To get a sense of what’s available, the wine panel recently tasted 20 bottles of the 2009 vintage, all $50 or less. The wines came from the well-drained, gravelly soils of the Médoc and Graves, classic left bank Bordeaux from the areas west of the Gironde and Garonne rivers, where cabernet sauvignon is king. For the tasting, Florence Fabricant and I were joined by Hristo Zisovski, the beverage director at Ai Fiori, Osteria Morini and Nicoletta, and Greg Majors, the beverage director at Craft.

By $50 or less, I actually mean $20 to $50. No, this is not cheap, though you will rarely see good wines under $20 from most top regions, whether Burgundy, Barolo, Napa Valley or Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Yes, you can find Bordeaux for as low as $10, but in that range you run the risk of buying mass-produced commodity wines, or wines made from indifferent terroirs. While those wines are no doubt palatable, it’s far easier in the $20 to $50 range to find wines representative of Bordeaux’s best qualities.

We found a variety of styles. Some were lush, dense and concentrated. Others showed more finesse and refinement. We especially liked wines that showed good acidity, which helps keep wines fresh and refreshing. We were looking for good structure in the wines, too, the skeleton of tannins and acidity that transports the flesh of flavors through the mouth and helps wine age.

It’s important to understand that tannic and structured are not synonyms. Wines that are simply tannic can flop in the mouth like a formless, astringent blob. Structured wines develop in the mouth, existing in the dimension of time as well as taste and texture. The flavors evolve and linger.

Decades ago, the influential Bordeaux enologist Émile Peynaud urged producers to create secondary, cheaper labels for grapes of lesser quality, reserving their best grapes for their top wines. At the time, many producers were aghast at making less wine by diverting grapes to a second label, but now all of Bordeaux seems to have embraced the idea of second and even third labels. Seven of our 20 wines were second labels.

I have mixed feelings about second labels. They can obviously be good, but emotionally I’d like to feel I’m getting the best a producer has to offer. Also, they’re not always great values as they trade on their illustrious siblings. In fact, four of those seven didn’t make our top 10, but among those that did were two of our first four, including our No. 1 wine, La Croix de Beaucaillou St.-Julien, sibling of the excellent St.-Julien Ducru-Beaucaillou. This wine was lively and bright with inviting mineral and fruit flavors.