Welcome.
You're here because somewhere along the way you decided the famous bottles weren't the whole story. Good. Neither did I.
Wine Underdogs is a simple proposition: the grapes nobody talks about are often the ones most worth drinking. Alicante Bouschet, Baga, Xinomavro — varieties that out-drink their price and ask only that you mispronounce them with confidence. Every week I'll send you one worth knowing: tasted, scored, no snobbery, no filler.
Let me start with one I opened this week.
Georgia invented wine eight thousand years ago — the buried clay vessels, the amber wine, a tradition older than most of the alphabet. Then, somewhere along the way, it learned to freeze it. The bottle I just tasted is a Georgian icewine, and here's the quiet trick: it's a white wine made from a red grape, pressed pale before the skins could lend a drop of color. Glimmering amber, ripe yellow fruit and honey, sweet but with the good sense to stop. My only complaint is that the bottle is half-size, which feels less like a serving and more like a dare.
That's the whole point of this: the wines that quietly upend what you thought you knew.
If you haven't grabbed it yet, your Underdog Starter List — ten bottles under $25 worth chasing — is waiting right here.
One favor, since this is the first letter: hit reply and tell me the last bottle you genuinely loved. I read every one, and it's the fastest way for me to send you wines that actually fit your taste — not just the ones I happen to like.
Next week: Baga, the grape they call the Nebbiolo of Portugal, and why it's been hiding in plain sight.
Until then, Chris
P.S. Forward this to the one friend who always orders the bottle they can't pronounce. That's exactly who this is for.