The Best Red Wines Under €20

Hello,

There is a tip sommeliers pass around: the little wine from the great houses. At Sottimano it is the Dolcetto, at Heinrich the Blaufränkisch, at Château de Coulaine the Chinon, which simply bears the estate’s name. It comes from the same cellar as the wines the house is famous for, made with the same care, and it costs a fraction of the price, because it is made from a different grape or from younger vines, or comes out of cask sooner. That is why good wine lists offer it by the glass.

I have picked six of them for this letter: the three I have just named, plus Tentenublo’s village wine from Rioja Alavesa, Jiménez-Landi’s Corralón from Méntrida and Loimer’s Pinot Noir from Langenlois. They cost between €14 and €17.50, while the great wines of the same houses cost two to five times as much.

There is also a twelve-bottle case: the same six plus six more, all under twenty euros, from Meinklang, the Demeter farm by Lake Neusiedl, to Clemens Busch’s son Florian in the Languedoc.

Case 1 · Six under twenty

Burgenland · Piedmont · Loire · Rioja · Gredos · Kamptal

Case 2 · Twelve under twenty

The six above · Meinklang · Valfaccenda · Corzano · Flo Busch · Callejo · Emilio Valerio

One click adds all six, or all twelve, to your basket.
You can remove or swap individual bottles there.

Heinrich, Gols

Gernot and Heike Heinrich are based in Gols, on the northern shore of Lake Neusiedl, and have farmed biodynamically since 2006, with Demeter certification. In the same year they bought their first vineyard over on the Leithagebirge, on the Alter Berg, two thirds of which was lying fallow at the time. Seven years later their Blaufränkisch from there came top at the Falstaff Red Wine Gala, and today it costs €56. Jamie Goode, who has followed the estate’s wines for years, calls the Heinrichs one of Austria’s most singular producers. Out of the dark comes from the same Leithagebirge slopes as the Alter Berg, and if you want to know what this house has in mind for Blaufränkisch, this is the place to start.

Sottimano, Neive

In the late sixties, fresh from his oenology studies, Rino Sottimano bought a farmhouse in Cottà with a small vineyard attached. Today his children Andrea, Elena and Claudia run the estate, with parcels in five Barbaresco crus, and Antonio Galloni writes that the family has firmly established itself among Barbaresco’s top growers. Our prices for the crus run from €82 to €99. The Dolcetto was there from the start: Bric del Salto is the small vineyard the Sottimanos bought in the seventies, and its name is still on the label today, even though the grapes now come from three sites, Cottà, Basarin and San Cristoforo, and so partly from the same hills as the Barbaresco.

Château de Coulaine, Chinon

Château de Coulaine lies on the peninsula between the Loire and the Vienne, a few kilometres west of Chinon, and there has been wine here since the fourteenth century. Rabelais, who came from these parts, mentions the estate in Gargantua. When Étienne and Pascale de Bonnaventure took over in 1988, only just over a hectare of vineyard was left, and they rebuilt the estate, which in 1997 became the first in the appellation to be certified organic. Today their son Jean makes the wine. His Diablesse, from a single parcel of old vines, was given 93 points by The Wine Advocate, and the Chinon simply called Château de Coulaine is the wine from the younger vines around the château.

Tentenublo, Viñaspre

Roberto Oliván’s family in Viñaspre sold their grapes for decades, until in 2010 the price fell to fifty cents a kilo. The following year he took over his mother’s old winery in Lanciego and produced 3,500 bottles under the name of the bell once used in Rioja Alavesa to drive away hail clouds: Tentenublo. Four years later Tim Atkin named him Young Winemaker of the Year in his Rioja report, and his single-vineyard wines, from parcels of barely a hectare with vines over a hundred years old, now cost between €32 and €50. V.L.A.V. is his village wine, from several parcels around Viñaspre, and of all six in this case it is the one whose price took me longest to believe.

Jiménez-Landi, Méntrida

Méntrida lies south-west of Madrid, in the province of Toledo, and for a long time it was not an address anyone went looking for. In 2004 the cousins José and Daniel Jiménez-Landi took over their family’s bodega, a manor house whose oldest part dates from the sixteenth century, with a cave full of clay jars. They began making Garnacha that was pale and cool, fermented with its stems and aged in large casks, before the Sierra de Gredos became known for it. Daniel left a few years later and made his name with Comando G, whose Rumbo al Norte 2021 was given a hundred points by The Wine Advocate. José stayed and still runs the bodega. His Ataulfos, a single parcel of bush vines at 830 metres, most recently scored 94 points and costs €71.50. El Corralón is the wine the bodega makes in the largest quantity, from its parcels on the plain near Méntrida.

Loimer, Langenlois

Fred Loimer took over his father’s estate in Langenlois in 1998 and shortly afterwards set a black cube on top of the hundred-and-fifty-year-old loess cellar. In 2002 he was Falstaff’s Winemaker of the Year, in 2006 he converted to biodynamics, and in 2007 he founded the respekt-BIODYN association with a few colleagues. Since 2004 he has also farmed the old Schellmann estate in Gumpoldskirchen, south of Vienna, where the soil is limestone, which suits Pinot Noir. That is where Anning, his great Pinot, comes from, at €45.50. The Pinot Noir with no site name on the label draws on grapes from Gumpoldskirchen and Langenlois, and of the wines in this case it is the one I am most likely to buy again.

Six more, for the twelve-bottle case

The twelve-bottle case holds the six above plus these six. I will introduce them more briefly, as the letter is long enough already, and three of them, Meinklang, Flo Busch and Callejo, could just as well have been among the first six.

What to open first?

When the case arrives, start with the Dolcetto and Heinrich’s Blaufränkisch, both at fifteen degrees, in other words after half an hour in the fridge. The Chinon and the Pinot Noir are for the second evening. The V.L.A.V. needs food. Save the Corralón for an evening when you have time.

Six under twenty:
1× Heinrich Out of the dark 2023 → sour cherry, gooseberry, sage
1× Sottimano Dolcetto 2025 → amarena cherry, juniper, a bitter bite
1× Coulaine Chinon 2023 → raspberry, violet, pepper
1× Tentenublo V.L.A.V. 2022 → damson, black tea, trodden by foot
1× Jiménez-Landi El Corralón 2020 → raspberry, orange peel, porcini
1× Loimer Pinot Noir 2023 → cranberry, cherry, lavender

The twelve-bottle case adds Meinklang’s Blaufränkisch and the Vindabeive, the two light ones, then the Corzanello and the Flores de Callejo, and, for evenings with meat, the Heureux qui comme and the Emilio Valerio.

Six under twenty 6 wines · approx. €95 →

Twelve under twenty 12 wines · approx. €176 →

One click adds all six, or all twelve, to your basket. You can remove or swap individual bottles there.

Warm regards from Berlin,

David and the
Living Wines team

P.S. If you want to see where all this leads at Sottimano: the Barbaresco “Basarin” 2023 comes from one of the three sites where the Dolcetto also grows, three hectares facing south-west on white limestone, with vines between forty-five and seventy years old. It has been through a long maceration, almost two years in wood and a year in bottle, and Vinous and The Wine Advocate both gave it 94 points. I would not open it before 2030. Approx. €82.

Six under twenty 6 wines · approx. €95 →

Twelve under twenty 12 wines · approx. €176 →