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Back when we were dating, in early 2006, my husband and I used to drop $85 on dinner without giving it a thought. Thirty dollars for a bottle of wine to take home. Another 10 or 15 for sweets to eat in front of the fire. What the hell...

Well, those days are gone.

Here in the midst of the 2008 recession - which I am really pissed off to discover actually has been going on for a year, exactly as I said it was when my income dropped some 60 percent - we don't dare dream of steak. Or spicy tuna rolls. Or even a veggie wrap with French fries in a cardboard boat. Here's what we did on our latest evening out: we went to Sam's Wine Shop for their Wednesday night wine tasting and bought a bottle of Elsa Bianchi Bonarda for seven dollars and 97 cents.

You can pretend at Sam's. That's the nice thing. You descend the stairs into a stone-lined cave lit with tiny Christmas lights. You move from table to table, drinking your quarter-inch of free wine from tulip glasses. You talk about the hillside in France and how the vintages made from the vines at the bottom are bargains at 32 bucks.

And then, if you happen to visit as we did on a night when one of the new Alexis Bailly Vineyards fortified wines is being sampled, you can wander over to the front of the room and enjoy a healthy drip.

I'll admit, I was disappointed when we showed up to discover that the dessert wine of the evening was a chocolate port. I'm not a fan of chocolate, nor of sweet drinks. But I bravely took a sip and much to my surprise, when the tiny gratis swirl in my glass was gone, I desperately wanted more.

This is a so-called ruby port - which actually means it's young and rather cheap. But rubies were exactly what this wine reminded me of. Jewels touched with sunlight and orange, with maybe a little melted gold thrown in. The bouquet is pure cocoa, deep and nearly powdery, but the wine is light on the tongue and finishes clean, with a hint of raspberry and cherry, and just a little acid to keep it from being too precious in the throat.

Sam Haislet of Sam's Wine Shop, who just happens to be married to Nan Bailly of ABV, says his wife experimented like crazy with milk chocolate and dark. She settled [he thinks] on a darker variety and a young, fruity port. She bottles it like beer, in opaque 375 ml containers, and charges - at least through Sam's, where she's sleeping with the retailer, mind you - a mere $19.99.

Now, I'm not claiming this wine is going to replace dusty bottles from the Douro Valley. But it has a good chance, in my opinion, of replacing the Bailey's Irish Cream on your shelf. Here, there is delicacy and nuance. Alexis Bailly's Chocolate Port doesn't clobber you with a Nestle's Quik flavor of chocolate and a throat-stopping dose of frothy cream.

Even better, it is pretty, fluid and nearly bloodlike in a fluted Riedel glass.  Which, by the way, you can buy at Target now. It is something my husband and I discuss as we walk back arm in arm with our $8 bottle in a paper bag. Even this recession has brought great things.