2008 Monte Oton Garnacha (Grenache) By Bodegas Borsao, Campo de Borja Spain

I am going nuts over this wine!!! Usually, not always, you have to go in the fifteen to twenty dollor range to get a grenache of this intensity and spiciness. This baby is loaded and it gets up and smacks you in the face. Very intense on the nose with a lot of raspberry notes. The wine hits your palate with vibrant dark raspberry mixed with black licorice and kirsh. The flavors are well balanced and continue to intensify through the mid-palate where you are in for some nice white pepper and spice notes. the finish is of good length and hard to shake from your memory. I'm telling you right now that this is killer, killer juice and at a redunculous price of only eight bucks. Are you kidding me! I searched this wine on the internet and saw a couple of sites offering it for $10.50.  From one of my favorite importers out of Spain Jorge Ordonez, he has got another winner in his portfolio and if you can get your hands on some, get as much as your budget can handle This will probably only age for about one to two years, but who cares... it won't last that long anyway.     94 points

2008 Goulart Clasico Malbec ... Mendoza, Argentina ... $9.99

Searching for the pick of the month can often be a painstaking process. The criteria for this honor is simply that it has to be a wine that is readily available and an excellent quality to price ratio (QPR) bottle. There are a lot of great wines out there, but sad to say many of them are over-priced and most of us just cannot afford to spring for a bottle unless it is a special occasion. Of course, there are expensive wines that fit the QPR status which I leave out on purpose just because I know that most of my readers want to see the real values that are available on the market. This being said, I try to search for wines that fall in the under twenty-five dollar category with most of my picks being under fifteen bucks. This past month I tasted quite a few good to great wines but none of them surpassed the excellent Goulart Clasico Malbec 2008. I have already posted tasting notes on this wine which many of you have already read. I will simply reiterate that this bottle of wine is outstanding. Vibrant dark fruit notes, excellent finish and nearly perfectly balance. I know it may be desirable for some if my pick were a wine that would match up well with a turkey dinner and for this I will write an article solely devoted to wines to match up with Thanksgiving fare. As for any wine that falls into the QPR status of the Goulart I have been unable to find any better. This is not to say I will not find one in the future, which I am sure I will. You gotta love the wine world for that! So if you are looking for a great wine to drink everyday... to impress your friends... for a power outage during a wind storm... to celebrate your football team's victory... to store away in your cellar for a couple of years, the Goulart Clasico Malbec 2008 for only ten bucks is the wine for you!   92 points