Five Wines Under $20 to Drink Right Now

Cava remains my pick for cheap, decent bubbles, mostly because the region sticks to Champagne-like winemaking, even for its basic wines. Castellroig, from the Penedès town of Subirats, always over-delivers. This mix of two red grapes, trepat and garnacha, which is fermented with indigenous yeast and rests on its lees for 15 months, is rare for cava. That unusual use of all reds makes it big and gutsy, with Fuji apple flavors and a chewy, strawberry fruit-leather side. Less subtle, maybe, but summer isn’t perforce about subtlety.

Grüner veltliner from Austria remains a mainstay of under-$20 drinkability (even if grüner’s fate has evolved beyond liter bottles), but Austria has an awful lot more to offer in the white-wine realm. This brings together two lesser-known things: the tradition of white field blends known as gemischter satz, usually found around Vienna but also the imposing-sounding Vulkanland Steiermark, or volcanic Styria, in the very southeastern corner of Austria. The soils—volcanic, obvi—bring a spice to whites, including this mix of riesling, müller-thurgau, pinot blanc and more. There’s blanched almond and wheatgrass and a fullness to the texture, like pinot grigio that cares.

I acknowledge that a set of people exist who seek nothing more than a good sauvignon blanc. I also acknowledge that recommending one—along with recommending any inexpensive Australian wine—comes with a lot of baggage. But the negociant-like Point Ormond outfit finesses it all, with this bottle from far southwest Australia. It’s more kaffir lime than the usual grassiness, and the pale color doesn’t quite give away how much energy and tang there is. A sign of hope for legit Oz drinkability.

I’ve been kinda harsh to Cahors in the past—not undeservedly so, since this area of southwest France, the ancestral home of malbec, has found every way possible to shoot itself in the foot. Thank goodness for people like Julien Ilbert, who understand that the region’s best chance is to reclaim its proper roots with malbec (which he even makes in a carbonic, Beaujolais-like version). This is his unadorned, basic Cahors, and as the name implies, it’s all about the fruit—that rugged, violet-edged plumminess well-grown malbec can offer.

Mélanie and Aymeric Hilaire established their young property in the outer ring of the Saumur, near the new appellation of Saumur Puy-Notre-Dame. This is where the dark volcanic soils of the Loire begin their shift to bright limestone, and the Mélaric wines stylistically sit in Saumur-ness and the Anjou wines to the west. It makes the best of its mix of relaxed grolleau fruit and tensile, spicy cabernet franc. Carafe it for a bit to let the layers reveal themselves.