Found One! Straightforward Wine at £5.

Budget Italian white along with a malbec punching above its price point.

Hooray! A £5 wine to laud today.

Let’s not get too carried away, though; I have had to kiss an awful lot of frogs to find it.

I still worry about the dubious quality of those that did not make “the cut”.

Will we reach a tipping point among the public where, for many people, “that is what wine tastes like”?

And then the accountants will encourage producers to make more of it – because it successfully constrains costs.

Finally, we reach the pre-CAMRA point where a generation of drinkers became inured to lower quality.

So much so, in those days, that anything not tasting like Red Barrel was dismissed as defective.

Probably just being a curmudgeonly old git but I do get despondent about it – and, to be brutally honest, those frogs do not taste very special anyway!

Meanwhile enjoy what has been unearthed here.

Adopting my traditional format, images and, where possible, hyperlinks accompany the assessments of the wines.

Starting with a quality malbec though.

2022 Irresistible Bio Bio Valley Malbec (£7.50 – instead of £8.50 until 13 May – at the Co-op and 14% abv):

Bio Bio is one of the newer members of Chile’s expanding band of impressive and quite distinctive wine regions.

Being further south (i.e. further from the equator) its climate is cooler than other parts of Chile and the proximity of the Pacific Ocean tends to make it wetter too.

When compared to many Argentinean versions, Bio Bio malbec often has softer fruit characteristics and the slower ripening times there keep acidity levels higher.

This one is attractively dark with a soft texture to support its raspberry, plum and bramble flavours.

Its predictably bright acidity is supplemented by well structured tannin, hints of mint, mocha and baking spices with everything rounded out by vanilla influences.