Includes Wine Reviews and Ratings from Fun with Wine TastingThere a number of proven ways to identify the world’s best wine values. The most comprehensive way is to sample hundreds of red wines, white wines, sparkling wines and dessert wines, then rate each one for quality. Then you look for those cases where the wine’s quality rating far  exceeds its cost. Those are best-value wines. They represent the best wines in the world for a given price. That approach has been employed by SpiritofWine, where the results can be seen.There is another, more informal and - I will admit - more pleasant way to identify best wine values. That is to find a wine tasting offering a pre-identified selection of wines in the same price range. Then, at that tasting, apply a rigorous rating system to all the wines; then, because the costs are all more or less equivalent, the highest rated wines become the best value wines.Here are quick ratings and notes, filed from a recent Fun With Wine tasting in New York City. Fun With Wine is a group known especially for their regular walk-around wine tastings, organized by Rick Weissman. This tasting, themed to wines for the summer, encompassed only modestly-priced wines, priced within the same range of approximately $12-20 U.S.. Listed below are the categories of wines offered at this tasting, along with the individual wines shown at each table. For tasted wines, I have included asterisks to indicate the number of stars for rating, consistent with the SpiritofWine rating scheme. That scheme runs as 1 to 5 stars, with 1 star being a wine I can’t even finish, 2 stars being a wine I would not buy again, 3 stars being one I would like to try again, 4 stars being one I would stay with for the evening, and 5 stars being a wine that you had better not try to take away from me! I may add a plus to any rating if there was something unique about the wine at that level.Some wines also contain brief notes that reflect highlights of the wine. In such a real-time review like this, the wines are not assessed with the same rigor as in an individual wine tasting. All of the best-value wines are shown below in bold print.Enjoy!

A Great Summertime TreatRose and blush wines have been getting a bad rap since White Zinfandel was commercialized and popularized in February 2006. Although, they are now reclaiming their fame, rose and blush wines are great summertime alternatives to white wines, for those avid red wine  drinkers. Most people do not realize that White Zinfandel as well as blushes and roses are actually red wines. In fact, most people who purchase grocery store brand White Zinfandel refer to it as a white wine because of its title. This may be true of White Burgundy, but it is hardly the case with White Zinfandel.In the 1980s, California began producing White Zinfandel in mass quantities because the grape was so easily grown in California. The downside to this uprise in popularity is that most White Zinfandel wines became mass produced which meant low quality wine. This gave all blushes and roses a horrible name because their sister varietal was so inexpensive and shunned by the higher class wine drinkers. In the last year, several boutique wineries have been producing their version of White Zin making it a little more mainstream and liked by more of the wine drinking community. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Zinfandel)One of the best alternatives that I have found to White Zinfandel is the Folie a Deux Winery’s Menage a Trios Rose from California. This blend of Syrah, Merlot, and Gerwurztraminer is a fruit forward, semi-sweet tribute to Rose wines everywhere and at the cost of a typical mass produced, grocery store brand White Zinfandel. Though this wine is less likely to give you headaches or that horrible feeling of alcohol in the morning. (Source: Folie a Deux Winery; www.folieadeux.com)