HOUSTON – Ready or not, the season of family gatherings and holiday parties is upon us. Whether you're hosting a party and serving wine to a crowd or you need to buy some bottles for hostess gifts, you don't want to blow your whole budget. We put together a non-scientific blind taste test to reveal the best cheap wines you can buy for less than $10 -- one was even two bucks!
The wine choices come highly recommended and we served them to a self-proclaimed panel of experts.
From Rose to a red blend, Chardonnay and Malbec, we poured samples from each type of wine for the ladies who volunteered their time.
"I'm a regular and dedicated wine drinker," Wendy Richard said. "I come from a family of wine drinkers."
Our testers know what they like.
"I typically drink reds," Cheryl Pfennig said, "like a bold red, like a Cabernet."
But they had no idea what labels they were drinking. Some of the wines were recommended by wine aficionado and host of Good Taste TV Tanji Patton.
"There's plenty of wines $10 and under on the market," Patton said.
But we wanted to know how they taste. So we tested a few:
Trader Joe's Charles Shaw or "two-buck Chuck" is aptly named because a whole bottle is just $1.99.
Target's new line of Roots wine sells for $5.
Faisao vinho verde from Portugal is $6.98.
Trapiche Malbec, found at Kroger for 7.99.
As the testers sipped, we asked the ladies to keep score and rate the wines on a scale of one through five. We then tallied the results to find out which cheap wine came out on top.
"The last one you gave us is my favorite," Richard said.
"I gave the highest score to the (Trapiche) Malbec," Jami Gerngross said.
And the winner is...
3rd place
Two-buck Chuck from Trader Joe's
2nd place
Target's new $5 Roots Chardonnay tied the Vinho Verde
1st place
Trapiche Malbec with a nearly unanimous vote.
"I think they're all very... I would drink all four of them," Allison Perry said.
"I would literally buy all four of these," Richard also said.
Other $10 wines that Patton recommends are:
14 Hands- $8.99 at Target.
Cava Val Formosa BRUT- $6.98 at H-E-B.
Faisao Vinh Verde DOC Rose Wine- $6.98 at H-E-B.
Partager Sauvignon Blanc- $9.98 at H-E-B.
