Got the book a few weeks ago and have tried a several of the bottles they listed and I must say the wines are absolutely delightful! Buying this book to use as a wine buying guide is a no-brainer. Best ten bux I ever spent!!

The first part of the book was mostly just description on the process of their blind tasting, nothing really that interesting. However I gave 5 stars based on the recommended wine list. I have to saw that after more than half a year, i have tried a good many of the highly recommended list and I'm really happy with their quality. Also they have included wines that are mostly easily obtained at local and large retail shops that carry wine. Recommended for beginners that need cheap wine to start out.

Familiarity breeds liking -- one of the oldest psychological truisms, supported time and again by social psychology research. The authors of The Wine Trials 2010: The World's Bestselling Guide to Inexpensive Wines, with the 150 Winning Wines Under $15 from the Latest Vintages (Fearless Critic) neglect to address (pro or con) this simplest of explanations for their findings but as they are not psychologists themselves, I didn't expect them to. Nor does this omission damage my love of this book. Considering this, it is no surprise that the average wine drinker is pleased by the flavors found in average-priced wine while the distinguishing flavors of top tier wines would be preferred by posh winos.

As a sociologist myself, I find The Wine Trials to be fascinating. The breadth of flavor in, say, red wine, is vanishingly narrow relative to its price ladder; so it makes sense that some other structuring characteristic is operating here. Goldstein and Herschkowitsch seem to believe that reviewer bias and an insular industry are to blame.

The simpler explanation the authors give is that wine is good, and broad variance in wine prices cannot reflect the relatively narrow variance in wine quality. Yes, there is bad wine; and there is phenomenal wine. But the way things are being done now, wine is clearly not being priced by how much the readers of Wine Spectator will actually like it. That much is clear, and the industry cannot ignore it.

Clearly blind tasting is the only even semi-scientific way of evaluating wine. We should value wines that we like, that taste good, rather than for nebulous qualities of their reputation and label. The fact that wine critics are not much better at identifying good wine than we are is a disturbing fact. And the shameful overpricing of wine in the United States, both with the government-mandated middle-men and the restaurant multiplying level, is a crime. Who could imagine spending $20 for a bottle of wine in Spain or Italy? Or that amount for anything but an old Bordeaux in France? Yet that's the bottom, the two buck chuck, of the US restaurant wine pricing.

Anyway, philosophy and overall guidance aside, this guidebook isn't all that useful. It highlights a scattering of good wines (to someone's taste) at a good (sub $15) price point and they are supposed to be widely available wines as well. The first ones I tried though were nothing special at all, and nearly all of my inexpensive standbys were missing from the book. With that lack of luck, I've moved on. Good wine ideas but only so-so on the guidebook side of things.

This useful guide proves itself consistently by our tasting experiences. We gave it as XMAS gifts this year and received surprised agreements from our friends.

The author had a great idea and ran with it. Right into a wall. Goldstein starts off by bad mouthing wine critics for being snobby, but as the book progresses he becomes very snooty himself, criticizing other wine tasters because their tastes are different from his. Wine is extremely subjective, and in his intro he explains that. Unfortunately the more I read, the bigger the author's ego got.
I bought 20 bottles of wine from his top winners lists, and only found one drinkable. Most of them are dry to very dry, which is great if you like those, but I would have thought that given the huge number of tasters that they had (although Goldstein admits that some opinions counted more than others) that there would have been more of a variety of sweetness/dryness levels chosen. Of course, the tasters couldn't pick anything that the author didn't provide.
In conclusion, if you enjoy dry wines and can get past a hypocritical author, there are probably some great suggestions in there for you. However, if you like a touch of sweetness to your wines, or are tired of reading "My-opinion-is-the-only-one-that's-valid" wine write ups, give it a miss.

Apologies, but I haven't had time to buy and drink my picks but the suggestions and the ones I like look very good for us to use and I consider this book a valuable resource for selecting vineyards and their evolving products. It is easy reading, informative and well organized.

Reviewers seem to want to focus on the statistical test methods and weigh in on the eternal questions of "can you taste the difference?" and "does that $15 bottle taste better than that $75 bottle?"

Forget about all of that. This is a great book for raising up 100 affordable, drinkable wines. It helps the reader to explore new or old varietals (value-priced Merlot). It encourages us to sometimes leave California for other lands. It urges us to actually taste the wines we drink and draw our own conclusions. It helps us to move beyond price based evaluation, vineyard branding/labeling or a single bad experience.

If you pick 25 wines to sample from these recommendations, you'll find 5-10 friends that can be used for everyday meals, without apologies or the need to "show off" your cleverness. Just enjoy. Bon appetite!

Don't waste your time on this book, there are many issues with this book. Spend it on a bottle of wine. Your guess is as good as the list in this book.

First, much of the methodology is flawed. The impression is given in the beginning that the tasters always picked the cheaper wines over the better wines but later in the book, you find out that's not true. Just what better wines were tasted? Second, where exactly did the wines come from and who paid for them? The wines were tested met two criteria: under $15 and widely distributed? Were all 150 wines tasted by each taster and ranked? How exactly did we get down to finalist? Wasn't this about picking the best of the mediocre not some discovery of excellent tasting wines at below normal prices? When reading the reviews I could not help but think all it was saying was, "Just go to the store and buy something red or white for under $15 by these producers". I could go on about the methodology but you get point, it's flawed.

One positive note is the suggestion to conduct blind tasting. It's a fun and informative way to learn about wine with friends.

Among the wines author covers, there are several very respectable wines I tried and decided to stock at great prices. And to disagree with the author's thesis, some were recommended by the big wine names and scored accordingly. There are also some junk wines in this list, and of course many wines I have not tried (who can try all the wines in the world???). Finally, there are great 90-91 pts $10 wines not on the author's list (again, of course, who gave him the candidates? there are too many wines to try!)

As for why there are no 92 pts wines for less then $10, this is economy 101, if the wine would be scored 92pts by a critic people follow, the wine price would be quickly raised. That happens every day! The opposite effect is also possible - though far less frequent - when at a later tasting the critic decreases the score (point: wine has a life, it ages, it changes every day and needs to be kept in proper temperature). Think about this: Wine Spectator had a story about 1999 California Cabs and the cheapest 95pt wine (Altamura 1999 cab) was mentioned at $30. Can you get it anywhere anymore at that price? No! The price went 100% up in two weeks.

The quality of a wine is not all that goes into pricing it. An important issue is that there are too many wines so it's impossible to evaluate them consistently (by many people and preferably blind as the author would like) and that's where past performance and its consistency get into play in a huge way, and wines with small supply and great historic record can get big prices, but more importantly even average wines can ask for higher prices w/o even being tasted if their past performance is consistent. Consistency at multiple levels is one of the most important issues in wine business. It costs money to make a great wine, but I would say certainly nowhere close to astronomic prices many wines are getting.

Now, I am not saying that $20 wine or $100 wine is worth it to me. Most are not, or better said most are worth much less to me. Same is for other products. If you look online for a wine, you will see that there are large differences in prices for the same wine. Producers and traders try to squeeze out consumers money in the capitalist market. Isn't that expected?

Let me address some content of this book: judging by the wine descriptions, the book pays more attention to label designs then tasting notes. Tasting notes are only summarized in very very short way with dubious methodology. Also, the weight of the wine is frequently misjudged, i.e., I would say that it errs toward saying that the wine is heavier (and I mean body/structure not alcohol) then it actually is.

Finally, I am hunting for $10 wine deals (yes, that is a deal, if the wine is good), and this book may be useful to filter out the junk though perhaps the better method is to look at CellarTracker or simply to look at more sources for ratings around 89 pts (what is 89 for one critic may be 92 for another and most importantly for you!).

that pretty much says it all. it's a guide to the wines we actually buy and drink every day -- the wines under $15 that you can find around the corner, not the $175 obscure bottles that are reviewed in the stupid wine magazines.

the reviews are really helpful (150 this year instead of 100, and all new wines), but i really like the first part of the book, an interesting discussion of the value of blind tasting, the economics of wine, and the corruption in the wine magazine industry, etc.

I love this book. The irreverent but very knowledgeable authors provide a guide to buying inexpensive wines that have out-ranked much more expensive wines in what must have been endless blind-tastings. They give a thorough, entertaining and informative critique of the wines, the wine industry and the traditional wine-reviewers and rankings. The book is really fun to read. I got two copies -- one for my kitchen and one for my bathroom. I try to remember to have one with me whenever I buy wine. This book is going make my Christmas shopping a lot easier this year. For some folks I'm getting the book. For some folks I'm getting some of the recommended wines. And, the best gift of all will be the combo -- the book together one of the highly recommended wines.