20 Wines Under $20: Finding Bargains Amid Inflation

Inflation may have eased in recent months, but the shelves of retail wine shops show no evidence of such economic calming.

Wines that used to fit comfortably in my 20 under $20 series have shot upward in price like a teenager growing out of last year’s favorite jeans. Or maybe the selection I chose in early January had not fully recovered from holiday bingeing, when people buy far more wine than they do at any other time.

Either way, this list for winter 2023 looks different to me. Staples like cru Beaujolais? I could not find good bottles under $20. Bottles from Germany? Nope. Italy? I found plenty of French and Italian wines, but not from popular, higher-status regions.

The hardest hit country in my selection was the United States, with only one American wine, a chambourcin from Virginia. It was a delicious wine, but no American cabernet sauvignons, pinot noirs, chardonnays or rieslings made the list.

My choices were limited because I wanted to branch out from American producers whom I’ve cited repeatedly. These producers have been a great source of inexpensive wines year after year, names like Broadside and Foxglove from Paso Robles, The Whole Shebang and Tendu, which sell under the California appellation, Montinore Estate in Oregon, and any number of bottles from the Finger Lakes. We’ll revisit them another time.

I’ve long believed that the best values in wine can be found in the $15 to $25 range. Myriad wines sell for less than $15, including many American bottles that younger Americans are apparently no longer buying, according to a recent report on the American wine industry from Silicon Valley Bank in Santa Clara, Calif. But to sell bottles for under $15, producers, especially those in the United States, where labor and land costs are often higher, must compromise.

They scale up, industrializing both the farming and the winemaking. The wines they make are sound, and might even be delicious, but something is often lost, a sense of place, soulfulness or whatever you want to call it.

A little bit more money, though, say $15 to $20, can buy those qualities in wines from lesser-known places, made often from little-known grapes. It takes a spirit of adventure to try, say, a blend of grasevina and grüner veltliner from Austria, a país from Chile or a chambourcin from Virginia. Some people are not interested, which is fine, but the rewards are many.

For more than a decade I’ve been offering selections of 20 bottles under $20. Some people have suggested that I raise the price cap to reflect the effect of inflation. But I resist that because plenty of these less-familiar values are still in a $15 to $20 sweet spot.

Because these wines are not mass-produced, they will not be available everywhere. That can often prove frustrating to people who want a particular bottle immediately.

I get that, but I think that it’s simply good to know these wines exist in the world, even if they are not right at hand. You might see some of them on a restaurant wine list next month, or in the nearest good wine shop next vintage. You never know.

If you have a good wine shop, ask the proprietor for suggestions if a particular bottle is not available. Often, you might find something akin to it.

This winter list is weighted toward red, though I think whites and sparklers will always have a place no matter what the season. Here are the 20 bottles, beginning with the least expensive and rising up to $20.

Credit…Photo Illustration by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Maris Pays d’Oc Rouge I.G.P. 2020, 14 percent, $14.99

Pays d’Oc is a large region in southern France for wines that don’t conform to the stricter rules of the Languedoc or Roussillon appellations, which makes sense for Maris, something of a maverick producer that farms organically with careful attention to biodiversity and the environment. This bottle (70 percent merlot, 30 percent syrah) is juicy, focused, refreshing and an excellent value. (Vintners Alliance, New Rochelle, N.Y.)