Vino would be keen-o

Lately, I've had a bit of a thing for drinking wine on a budget. Not that I'm that much of a tight ass, but there is a certain movement during this recession to find and imbibe some cheap wine.

When I was a dumbass college fucktard (rather than the overgrown childlike fucktard I am now) I went through a wine-snob phase neatly wedged between my first tequila phase and the so-called salad years known among the group as "pharmaceutical daze". We've talked before about the archaic wine laws that have handicapped appreciation of finer vintages locally...and in my college years we would eagerly buy bottles of anything flashy or shiny when on the road. It wasn't cheap.

Of course now I've had it all wrong...I should have enjoyed less costly wine in school and develop a taste for superior shit now that I can afford it. Feh.

Anyhoo, I've been swilling two red wines in particular. The first is the cheesy icon of Macaroni Grill, their red table wine...whored up as a Chianti.

The crayon is a nice touch...as is the venerated tumbler that the joint would give you. The entire experience reeked of novice drink. I can find this 1.5 of berry goodness at my local package store for less than nine American dollars(tax included). It's light and goes down in a hurry, provided you don't let Mackey butcher the cheap plastic 'cork' with a wine tool. Some cursory research has revealed that this wine is actually produced by the Navelle Vineyards, and that a boxed version under the name Almaden is available.

The second inexpensive wine I've been hooked on is the Hungarian product, Bull's Blood.

Bull's Blood will run you about 11-12 bucks for a standard 750ml bottle. Not exactly the volume I'm looking for(compared to the Chianti anyway) but it is a noticeably superior product. Every bottle of Bull's Blood I've ever consumed looks beat to hell, as if it was still being smuggled out of the Eastern Bloc circa 1968. Sure, that's complete bullshit but it gives a certain cachet to an otherwise pedestrian wine. Typically, you can find Bull's Blood coming in a couple or three dollars cheaper than a comparable red wine.

One bonus about both these brands is that I don't have that much of a hangover the next morning...while many wines have those hated sulfites, I'm happy to say that I can guzzle these without consequence. Even Mackey doesn't seem to notice, and he spends many a day recovering from a wine induced boozing, depicted thus:

My apologies to Bach for the telling illustration but you get the point.

So if you are looking for some cheap grape flavored drank, you could do worse than these two fuckers. Now, hand me more wine...I shall require it to finish.