That depends on how willing you are to take a gamble.
Cleanskins – wines sold without the usual branded labels – are nothing new; wineries have been offloading extra stock this way for years. Some are cancelled export orders and some are "museum" releases of respectable old bottles nearing the end of their life span. In fact, they can be real finds. Dig around in the sale barrels next time you're at a winery cellar door and you may pick up some aged bargains.
But now, with Australia in the middle of a wine glut and grape prices ridiculously low, retailers are taking the unsold excess off wineries' hands and selling them for next to nothing. The wineries are happy to realise anything at all for the bottles, and consumers are happy to drink on the cheap.
And some cleanskins are really cheap. Like $2 a bottle cheap. Plenty more are on the market for less than $5.
Make no mistake though – these are generally bulk-made wines made from fruit grown well away from premium vineyards. For many wine drinkers, however, that's quite OK. Especially when you're only after something to quaff mid-week.
Most of the big wine retailers have them, from Dan Murphy's and Vintage Cellars to the connoisseurs' choice of Ultimo Wine Centre. There's even a store in Sydney that deals only in cleanskins: The Wine Point at Birkenhead Point. Kemenys in Bondi have created a Hidden Label range with more than 20 cleanskins, all specifying the region of origin. They even sell a few premium options, such as a Marlborough sauvignon blanc, a Coonawarra cabernet and a Heathcote shiraz – proving not all cleanskins come from cheap, bulk Riverina fruit.
To find out what's good and what isn't, I had a taste test of more than a dozen different varieties with some regular cleanskin drinkers, Chardy and Murray Rivers. The prices ranged from $1.89 for a "Get the Roo for under $2" chardonnay to $18 for a Kemenys merlot.
