Chasing fleeting wine bargains!

It's bad enough trying to figure out what you like from the enormous variety of wines, regions, makers, styles, blends, varietels and on and on -- but if you happen to find a great wine bargain, sometimes it's strictly temporary.

Take the Rosenblum Snow's Lake I found last month at Cost Plus/World Market. I told everybody I knew, of course, and many of them ran out to World Market to pick up this wonderful bargain -- a $35 wine for $19. And found nothing. They were out. And had no idea if they'd ever have it back.

Obviously it was some kind of wild bargain opportunity World Market had stumbled across and seized upon, and sadly looks like won't be repeated (but keep your eyes open when you pass the store!).

Likewise, I was in a BevMo the other day and found at the checkout counter a clearance sale on a Cab I had never heard of, called Ca'Na -- yeah, the name doesn't make sense to me either. Nice black label, nothing to distinguish it -- except that it was discounted from something like $20 to $3.99. So I picked up a bottle -- what the heck.

Man, it was good! Dense, lush, mouth-filling, nicely balanced between fruit and tannins. Damn, that's as good a Cab as I've had all year! Yeow! Gotta go run tell all my friends!

Gone already. Boy, clearance items CLEAR OUT at BevMo, don't they!

Keep your eyes open for it. If you see it somewhere else for any price under $20, it's a bargain. And somebody who knows who they are, go tell them to keep it up, they're onto something winemaking wise! It's made by Tamayo Family Vineyards in Contra Costa County, in northern California. On the site they sell their latest Cab for $30. So you can see, I got a heck of a deal!

But meanwhile, the word to the wise: When you find a killer bargain--run right back and buy lots of it right away! Because true wine bargains can be sooo fleeting! Damn it!