I’d been planning to price check a couple of Chateauneuf-du-Papes I saw the other day at Bristol Farms. But those can wait, since I happened upon the bargain of the week today and thought you should know about it.

On close-out at The Wine Hotel on West 3rd Street in LA you’ll find a scant three bottles of the 2006 Lang & Reed Cabernet Franc, for a mere $9.95 a bottle. Beats our price by a long shot. Apparently it’s not to the taste of the new owners, along with some Mollydooker and some other wines that are priced Crazy-Eddie-low.

You can call the Wine Hotel at 323-937-9463 to snare these. Though, honestly, your chances are better if you show up to the 5800 West Third Street location in LA to pick these up in person, as they’re not really set up for phone orders (yet).

Oh, since this is a Price Check…here’s what others (including us) sell this for:

Wine Library: $18/bottle (damn you, Gary Vaynerchuk!)

Wine House: $20/bottle

d547: $23/bottle (drat! It’s Caronne-Ste-Gemme all over again)

Englewood Wine Merchant: $25/bottle

I think I misstated things in the Wine Blogging Wednesday post below. See, when I spent my honeymoon in Tuscany, I drank just as many two-Euro carafes of restaurant house wine, as I did bottles of Brunello. Actually, far more. And my hubby and I truly enjoyed these unnamed, bargain wines.

Feeling guilty for not having really participated in the monthly wine meme, I rectified matters on Friday evening, by ordering a bottle of the 2006 Casanova di Neri Rosso di Casanova di Neri (formerly their Rosso di Montalcino) with dinner at Osteria La Buca. This is the perfect wine representing an in-between point from the far extremes of the two-Euro carafes and the pricier Brunellos.

On the list at La Buca, the wine cost about $60, which is not totally unreasonable (but perhaps begins to push the outer limits of fairness; more reasonable is the $90 for a bottle of the Casanova di Neri 2003 Brunello, but I decided that wine just wouldn’t be ready to drink at this point). At retail, the Rosso appears to be available for the $20 to $30 range.

More important, the wine was just lovely to drink. Very tight upon opening, it took merely twenty minutes to start showing all the red cherry, a good deal of smoke and a bit of scorched/tarry earth that I associate with Tuscan reds. Mouth watering acidity made this a great match with food. I could drink this wine all the time.

On a side note, you should all go check out Osteria La Buca for the food and atmosphere — as well as the great service of newly installed Sommelier Alessia Botturi. She has imported several of the wines on the list herself, including a sparkling Pinot Nero we can’t wait to sample.

So there are various baseball players with charity wines, and celebrities who have endorsed things like Prosecco. These all fall into the gimmick category, and it’s doubtful that wine afficionados will purchase any of these items, except perhaps as a novelty collectible (or as a gag gift).

We haven’t heard much about serious wines made by actors and such, until a friend sent us a link to an event on an early September weekend at Wally’s in Westwood (Los Angeles for those of you out of the area). It’s to honor the release of a Walla Walla Cabernet, “pursued by bear,” made by Kyle McLachlan and assistant winemaker Eric Dunham.

Maybe it’s just the strange picture, but this all sort of seems like a joke — like something out of a David Lynch film, or one of the more minor works by Christopher Guest.

But, rest assured, it’s not. Twin Peaks and Walla Walla Cab fans unite! Your prayers have been answered.

This is going to be a brief post. It’s Wine Blogging Wednesday, and the theme from Lenn Thompson is a good one: to choose a wine that gets you back to your roots as a wine drinker and wine lover. Sort of ‘the wine that changed your life,’ if you will. Read more…

Seems a little early for our soon-to-be annual contest to guess the Spectator Top 10 Wines of the Year, doesn’t it? Well, not to the many people we see already landing at domaine547 via searches on this very subject line.

We can’t believe it’s August and people are already obsessing over the year-end list. Rest assured, we will happily feed the frenzy, of course; but those of you who landed here because of such a search, please have some patience. Last year we jumped the gun, and our first post on this subject was around mid-October, a good month before the top 10 was announced. So check back with us in six or eight weeks for more on that subject, and between now and then for other wine-related content.

(Don’t worry, loyal readers…the contest is very much tongue-in-cheek and we have not gone over to the dark side. domaine547 remains a [mostly] points-free zone.)