Consumers are clearly interested in spending less per bottle and unfortunately the US doesn't

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do $20 bottles as well as Europe does

PINOT gris is a most unusual grape. Unlike, say, sauvignon blanc, which is pretty much identifiable as sauvignon blanc wherever it comes from regardless of varying expressions of terroir, pinot gris offers completely different guises depending on whether it hails from Alsace, Italy (as pinot grigio) or Oregon, which is the subject of my column.

After the wine panel tasting of Oregon pinot gris, however, we were left not so much with questions of identity. Our questions were about quality. In a column in 2007, I called Oregon pinot gris an excellent value.

It remains relatively inexpensive, and the wines we liked were indeed good values. But we did not like as many of the wines as we would have wished. One of the questions I was left with after the tasting, though, is what we should demand from moderately priced wines.

Is it enough that a $20 bottle of wine simply be sound, with no obtrusive flaws or faults? I don't think so, not by a long shot. I can find $8 bottles that are sound. No, a $20 bottle cannot be ordinary. It must have some sort of character and personality that distinguishes it from the vast range of other bottles costing $20.

The United States wine industry is in a difficult position today. Consumers are clearly interested in spending less per bottle than they were three years ago, and unfortunately the United States doesn't do $20 bottles as well as Europe does. I found it far easier to write columns about great values in the $10 to $20 range from France and Italy than it was from the United States.

If you think I'm unpatriotic to say so, and that I ought to do more to support the American wine industry, consider what the wine industry is doing itself. In my last post, I mentioned the recent Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, a trade show in Sacramento, where the wine analyst Jon Fredrikson reported that big American producers in 2009 increased the amount of bulk wine they were importing by 87 per cent! What are they doing with this bulk wine? Repackaging it and selling it to Americans because it's more profitable for them to import cheap wine than to produce it. It reminds me of the "Buy American'' campaigns, in which we were urged to support American car companies, who by the way, were outsourcing their production to countries where the labour was cheaper.

Not that this bulk wine is going into $20 bottles. It is much cheaper. The $20 price point for domestic wine consists primarily of mundane stuff.

My point is that Oregon pinot gris used to be one of the few distinctive American wines in the $20 range, and I would hate to see it fade into mediocrity, in the manner of so much New Zealand sauvignon blanc.

With that in mind, I ask your help. Can you recommend American wines in the $20 range that offer character and value? I'm listening.