As a country club manager searching the mid to upper price categories for my wine lists, I would miss out on so much were it not for my weekly commitment to write up an under $15 bottle of juice that I like. Time and again I taste something that should be pricier. This bottle of cabernet sauvignon, from yet another fun and whimsical line by Don Sebastiani and Sons, is an excellent example.

As the name implies, the wine has a screw cap. When I began serving wine for a living 20 years ago, we would encounter one bottle of bad or "corked" wine every four to six months in the 300-plate-a-night steakhouse where I worked. I now encounter one bottle for every four to six cases of wine I open. The demand for cork has outstripped supply, so trees that are too young are being harvested and are producing inferior corks.

Let's forgo the romance of a corkscrew for these everyday wines. If your house is anything like mine, at 6:00 p.m. on a weekday, romance isn't on the radar, but a big splashy glass of quaffable cabernet is (which, ironically, helps romance appear on the radar later in the evening). My career-and-motherhood-stressed wife couldn't give a rat's patootie about how the wine got from bottle to glass, just so long as it does. She does, however, care that the $50-$100 per bottle Caymus and Silver Oak we laid down five years ago are going to be fit to drink on that future special occasion.

Now for some particulars on this wine. Deep color and healthy legs are seemly partners to the ripe fruit aromas. The wine is very drinkable, with a medium acid/tannic profile that highlights a green peppercorn and bay leaf spiciness. The forward flavor of berries and currants are well integrated into the spicy backdrop, with both facets skipping along arm-in-arm to the soft finish. This is really a steal at $10 a bottle, no matter how the bottle was sealed.

Craig Pierce is club house manager of Baker Hill Country Club in Newbury.