As we’ve frequently said, there’s not much better than a great bottle of wine for $10. We’re talking about value of course, and not the absolute quality of a wine. You shouldn’t expect a $10 bottle to drink like a $100 bottle. That’s just not the way it works. Now we do sort of draw the line there, because going over $100, certainly well over $100, is generally not going to guarantee you a much better bottle. For those of us that can’t open the $50, $100 or higher bottle of wine regularly, the $10 value wine is a holy grail of sorts. Sometimes you find one that is superior, and just well beyond what you’d expect for the price. That’s when you buy by the case. Here is one of those wines.
Wine: 2019 Indaba Mosaic
Winery Location: Western Cape, South Africa
Tasted By: Neil & Cheri Date: March 2021
Tasting Notes: Indaba makes wine in the Western Cape winelands of South Africa. Grapes are selected from the best blocks. For this wine, that involves Cabernet Sauvignon (78%), Merlot (12%), Cabernet Franc (6%) and Petit Verdot (4%). All are independently vinified and aged. The amount of work that goes into this wine is equivalent to a classified growth Bordeaux. What you end up with is a juicy red blend, with gobs of berry fruit, including some raspberry and blueberry, along with some herbal notes, oak and caramel. It is full bodied, and rich throughout the mid-palate. It also finishes long. All in all, this is just a really pleasing bottle of red wine, no matter how you slice it.
The winemakers here are Bruwer Raats and Clayton Christians. Bruwer is none other than the force behind Raats Family Wines, another South African label from Stellenbosch, featuring higher end, outstanding wines that we’ve done a feature article on in the past (click here). Bruwer knows how to make great wine, and this is the low cost version, but still a great wine for the money.
Price Point – $10. We saw it on wine-searcher for as little as $6.29 per bottle with a case discount, which is truly insane.
Would We Buy It? – We did, we do and we will. This is a case buy all the way. What a value, and an easy addition to the Value List.
Wow, sometimes you find a gem and this is one of them. We’ve seen scores of 86 points for this from the major wine review pubs, but we think it deserves higher. The 2017 version was our #13 Top Wine for 2019 (you can see that list here). There aren’t many, if any, better choices for an everyday, low cost red wine.
A votre santé!
Leave a Reply