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"GQ's resident sommelier, David Lynch, sifts through the case stacks to bring you cheap wines that overdeliver \n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nAlthough I moonlight as a handsomely compensated, perk-exploiting wine writer, my day job is that of a restaurant sommelier\u2014the best part of which is having access to a ridiculous amount of wine. And as any wine professional will tell you, there's a hell of a lot of good wine being made today. Winemaking has reached a technological baseline that makes it difficult to find an outright \"bad\" glass. It's more likely you'll get something indifferent\u2014technically sound, but kind of vanilla.\n\nOf course, we're not searching for the bad or indifferent. We're searching for the vinous holy grail of good and cheap. People are always asking me for lists of good, cheap wines to have around the house. This is a pain in the ass, to be perfectly frank, so I want to thank GQ for giving me the opportunity to keep a running tally here. From now on, all \"make me a list\" requests will be summarily directed to Forked &amp;amp; Corked.\n\nThis first underpriced gem comes to us from Tuscany and will run you around $18. It's from the Carmignano (car-min-yah-no) appellation west of Florence, where a handful of small wineries make delicious Sangiovese-based reds in the shadow of their more glamorous neighbors in Chianti Classico to the southeast.\n\nCarmignano is a historic production zone going back centuries, but it is relatively small (about 750 acres of vineyards in all) and dominated by just a few producers, none of whom have enjoyed much marketing traction. The key feature of the Carmignano appellation's production formula is that it was the first in Tuscany to allow for the use of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in combination with Sangiovese, the \"traditional\" red grape of Tuscany. Although Chianti later followed suit and allowed Cabernet into its blend, Carmignano was the trailblazer\u2014and since the zone sits at a fairly northerly latitude for the finicky, high-acid Sangiovese, the addition of some weighty, velvety, deep-colored Cabernet helps smooth the edges of what might otherwise be (and sometimes is) aggressively rustic juice.\n\nRustic is definitely not a word you'll use to describe the 2007 \"Montefortini\" Carmignano from Fattoria Ambra; this is a silky-smooth, medium-bodied red with the personality of a Tuscan nobleman: rugged, woodsy, yet refined. Think of a guy who goes hunting in tweeds and can field-dress and cook what he shoots. Whatever he bags, this Carmignano is the kind of wine he'd serve it with. It's a blend of 85 percent Sangiovese, 10 percent Cabernet, and 5 percent Canaiolo (an old-school Tuscan blending variety), and it's a knockout."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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