Tim is the founder and chief reviewer at Cheap Wine Ratings since 2007. He has written for other publications, such as Mutineer Magazine and Man of the House, and he has judged wine competitions such as the Cincinnati International Wine Festival. In addition to ongoing tasting and studying of wine, Tim frequently travels to wine regions around the world to further develop his wine knowledge and experience.

I can’t help but wonder how meaningful the “Meritage” name is to wine consumers.  I mean, I don’t hear many people saying, “I’d like a glass of Meritage.”  I suspect a lot of consumers don’t even know what it is.  In essence, Meritage is a name for Bordeaux-style wine that’s made somewhere other than Bordeaux. [...]

Continue reading this post...

I’m a big fan of sangiovese, but most of the time if I’m drinking a sangiovese it’s one from Italy.  I just don’t come across a lot of domestic sangiovese, but I’m always curious about it when I do.  Perhaps I don’t come across much of it because the market is just too small for [...]

Continue reading this post...

The Jacob’s Creek wine brand started back in 1976 and was named after a creek in the Barossa Valley, on the banks of which the first commercial vineyard in the region was planted.  The grapes in this wine, however, don’t come from the Barossa Valley.  Rather, they come from the Coonawarra region, which is south [...]

Continue reading this post...

We’ve been reviewing a number of cabernet sauvignons lately, but one wine we’ve come across that we really like is not quite a cabernet sauvignon, but rather is a red blend that is dominant in cabernet sauvignon.  Anka is a blend of 57% cabernet sauvignon, 16% merlot, 15% cabernet franc, 7% carmemere, 4%  syrah, and 1 % [...]

Continue reading this post...

While packaging really doesn’t tell you much about the wine inside the bottle, it’s a critically important element for wine producers.  The truth is as consumers we often will buy the bottle that we think looks the best.  But what do the looks of a bottle really tell us?  Regardless of whether the label design [...]

Continue reading this post...

Continuing with the cabernet sauvignon theme, today we’re checking out another Chilean cabernet from the Colchagua Valley region in Chile. We’ve reviewed a few other Calcu wines, such as their malbec and their red blend, and we’ve found them to be generally decent.  They’ve not necessarily knocked our socks off, but they’re still good.  And [...]

Continue reading this post...

A lot of the wines that I review seem to have a similar story.  A family owns a vineyard for generations and recently renovated their winery, blah, blah, blah.  Well, the story behind Maquis has a slightly different twist.  Yes, it’s a vineyard that has been owned by the same family for over 100 years. [...]

Continue reading this post...