1. Home
  2. Tim Lemke

Tim Lemke

Tim is the founder and chief reviewer at Cheap Wine Ratings since 2007.

Rosa Regale Brachetto d’Acqui

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and many men will be looking for flowers or chocolates or something sweet for their significant other. But if you want to something a little different, something unique, yet still in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, this wine may be just what you need. Rosa Regale is a sparkling Brachetto d’Acqui, […]

Cosentino, Cigar Old Vine Zinfandel

Zinfandel is wine with an attitude. It’s a wine that evokes a passionate fan base for those who love it for being bold and brash. And it’s a wine that has its detractors too, also due to it being a bold and brash style of wine. Cigar Zin, from Cosentino Winery, is one of those […]

Bila-Haut, Cotes Du Roussillon Villages 2015

I always like to find consistent, reliably-good and affordable wines. That can be a hard thing. Sometimes you find a bargain wine you love and then the next year it’s not so good. Or you find that hidden gem, but so does everyone else and the price begins to creep up. This wine, Bila-Haut by Michel […]

Selbach Oster Zeltinger Himmelreich Riesling Kabinett

Wow, the name of this wine is a mouthful. Selbach Oster Zeltinger Himmelreich Riesling Kabinett. But a mouthful of this wine is a good thing. This is a style of riesling I often seek out because I think they go well with food pairings. It’s a “halbtrocken” which translates literally to “half dry” but I often […]

Frontera, After Midnight Red Wine

Chile is a great region for bargain-priced wines and hence I find myself reviewing a lot of wines from Chile. Some of them are great and some of them are meh! But what do you expect when you’re tasting the cheap stuff. And at $5.99 per bottle, this one is about as cheap as it […]

Peter Zemmer, Rolhüt, Pinot Noir

Many casual wine drinkers I know only think of Tuscany when they think of Italian wine, but the number of different wine regions  in Italy and the varying styles of wine you can get from those regions is mind blowing. While I have many “favorite” Italian wine regions, one of them that many Americans are […]

La Bastarda Pinot Grigio – Crisp and Tangy

My experience with pinot grigio has been hit and miss. And when it comes to pinot grigio under $10 per bottle it is more often a miss than a hit. I would also say that wines with kitschy branding are more often misses than hits. With all of that bias to influence me I approached this […]

Kruger-Rumpf, Rockin’ the Trocken Riesling

A couple weeks ago I wrote about Bex riesling from the Nahe region in Germany. It’s a region that produces phenomenal riesling and yet I’ve only written about those rieslings a handful of times in the 10 years I’ve been doing this. And here I am, two weeks later writing about another Nahe riesling. This one […]

Becker Landgraf, Gau-Odernheim Spätburgunder

I’ve often heard people say you can’t find good, low-cost pinot noir. I beg to differ. Most pinot noir lovers I know tend to fall into one of two camps: 1) California pinot noir fans, or 2) Burgundy pinot noir fans. Now there are going to be some stylistic differences between the two, which may […]

Bex Riesling – Tasty Nahe Riesling

It’s time for another riesling review. Why? Because riesling is awesome! When it comes to awesome riesling, I mostly gravitate toward German riesling. Most of the German riesling I come across come from the Mosel or Rheinghau regions, but if you love riesling there’s another region of Germany you should know: Nahe. Residing along the banks […]