• 2005 Este de Bodegas Alto Almanzora, Vino de Mesa, Spain

• $8.50

GIL KULERS (ENLARGE)

2005 Este de Bodegas Alto Almanzora

KULERS UNCORKED GIL KULERS Gil Kulers is a certified wine educator with the Society of Wine Educators and teaches in-home wine classes. You can reach him at gil.kulers @winekulers.com or by clicking on his photo above. Related: • More on food and drink 2006 Louis Jadot Beaujolais-Villages  Why Australians shake the wine: It's a gas  2005 Greg Norman California Estates Petite Sirah  Good wine is more than alcohol percentage  2006 Kendall-Jackson Vineyards and Winery Grand Reserve Chardonnay

• Two thumbs way up. A powerful wine filled with aromas and bold flavors of cherry, black licorice, cinnamon and rich blackberry, with soft touches of chocolate and cola. Unbelievably complex for a sub-$10 wine.

Listen up, all you cheapskates out there. The Wine Curmudgeon has said this before, but it bears repeating: You don't have to pay a lot for great wine.

The Curmudgeon is not talking about those inexpensive, overly commercial, "safe" wines with the barking penguin (or some other cartoonlike character) on the label. Not that they're bad, but those easygoing wines wouldn't offend your teetotaling grandma.

The great wines of which the Curmudgeon speaks are those balanced, interesting, "edgy" wines with indefinable characteristics that take your breath away. These are what the wine intelligentsia refer to as "serious" wines. Unfortunately, one characteristic of "serious" wine is high price.

Yet there are plenty of scrappy players out there making artisan wines on the cheap. Maybe they are in unestablished wine regions or use oddball grapes, or perhaps they haven't found favor with the dwindling number of distributors out there, thus lessening their chances for discovery. Whatever the reason, these wines are like mutts at the Westminster dog show: They get no respect and can't fetch a high price.

But take it from the Curmudgeon, these wines are out there. Can't find them by yourself? Then challenge your local wine shop to locate these gems. I've heard more than one shop owner moan about big-box retailers and specialty markets "stealing" their customers. Here's an opportunity for them to shine, if they'd only get off their keisters and track down these undiscovered treasures.

This week, the benevolent Wine Curmudgeon offers this $8.50 pearl: Este, a Spanish table wine made by Bodegas Alto Almanzora from monastrell and garnacha grapes. Never heard of it? Well, my dear friends, that's the nature of discovery.

Gil Kulers, a certified wine educator with the Society of Wine Educators, is beverages instructor for the culinary arts program at Chattahoochee Technical College. Contact him at gil.kulers@winekulers.com.