all the time and am growing another arm. ?

[Denim]

When you're really down on your luck ...........

[MrBanks]

There is such a lot of cobblers talked about wine, it is, when all said and done only a drink. The only thing that matters is do YOU like the taste, don't listen to all the snobs, I find that half of them have not got a clue what they are talking about.

My current favourite is called Barefoot, it is from California, available in the Villa, I think that it is 699 baht a bottle. They have a Cabernet Sauvignon, a Merlot and I think a Shiraz, they also have a white wine but I didn't like that. To me the Cabernet and the Merlot are great, very smooth and a really nice taste.

As I say though my taste might not be the same as yours but surely this is part of the fun of drinking wine, so many different shades of taste, so many different countries producing nice wines.

Apart from Barefoot I think that there are some nice wines from Chile in the 600 baht region, last one I had was Los Vascos reserve, 795 in Foodland. An Aussie one that I enjoyed was Peter Lehman, Wild Card, though I cannot remember what I paid for it but it was certainly below 1,000. I bought that in Central.

Well cheers to you and keep on enjoying your wine trek!!!

[Bangkok Barry]

Nearly all wine sold in Thailand is for the uneducated palette......

That is a very ignorant claim to make. Villa at Phrom Phong in Bangkok have an enormous selection and I'm sure there are many decent tipples there. I'm also sure that many people don't know the selection is there. It's upstairs and they don't promote the area at all. I wouldn't go searching for classy wines in Tesco or Big C, but for supermarket wines that branch of Villa is an exception. And there are many wine shops around. In Bangkok there is, or used to be, one in Silom Center, and there's one near the Soi 23 exit of the Citibank cut-through from Asok.

[Bangkok Barry]

I'm like the OP. I can't tell a good wine from a mediocre one. It's a fortunate gift I suppose. I did a wine tasting with Jacobs Creek at a do in Melbourne. Was offered three wines to try and I picked the cheapest. Wonderful!

[Jingthing]

I mostly gave up on wine after I moved to Thailand.

I can't afford to be a wine snob or a wine anything here!

But the deceptive labeling on the fruit juice wine, which I fell for a few a times before I wised up, that it is so LOW.

[Berty100]

I mostly gave up on wine after I moved to Thailand.

I can't afford to be a wine snob or a wine anything here!

But the deceptive labeling on the fruit juice wine, which I fell for a few a times before I wised up, that it is so LOW.

I haven't purchased wine in the west for many years, but i doubt that these fruit wines offered by Australian and other foreign companies, are produced solely for Thailand.

I suspect that they are also sold with the same box and descriptions in most other countries in the world.

[Jingthing]

I mostly gave up on wine after I moved to Thailand.

I can't afford to be a wine snob or a wine anything here!

But the deceptive labeling on the fruit juice wine, which I fell for a few a times before I wised up, that it is so LOW.

I haven't purchased wine in the west for many years, but i doubt that these fruit wines offered by Australian and other foreign companies, are produced solely for Thailand.

I suspect that they are also sold with the same box and descriptions in most other countries in the world.

You don't get it. They're mixed in with wine section displays and the labels are very deceptive. They try to trick people into thinking they're buying wine. That would NOT happen in the west!

I have no problem if people want to drink that sugar juice, yes I realize Thai people usually are SUGAR addicts, but there should be LARGE labels on the bottles and the fruit juice should be only in a separate well marked section.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Jingthing

[Dionigi]

The finer points of wine is BS. If you like the taste and if you like the price buy it and drink it.

whether it comes from the north side of the vinyard and costs 300 dollars a bottle is immaterial if it tastes like piss to you.

Remember all those experts that drunk wine adulterated with banana skins and other rubbish until they found out. An educated palate does not exist, being able to say what the flavours in the wine are does not make it any better, even knowing what country it comes from does not make it taste any better and paying a fortune for it does not alter its taste.

[Berty100]

I mostly gave up on wine after I moved to Thailand.

I can't afford to be a wine snob or a wine anything here!

But the deceptive labeling on the fruit juice wine, which I fell for a few a times before I wised up, that it is so LOW.

I haven't purchased wine in the west for many years, but i doubt that these fruit wines offered by Australian and other foreign companies, are produced solely for Thailand.

I suspect that they are also sold with the same box and descriptions in most other countries in the world.

You don't get it. They're mixed in with wine and the labels are very deceptive. They try to trick people into thinking they're buying wine. That would NOT happen in the west!

I think YOU don't get it. Since the labels are printed in the foreign countries and are in English language, I doubt they are printed ONLY for Thailand, a country that is pretty small on the wine sales scale.

So I'm pretty confident that the same box and printing is on the shelves in western countries.

[Berty100]

I remember about 25 years that one of the BIGGEST wine producers in Europe was caught because he added anti freeze to cheap box wine, as it made the wine sweeter.

It wasn't printed on the box though.

[Jingthing]

I've never been a wine snob but I have a good amount of experience drinking different levels of wines. A lot of it is about the COMPLEXITY of the flavors. More complex wines are generally going to more expensive. A significant percentage of the population can't actually taste complexity well even IF they are well exposed to it (not about snobs, about their biology) and those people are definitely wasting their money spending a lot on wine. I've never even tasted a massively expensive wine but I think my palate is sensitive enough to appreciate like a 30 dollar bottle of decently rated wine (would that be 100 dollars in Thailand?) in the west as I've had many of those and I sure can taste the difference between that and California Barefoot. I suspect much more would be over my head and good thing too. Well, actually maybe not, but I'll never be rich enough to test that theory. Oh well! Basically if you are capable of appreciating the complexity, the more exposure you have to more sophisticated wines, the more likely you'll get "spoiled" and not be very happy with simpler wines.

But there really is too much snobbery in the wine world, obviously a lot of it is about pushing profits and wine as status instead of delicious food. Definitely drink what you like, even if others think it's plonk, but if you can afford it and taste it, more complex wines can sometimes be better than sex. Also even if you can afford and taste better stuff, sometimes a basic one note red "house wine" is exactly what you want with a casual pasta and red sauce meal, etc.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Jingthing

[topt]

To take the OPs request there will be no "champagne" at below 1500 baht but plenty of sparkling wine. Italian Prosecco for example is available at every supermarket, Makro etc and is usually very good value at around 700 to 850 baht relative to other white wines.

Between 700 and 1000 baht there should be quite a few palatable wines (bearing in mind 1000 baht used to be the equivalent of £20 before Brexit so one would hope so? but you still have to take into account craigs points about storage and transport. I have tried a couple of New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs including Brancott at 730baht (Big C, Foodland) and been underwhelmed.

Jacobs Creek has already been mentioned as a solid entry point and can be had for as low as 595baht on some of the types in Makro.

Thanks to the poster who mentioned Barefoot as I will give that a try.