You won’t see much marketing for Crane Lake wines out there, but you will find them in many supermarkets.  Crane Lake is another label from cheap wine mogul Fred Franzia and his Bronco Wine Company.  These are the same folks behind the legendary Charles Shaw (aka Two Buck Chuck) that you’ll find in Trader Joe’s [...]

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Last month we reviewed the McWilliam’s Hanwood Estate Shiraz which was a good Shiraz—especially for the price.  And today we’re giving the Merlot from this brand a try.
Like the Shiraz, the grapes for this Merlot come from the New South Wales region in Australia, and more specifically the Riverina region within New South Wales.  Riverina [...]

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McWilliam’s Wines has a long heritage as a family-run winery in Australia since 1877.  They tout themselves as “Australia’s most awarded winery,” and they certainly have earned a number of awards over the years.
McWilliam’s has vineyards in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales—the latter being the area where the grapes for this Shiraz were [...]

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The St. Hallett winery resides in the Barossa region in Australia and focuses on producing wines from this region.  They are best known for their Shiraz, of which they release a few different lines.  The Faith Shiraz is their most affordable Shiraz—other than a Shiraz Grenache blend they offer.
The winery was established in 1944 and [...]

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Critters on wine labels is often something that will steer me in another direction because it is often indicative of not-so-good wine. I’m not the first person to bring this up, others wine aficionados also avoid the critter.  But many shoppers are attracted to wine with cute little animals on the label and some winemakers [...]

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I recently had the opportunity to try the full lineup of wines from a relatively new producer in South Eastern Australia named Friday Monkey.  These wines are fairly typical of what you would expect from Australian value wines.  They are very much “new world” wines in style in that they are simple and fruit-forward.
Occasionally I [...]

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G’day!  Today’s wine takes us down under to South Eastern Australia as we check out the 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon from Alice White.  We’re also getting down under $7 in price, which is always tricky.  Now and then I’ll find an incredible bottle of wine for about $5, but that doesn’t happen very often.
While my mission [...]

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