Cabernet Sauvignon

1999 Forest Ville Cabernet Sauvignon ($6). This almost insanely priced California cabernet is downright good. It's not something connoisseurs will drool over, but for six bucks it offers ample black-cherry and black-currant fruit. Its straightforward, full-bodied flavors are quite satisfying. This would make an excellent restaurant by-the-glass wine and is worth buying by the case for use as an ideal hamburger and pizza companion.

This red wine made from Bordeaux grapes — cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc — along with syrah has turned out to be a harmonious and complex blend at a very appealing price. It's a smooth, subtle and layered wine with flavors of black cherry, smoked meat, herbs and earth. It's at a good state of maturity now but will only get better over the next 5 to 10 years. From: Toscana, Italy Price: $17 Serve with: Pasta, beef, lamb

1992 Portal del Alto Cabernet SauvignonGran Reserva, Maipo Valley, Chile ($6)Chilean cabernets often disappoint, but not this new arrival. It offers pure flavors of black cherry and black currant, with little of the bell pepper that often mars Chilean reds. This robust wine has plenty of length and grip and will likely age well for such an inexpensive wine. Looking for a good "house red"? Here's a good candidate.

This lush, smooth blend the five traditional Bordeaux grapes — with cabernet sauvignon in the starring role and merlot as its sidekick — plays above its pay grade. Very accessible for a young red wine, it offers ample black cherry, blackberry and raspberry fruit. It has all the elegance and class of many of its pricey Napa Valley peers. From: Central Coast Price: $18 Serve with: Fine cuts of lamb, beef

Remarkably, this stylish wine with delicious black cherry an cedar flavors is the third-best cabernet sauvignon made by Patrick Campbell's Laurel Glen Winery. It's a medium-bodied cabernet with a soft texture, but plenty of structure -- ready to drink now, but capable of aging three to five years. If you can't hTC afford Laurel Glen or Counterpoint, the second label, Terra Rosa is a classy alternative.

This is no classic. It's just a reliable, available, easy-to-enjoy red wine at a good price. The $6 estimate is actually the upper range. It's soft, fruity and ready to drink. There's no complexity, but it's clearly a cabernet. A solid everyday hamburger wine. Enjoy it for what it is.

In Wednesday's A La Carte section, an incorrect wine label was pictured. The correct label for the 1993 Napa Ridge North Coast Cabernet Sauvignon, Oak Barrel, is shown above.The Sun regrets the errors.Napa Ridge has consistently been a reliable source of sound, inexpensive wines, but this cabernet goes far beyond being just a good budget wine. This is serious cabernet, with concentrated blackberry fruit and considerable compexity in its nuances of chocolate and herbs. Only an early drop-off in the finish leaves it short of elite quality.

Many things that are famous are just well-hyped, but that is not the case with Napa Valley cabernet. Napa is the real deal for cabernet. I'm not sure how Rutherford manages to sell a Napa cabernet at this reasonable price, but the smooth texture and intense, pure black-cherry and black-currant flavors show the winery wasn't cutting corners. Serve with beef, lamb. Michael Dresser

This moderately priced, medium-bodied red wine from Washington state is a very appealing, widely available wine with a supple feel and fine varietal character. It delivers pure and penetrating black-cherry flavor tempered by sweet American oak. Ready to drink young, it will go well with a wide variety of foods from poultry to red meat. Serve with --lamb or beef

Baseball fans have Cooperstown. Civil War buffs have Gettysburg. Elvis fans have Graceland. And devotees of American wine have the Napa Valley. There are many places in the United States where great wine grapes are grown, but none has achieved the level of international recognition of this narrow, 20-mile-long valley northeast of San Francisco. Teetotalers in Salt Lake City associate Napa with wine. Vignerons from Bordeaux to Bourgogne recognize le vin de Napa. Tourists flock to the valley, hopping from winery to winery to sample tastes of Napa's bounty.

This boxed wine, made in California for a Baltimore-based startup company and distributed in the mid-Atlantic region, fills a useful niche. In quality terms, it's a cut above most boxed red wines, though the price is correspondingly higher. And the 1.5-liter box — equivalent to two standard bottles at $11 each — fills a useful niche that that's been left vacant by most competitors. The company also makes a merlot and a chardonnay, each of which is equally worthy of a recommendation.

It's widely available, it's moderately priced, and it doesn't require a corkscrew. What more do you need in a red wine? It doesn't hurt that this medium-bodied blend of shiraz (75 percent) and cabernet sauvignon (25 percent) shows plenty of earthy character, with vibrant flavors of blackberry and chocolate. It's not the most complex red on the market, but it's thoroughly enjoyable and ready to drink. A wine for the masses, not the critics. From: Australia Price: $13 Serve with: Grilled meats, pasta

From: California Price: $14 Serve with: Pasta dishes, grilled meat This lush, ripe blend of zinfandel, syrah, cabernet sauvignon and merlot is all about decadent pleasure. It's one of those smooth red wines that is so fruity it gives the impression of sweetness without being sweet. There's a lot of berry action - black, blue and wild - and hints of chocolate and coffee. There's no point in sitting on it. Drink now.  

Quick. Tonight. Got plans? Do this. Pazo is hosting a "Pop-Up" wine tasting with Tony Foreman and sommelier Lindsay Willey. Space is limited for this event, which will include wine tastings and light tapas. The cost is $20. That includes complementary valet parking (CVP). The Wordly Wine Tour wine-up includes: Champagne Laurent Perrier Brut 2002 Reds Monthelie, Thierry et Pascale Matrot 2009 Bierzo, Godelia 2008 Malbec, Siesta en el Tahuantinsuyu 2007 Barbaresco, Moccagatta “Bric Balin” 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon, Woodhouse “Daríghe” 2002  

Everyone has a few favorite food items that galvanize them when they peruse a menu. Citrus, mushrooms, spice, chocolate, tomato …whatever it is, it tantalizes the emotions and helps in the decision-making. Those personal food preferences also reveal a lot about personal wine preferences. Your breakfast beverage of choice is very telling. As a general rule, those who drink orange juice by preference love the fruit-forward character of New World wines. Those who prefer the high acidity of pink grapefruit juice revel in the structure and complexity of Old World wines.