Shiraz (Vintner's Reserve)

The Vintner's Reserve wine kits from Winexpert are uniformly excellent in quality. Although one of the more reasonably priced lines from Winexpert (most of them retail at around $65 per kit), every Vintner's Reserve kit I've tried (and I've done a dozen or more) has produced excellent wine. The Shiraz is no exception. A full-bodied red wine with floral and fruit overtones, the Shiraz continues to mature (and improve) for as long as a year after bottling. It pairs well with most cuts of beef, and is also excellent as a sipping wine in the evening.

The Winexpert wine kits are easy to make, so long as you have the basic winemaking equipment. The Vintner's Reserve line is a four-step process from mixing to bottling. Each step takes less than an hour (including sanitizing and cleanup). So, for three to four hours of work over a 6-8 week period you'll get approximately 30 750ML bottles of great wine. This works out to under $2.50 a bottle, which is a great bargain considering the high quality of the wine.