This week, my big decision was how much Bedrock wine to buy.  If you haven't heard of Bedrock, you should.  Bedrock's wine maker is Morgan Twain-Peterson, son of Joel Peterson who was and is the winemaker at Ravenswood.  Here's Morgan's bio on his website.

I'm particularly fond of Syrah, and that is one of the great value grapes in California.  You'll find my focus on value throughout this blog.

Morgan makes a variety of field blends, which I really enjoy.  They are actually very similar to Chateauneuf-du-Pape because CdPs are also blends of many different grapes.  However, Morgan's blends have a different composition, with an emphasis on Zinfandel, as opposed to CdP's emphasis on Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre.

The field blends are priced in the high $30s, and are still good values, but the great values are his base Syrah and Zinfandel, which sell to the mailing list for around $20, but are available at retail for around $25.  I highly recommend you try both the Syrah and the Zinfandel, and if you like them, go for one of his field blends or his single vineyard Zinfandels.

I know this sounds like an advertisement for Bedrock, but I'm a member of only around 5 wine mailing lists, and none of them are the high priced/well known wineries.  I don't buy Silver Oak, for example.