If you only have $6...

[Boozy]

...and you would like to bring a gift for the host or hostess of a party you are attending, might I suggest that you spend that $6 on a small bouquet of flowers or box of chocolates?

Because any wine we have in that price range is not an appropriate gift.

Just ONCE I'd like to be able to send these misguided souls elsewhere. Its against company policy of course. We have to take their $6, give them a twist-top bottle of vinegary wine, and send them off to embarrass themselves.

Just doesn't seem right.

[Sofar]

Six dollars will get you wine in a bottle? With a label and everything? I thought six dollars got you wine in no more than a waxed cardboard box or perhaps a vinyl waterskin.

[Becks]

Just how big a bottle of wine does $6 get a person? A half liter? 20 oz?

[Melxb]

Well, at my local supermarket you can get a bottle of wine for about $3USD. It won't be the best bottle of wine, but it won't be awful. And it'll have an actual cork. I've been known to get a pretty decent Pinot Grigio or Chardonnay for about $6. Not necessarily unheard of.

But as a hostess gift...hoo-boy....don't know about that.

[Shengirl]

Manischewitz is like $4 for the smaller-sized bottle, though it's awful sweet...and I think I did have some decent white merlot for $6 once. But then, I actually seem to prefer cheap wine over nice wine. Not that my wallet will ever compain.

[Boozy]

Our wine store sells Ontario wines exclusively. They tend to be more expensive than some imports because good soil on the Peninsula comes at a premium (unlike say the huge wine regions of France and Italy).

Our premium wines start at about $15, and can go as high as $75 for the icewines. But we have several surprisingly good wines priced at about $10. It's really worth the extra $4.

[Mark Healey]

Just ONCE I'd like to be able to send these misguided souls elsewhere. Its against company policy of course. We have to take their $6, give them a twist-top bottle of vinegary wine, and send them off to embarrass themselves.

My dad's uncle (I don' t know what that makes him to me.) was a wine snob, He used to rant about how it sucked that you could not get good wine in a box with a plastic bladder and a valve. According to him that was the best way to keep it since no air would be pulled into the bladder.

He also said that screw on caps are better but I don't remember his reasons.

[Boozy]

Boxed wines have vacuum sealed bags inside which prevent oxidization for months after they've been tapped. Screw-on caps, same sort of thing.

Now that Portugal is running out of cork wood and the shipping costs for glass bottles is so high, they've started putting some good wines into boxes, tetras, and screw-capped bottles.

Another bonus - People with bad arthritis can't pour from a glass bottle let alone operate a corkscrew. Boxed wine with the valve is great for them.

[earl colby pottinger]

$6?

As has been pointed out it is possible to find drinkable wines in the $6 range.

But this is for a gift! What does it say that you are willing to only spend $6 on your host.

A) You are cheap, cheap, cheap!

B) You don't care much about your host.

C) You are poor.

Generally, I doubt C is the real answer in 95%+ of the cases.

[Rapscallion]

Hmm - I had a woman with nothing better to do harass me in customer services the other week about corks. Apparently, if we stop using corks, they won't harvest any, and the unique biology of the cork plantations - a biodiversity akin to the rainforest, would you believe - would be lost.

Our buyer laughed at me when I told him about this. Experts - the ones who spit it out and know what they're talking about, apparently - reckon that over half of all wine is actually corked (as in bad from the cork), whether the average person can detect it or not. He also pointed out that we're not going to insist on cork-only wine.

Rapscallion

[blas]

There's a $5 champagne called Andre that I love. Two glasses of that and I'm on the floor.

But would I buy Andre for a special occasion or give it to a friend? Hell no.

[Shengirl]

Yeah, that's actually a much better point; I stand corrected. $6 wine can be good, but I don't think I'd give it to a hostess for a house party.

[GingerBiscuit]

Now, I've had some very nice cheap wine, but I definately wouldn't give it to a party hostess. However, a nice box of chocolates...

[BusBus]

I had a pretty bad experience with a 2euro bottle of wine that my sis and I split in Germany, so I naturally stay away from the cheapcheap stuff. $10-15 will get you a decent bottle here. If you only have $6 to spend on a gift, cheap wine is not the way to go.

[Pagan]

Anyone ever hear of "3 Buck Chuck"? It's only available at Trader Joe's and it has won awards. And personally, I wouldn't be insulted to get that as a hostess gift. If it's a good wine, who cares how much it cost? It's the thought that counts. Maybe the person can't afford to spend more but still wants to take a gift.

There's a $5 champagne called Andre that I love. Two glasses of that and I'm on the floor.

/Nitpick/ That's not champagne. One, it's carbonated after the fact. Two, for it to actually have the label say champagne, it has to be from the Champagne district in France. Otherwise, it's methode champenoise. Just like it's not Parmesan unless it's from Parma and they're not piñons unless they're from New Mexico.