It's nearly summer. What's in your fridge? High time you stocked up on affordable white wine, a stash of bottles that you can open when a friend stops by (with another friend) or someone at your party doesn't want to drink punch. You need bottles that can make your delivery Thai food dinner a little more special—without breaking the bank. Here are our favorites—the best bang for the buck in white wine under $15. More

They say all good things come in threes—The Three Musketeers, Three Blind Mice, Three-Minute Egg. I would give you a fourth example, but that just seems like poor judgment. Instead, I'll tell you about three brave grapes, that many years ago made the long and trying journey from a faraway land called "France" to an also faraway land called "South America". The names of these grapes are Carmenere, Tannat, and Malbec. For this post, we tried a whopping 22 bottles of Malbec to pick out our favorites to recommend. More

After tons of tasting and a number of exciting discoveries, today I'm pumped to present the first-ever edition of the Serious Eats Budget Wine Hall of Fame. Here are 15 awesome red wines for under 15 bucks, along with tips for how to make your own best-value wine discoveries. More

My love story with Zinfandel started at a small winery in Healdsburg, California called A. Rafanelli. Their Zins are ripe, slightly spicy, and just plain delicious. The only problem was that I lived in New York, and so I've had to put a lot of effort into this long distance relationship. My first trip there, I took back 2 bottles, the next 4, and before I knew it, I was sacrificing extra underwear in my suitcase to make space for all the wine. (Totally kidding...underwear is one of the best shock absorbers to prevent breakage during transit.) More

I remember drinking Merlot after I saw the movie Sideways, and I thought, "What's the big deal? Why was he so angry about Merlot? Despite my own affinities for the glass in hand, it was sad to realize such a blanket statement about a grape would stick around for a while. Fortunately for us amateurs, we get to make up our own minds about this grape variety. Here are a few tips on where it's made, how to serve it, and some tasty (and affordable) bottles to try out. More

In college, we used to have formals with all the exchange students from England who had come for the year. It was called a "formal" and half the people had British accents and we were all drinking wine, so it was clearly one of the more posh events on the social calendar. Needless to say there was a lot of wine consumed, and funding such efforts on a college budget usually meant one thing: Two Buck Chuck. I wish that back then we had splurged the extra few dollars and traded up to Yellow Tail. This week, we tasted all of Yellow Tail's red wine offerings and the rosé, a total of 11 bottles. Read on for the results. More

The bubblies are roughly aligned with the prices of the Yellow Tail varietal bottles, coming in at around $8 to 10, depending on where you buy. And each comes with a novel, resealable closure called a "Zork". Basically, you peel off a spiral of plastic (like some milk gallons have) and shimmy off the remaining closure. Less exciting without the pop one normally looks for in a sparkler, but it should keep the bubbles in the bottle for longer. But is the stuff beyond the Zork any good? More

Many of my first wine experiences were at wineries in Napa, leading me to believe that if a wine wasn't $50+, it probably wasn't good. Times have changed, though, and I'm always on the lookout for affordable gems—whether they're priced kindly because they're from lesser-known regions or less-common grapes. But what about the big brands? Are there good bottles to be found in the supermarket aisle? Over the next several weeks we'll be tasting our way through the entire Yellow Tail collection to see if there are a few...err...cubic zirconias in the rough. More

I was intrigued to see some of the lesser known grape varieties among the mix (although the options might change from year to year and shop to shop). We picked them all up and gave them the Serious Eats Amateur Wine Tasting treatment. And while a few of the wines were forgettable, we were pleasantly surprised by a couple of bottles that, for $6 each, we'd be happy to pick up again. More

We weren't wild Costco's house brand Champagne, but we were curious about the less expensive options in the Kirkland wine line, so we picked up the Kirkland Signature Napa Cabernet, which sells for $12.89, and their $8.99 Sonoma Chardonnay. Did these cheaper bottles fare better than the Champagne? More