KK,

Yes, white wine. I nearly always have white with chicken or pork - unless it's BBQ ribs, in which case beer is better IMO. Red with hearty foods isn't a bad rule of thumb, but a light bodied red like Pinot Noir goes well with BBQ salmon or even baked halibut. Zin= steak, roast beef, etc.

Columbia is a good value, both the chard and cab and merlot; at leasat for me.

Snake,

I tried 2 buck Chuck, which was $3 at Trader Joe's a few years ago. It's flat out bad wine. Amazingly, to me is Tisdale at $3 and Crane Creek at $3.99 at Fred Meyer - cheap and good enough for everyday wine. And I drink wine pretty much every day, so dropping $10 or more for wine on a daily basis makes me feel weird when I go grocery shopping and wine accounts for 70% of my bill. I agree about not drinking crappy wine, but some of the values I've been finding are well above that catagory. I agree that $20 wine usually tastes better than $10 wine, but it sure doesn't taste twice as good. My take is that you have to spend larger and larger increments of money for smaller and smaller increments of improved wine flavor, earthy oak overtones notwithstanding.

Sg