Brace yourself. I am about to make a bold statement:

I like Pinot.

Yeah, I know, it blows your hair back a bit.

As I have written countless times on this blog, my first real love in wine was and is champagne, but the bubbles only account for about 10% of my cellar (I am only counting champagne here, not other sparklers). After I got my nose tickled in Champers, it was not much of a stretch to move on to Pinot Noir. After all, Pinot is one of the three main grape varieties in champagne and I find the more Pinot there is in the bubbly blend, the more I like the wine.

The problem with Pinot is that it is tough to find a good one under $30. A couple of months ago though, I wrote an article (Pinot for Paupers) that tried to do just…