The Finest Team of Wine Drinkers Known to Mankind

One of my favorite movies as a child was THE GUNS OF NAVARONE directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring the great Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn. The movie is one of those great World War II epics in which there is an impossible mission to be undertaken by a rag-tag outfit of hard drinking, spit fire talking, down on their luck men who have a chance to finally redeem themselves. In this case, their mission is to take out an impregnable Nazi mountain fortress that has two massive guns threatening a Royal Navy rescue of British soldiers stranded on a Greek Isle. Good to know that the British are still stranded on Greek Isles in the form of drunken tourists.
In the weeks since my first post, I have been assembling a rag-tag group of wine drinkers to take out the impregnable fortress of wine inequality and the threatening guns of lack-of-quality and lack of good taste. My team is ready, and we have been planning our first Brown Bag Event in which we'll have a tasting of wines all under $12.99.
The first region we are taking on is the Great State of California (we might hone it down to one particular wine growing region - there's a good chance Paso Robles will be first up). California is the Navarone of Wine Regions to me in terms of affordability and quality. I find it very difficult to find an affordable and great tasting California wine for under $12.99. It could be because our real estate is so expensive, or it could be because the California wine culture puts a lot of emphasis on elevating wine above everything around it. That emphasis leads to a lot of heavy taste engineering - which is costly.
Don't get me wrong. I love California wine, but it tends to fall in a range of $20 and above. Then again, there could very well be bargains out there in the every day affordable range. There has to be.
And in my first major review, me and my rag tag team of wine lovers will be bringing them to your attention.
Oh, and I promise to start adding pictures and stuff that most people like in blogs.
BBS