If your wine budget's limited, try these.

Byline: Best of . . . The Register-Guard

The party season is officially under way, and Team Best of ... has your back. We know that however well you mean, once again this year you will find yourself rushing to pick up something to take to the party, whether a gift to the host or as a bring-your-own-bottle deal.

We can see you now, flustered, stopping at the nearest grocery store to pick up a bottle of wine. You want something decent, preferably local because it's the cool thing to do, but you also want something that won't break the bank.

Therein lies the challenge. Ever since California bulk producer Bronco Wine resurrected the once-prestigious Charles Shaw label, but charged less than $3 a bottle through Trader Joe's stores, we have a new low-pricing standard.

The trouble is the grapes that do well in Oregon's less sunny, more variable climate are famously finicky. The coddling they require makes it hard to grow them on the cheap.

So Team Best of ... went searching for a reasonably priced bottle of decent local wine, one available almost everywhere, whether it's Market of Choice with its well-stocked shelves or the River Road Safeway with its well-intentioned but puny selection.

Hinman Winery came up our winner, flavor-wise, price-wise and availability-wise.

We like the fact that Hinman is locally bottled on the outskirts of Eugene. And while it's true that other Oregon wineries - Duck Pond and Bridgeview, for example - sometimes have lower prices, they aren't our neighbors.

At every store we checked, we found at least one of four affordable and flavorful Hinman wines: a pinot gris, a pinot noir, a riesling and a concoction called Rogue Valley Red, a blend of grapes from Southern Oregon. They ranged in price from $9.44 for the pinot gris to $11.69 for the pinot noir.

Among the four, we preferred the 2005 pinot gris. We're no connoisseurs; we can never detect all those subtle flavors wine experts go on about. But the pinot gris was smooth and fruity without being too sweet.

The Rogue Valley Red was our second favorite. It has a bigger taste than the pinot noir (we're sorry to confess, and we recognize the irony that the refinements of pinot noirs pretty much escape us).

The riesling is on our list because it's the sweet one, the one we buy for a favorite relative who never drinks the stuff, except at Christmas. It's a good choice for wine neophytes.

Hinman has one other advantage: Its distinctive blue-hills-on-black-background-label is easy to spot when you're in a hurry. Yes, we know the wine gods will strike us down for letting label design drive our decision, but hey, it could be worse.

Around the holidays, we want something reliably special that doesn't break the bank. Hinman hasn't let us down.

Light on the palate with just a hint of je ne sais quoi, let Best of ... come to the party, too, at www.registerguard.com/bestof.

BEST LOCALLY BOTTLED BUDGET WINE Hinman Vineyards Where: Most local grocery stores More information: www.silvanridge.com