The red wines of Tuscany can be as frustrating as they are fantastic. Just ask anyone who's had their share of lousy, watery Chianti at neighborhood Italian restaurants in the United States. Like many, my earliest exposures to Tuscan wine left me with a very distinct taste in my mouth, and it wasn't pleasant. Tuscan red wines, even the good ones, can be quite dry and tannic in their youth, and if poorly made can really make you feel like you're drinking liquid leather.

Those who have the patience to age their Brunellos and Vinos Nobile de Montepulciano, or to search out the gems of Chianti, Bolgheri, Sant'Antimo, or Maremma are often rewarded with wines of remarkable character and soul. When they're good, they're really frikken good, as my wife, Ruth, would say.

I find the Chianti region to be one of the most difficult in which to ferret out excellent wines. I'm sure I'll draw some ire for claiming so, but I believe that the region has an unusually high proportion of mediocre wine compared to good, even among the DOCG (Denominazione di Orogine Controllata e Garantita) designated producers. Which means that when I find a great producer of Chianti, I get very excited.

My latest discovery is a winery named La Brancaia.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Brancaia is a relatively new producer in the Chianti Classico region. More surprising might be the fact that the estates owners, including the current winemaker, are Swiss German, and never had any intention of becoming wine producers.

In 1981 Brigitte and Bruno Widmer were on vacation in Tuscany for the first time, and not unlike many before them, fell in love with the landscape, the culture, and of course, the food and wine. On the spot, they decided to purchase a property that they might use as a family vacation destination, five hours by highway from their home in Zurich. With the help of a local real estate agent, they managed to find a few ancient farmhouses for sale, and quickly fell for the charm of the most ancient and most dilapidated of them. The property was perfect in every respect except for one: it came with 21 acres of grapes that the Widmers had no idea what to do with. The Widmers were not about to let a few vines get in the way of their dream, so they bought the property anyway, and set about refurbishing the old farmhouse.

Apparently their neighbors were the ones that talked the Widmers into trying their hands at winemaking and gave them support for the first year or two it took to get their small family operation up and running. Whether it was the neighbor's help, their own Swiss attention to detail, or the raw quality of the vineyards they happened to have bought, it's not clear, but their 1983 vintage won first place in a major Chianti Classico blind tasting.

And like so many stories of this kind, that was the first day of the rest of their lives.

Over the next 7 or 8 years, the Widmers threw themselves into the creation of a small, high quality Chianti winery. They purchased another vineyard site, bringing their total vineyard acreage to about 75, and fought through the nearly prehistoric local bureaucracy to get a permit to build a modern winemaking facility. All the while, their small production wines were garnering accolades throughout the country.

In 1992 the Widmers hired consulting winemaker Carlo Ferrini to help them take their operations to the next level of quality. Ferrini, even at that time, was one of Italy's most celebrated winemakers and consultants, and quickly transformed Brancaia into one of Chianti's most celebrated wineries. With Ferrini's help, since 1994 the winery's flagship wine "Il Blu" has been awarded the Gambero Rosso Tre Bicchieri every single year except one.

Soon after Ferrini began working with the Widmers, their daughter Barbara decided to abandon her budding career as an architect and become more involved with the new family business. After managing sales and event marketing for the winery, she eventually went back to school to train as a winemaker in Switzerland, and after graduating and working at several Swiss wineries, she returned to Brancaia in 1998 to become its full-time winemaker. Barbara, along with her husband Martin Kronenberg who manages operations and sales, has taken over management of the winery, and Ferrini continues to consult.

In 1997, the family purchased another property, this time in southern Tuscany in the Maremma region, from which they make a single wine called Ilatraia.

The wines are all made in the family's production faculty in Chianti, a three story winery designed to all but eliminate the use of pumps in favor of the gentler forces of gravity on everything from the destemmed, crushed grapes to the fermenting and finished wine. The wines are all aged in French oak barrels, of which roughly 66% are new each year.

Brancaia certainly represents a new wave of producers in Chianti, and may be seen by some as "nuvo" or un-traditional (some Tuscan winemakers consider anyone using French oak to be a non-traditionalist). This may be true, but it should not obscure the fact that Brancaia is producing some truly fantastic wines that are true to the soul of the place from which they come, and top examples of what the region is capable of producing in the right hands.

Full disclosure: I received these wines as press samples.

TASTING NOTES:

2005 Brancaia "Ilatraia" Rosso Maremma Toscana IGT, Tuscany
Dark garnet in color, this wine has an incredibly distinctive nose that screams COLA! Followed by softer murmurs of cherry and chocolate. These murmurs turn into songs of such flavors on the palate, as beautiful rich flavors of cola, spices, chocolate and cherry swirl amidst lovely texture and very faint tannins through to a very nice finish. Tasty, tasty, tasty. 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Sangiovese, 10% Petit Verdot. Score: around 9. Cost: $70 . Where to buy?

2005 Brancaia "Il Blu" Rosso Toscana IGT, Tuscany
Cloudy medium garnet in color, this wine smells of chocolate covered cherries and wet dirt. I don't know about you, but that tends to make my mouth water. On the palate the wine offers an overwhelming sense of having just been dug up out of the wet ground and plopped in your glass. This damp earth quality quickly plays a low rumble to higher tones of cherries and chocolate that modulate to higher tones of rosehip and herbs on the long finish. Delicious. 50% Sangiovese, 45% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Sauvignon. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $60 .Where to buy?

2005 Brancaia "Tre" Rosso Toscana IGT, Tuscany
Medium ruby in the glass, this wine has an altogether funky nose of farmyard aromas -- gamey, horse sweat, and other pungent but not entirely objectionable smells mesh with red fruit. In the mouth, thankfully, the wine centers around more traditional flavors of leather, sandalwood, and cherry, as well as a distinctive, unusual flavor I couldn't pin down. This wine is beating to it's own rhythm. Sangiovese with unspecified amounts of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Score: between 8.5 and 9. Cost: $18. Where to buy?

2004 Brancaia Chianti Classico DOCG, Chianti, Tuscany
Medium garnet in color, this wine has a beautiful nose of floral and cherry aromas that compels multiple inhales before any drinking begins. In the mouth it is rich and full, while holding the earthy dryness one expects from a good Chianti. The primary flavors are of cherry and leather with rich earth undertones that linger on a bed of fine grained tannins into a nice finish. 95% Sangiovese and 5% Merlot. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $20. Where to buy?

The 15 East Bay Vintners are:

Adams Point
A Donkey And Goat
Andrew Lane Wines
Aubin Cellars
Dashe Cellars
Eno Wines
Irish Monkey
JC Cellars
Lost Canyon Winery
Periscope Cellars
Prospect 772 Wine Company
Rosenblum Cellars
Tayerle
Two Mile Wines
Urbano Cellars

The Urban Wine Experience is like tasting wine in wine country, just without the wine country (and the long drive to get there). Held At the Meadow at Jack London Square in Oakland, this event offers attendees the opportunity to taste over 50 wines from all 15 members of the Alliance. The event will include food from local restaurants and food purveyors, as well as music from the Cajun All Stars.

Attended by more than 600 people for each of the last two years, this event will likely sell out again, so plan accordingly.

The Urban Wine Experience
The Meadow at Jack London Square
Oakland, CA 94607
( map )

Advance tickets are $45 per person and are available for purchase online. Any remaining tickets will be sold at the door for $60 per person.

Attendees are strongly encouraged to take public transportation to the event. The Lake Merritt BART station is very close to Jack London Square, and a free shuttle service will be offered between the station and the event.

America and its wine lovers have a varietal bias.

There's nothing inherently wrong with an attraction to wines made from a single grape variety. Just ask any Burgundy, Brunello, or Barolo nut whether it's possible to make profound wine from just a single type of grape and you'll get yourself an earful (and if you're lucky, a glass-full). The only problem with a primary orientation to wines made from a single grape variety is that, well, they're boring.

OK, shoot me now.

Or hear me out a bit. Because I only mostly meant that last scandalous remark.

For every example of one of the world's top wines made from a single grape variety, I can find you examples of three or four others that are made from blends of different grapes. Get outside the world's finest wines and the numbers swing even more heavily towards wines made from three, four, or five, or fourteen different grape varieties.

Blended wines are simply the way that most winemaking has taken place for most of the modern history of our obsession with the fruit of the vine.

Back in the day, most vineyards were planted with a mix of different kinds of grapes which were all harvested together, crushed together, and fermented together. Such practices are so rare these days that we have to have a special name to describe such winemaking: a field blend. But if you were to jump back in time about 100 years and asked a winegrower (that happened to speak English) what he had planted in the vineyard, they'd likely tell you something like "mixed blacks" which meant a whole lot of different dark skinned grapes, many of which the gentleman might not be able to specifically identify.

Go back a few centuries farther in history and most winemaking converges towards a relatively simple formula -- grow some grapes, squash them, and ferment them. The selection of particular varieties for flavor was less important and common than the selection of grapes that would simply grow wherever it was that you wanted to set up your farm.

I mention this history simply to establish a precedent, but my ode to blended wines has little to do with a yearning for traditional winemaking practices. My proselytizing of blended wines has much more to do with pleasure than precedent.

Setting aside for the moment that many of the best wines I've had in my life have been blends, let me evangelize based on my current experiences as a wine critic in today's market. Simply put, the majority of the most interesting wines I have tasted in the last year or two have been multiple variety blends. Yet such wines make up only a small portion of the wine made in America, and an even smaller portion of the wines purchased by most American wine lovers.

Just to be clear, when I'm talking about a blended wine, I'm not talking about adding 4% Petite Verdot to your Cabernet Sauvignon to give it a little more depth. I'm talking about American wines that are made up of enough grape varieties that they can't legally be labeled with a single variety, and wines from around the world that have funny names that we Americans don't understand or can't pronounce.

I promise to go light on the clichéd metaphors here, but there's just something magical about a blended wine that most single varietal wines can't touch. Call it the harmonic effect. I like a fantastic Gregorian chant as much as the next guy, but I tell you what -- it almost never gives me the shivers like a six part boys choir.

The most amazing wine experiences in my life all have one thing in common: the incredible complexity of the wine -- a swirling myriad of primary and secondary flavors and aromas with layers and dimensions that seem to defy the properties of a simple liquid put in the mouth. These layers and multiple notes are, of course, one of the chief reasons to age good wine, to let time transform the wine into something much more complex.

Blended wines, especially those that are made well, come pre-layered with multiple flavors and complexity. They can achieve balance and harmony in ways that single varietal wines sometimes cannot, chained as they are to the flavors of a single grape.

And if you need just one more reason that you ought to be buying more blends, here's the final one: they're often cheaper than wines with big name grapes on the label, at least where American wines are concerned. There are a few notable exceptions. Anything from Napa that is labeled "Proprietary Red" is bound to set you back several hundred bucks. But there are a lot of Rhone Blends, Bordeaux Blends, Red Table Wines, and wines with their own unique, characterful names that just won't set you back as much as a bottle of excellent Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir or a top Paso Robles Syrah.

And then of course, there are the beautiful red wines from France's Languedoc and Southern Rhone Valley; the regional red and white blends of Italy; the gorgeous blended dry reds from Portugal; the stunning Bordeaux-style blends from Chile and Argentina; the fascinating blends from Eastern Europe; the list goes on and on, even without mentioning the most famous of wine regions.

Many of us American wine lovers have led sheltered lives, not unlike that kid I knew in elementary school who would only eat sandwiches on white bread with one ingredient in between the two slices. It's time to break out of the varietal rut we're in.

So next time you're going to buy a bottle reach for something without the name of a grape on the label. And next time you're visiting a winery, ask them what they've got with a bunch of different kinds of grapes in it. Or just simply remember that you heard it here first: blended wines are the spice of life.

Thanks to reader Jim Kopp whose recent comment reminded me that I had been meaning to write something on this subject for a while. I think at one point sometime ago another reader also suggested this topic.

Exact details of the transaction aren't available, but speculation of amounts nearing $110 million dollars have been thrown about on various web sites, including Decanter. The speculation about the price, however, doesn't begin to touch the wild imaginings of the eRobertParker.Com bulletin boards over the last 18 hours after Robert Parker posted a tantalizing message yesterday announcing what he described as "one of the biggest stories in his three decades in the wine industry" with no further details.

While I certainly don't think this event merits the description Parker used, it's certainly an interesting development, and if the economy continues the way it has recently, probably not the last time a prime Napa property will be snapped up by European investors of one kind or another.

Chateau Montelena was founded in 1882 and fell into disuse through Prohibition before being purchased and revived by Jim Barrett in the early 1970's. Known for its production of high quality Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, Montelena became a world famous winery after its 1973 Chardonnay beat out French competitors in the famous 1976 Judgement of Paris.

Cos d'Estournel is known as one of Bordeaux's "Super Seconds" -- a Second Growth estate that punches above its weight consistently. It is owned by Michel Reybier, who made his fortune in a French meats company and now runs French petroleum giant Pebercan.

The 2008 vintage for Montelena will be overseen by Cos d'Estournel's director and winemaker, and the speculation has already begun as to whether the price will be going up. I'd definitely put Euros on that.

This stereotype is especially convenient for those who can't afford to drink such wines. I should know. I still can't afford to drink such wines, and while I've learned better now, about 10 years ago I believed that the only thing special about big name wines was how much money people spent making them.

Not much richer now, but older and wiser by far when it comes to wine, I've come to realize that if it were just about money, then everyone and their brother would have a mailing list 5 years deep. If there is a formula to making a world class wine, it's so damn complicated that no one can simply buy it.

But nonetheless, it certainly is possible to set out to create a world class wine, and actually succeed. You might say that everyone begins that journey, but very few actually complete it. And if you look closely at those who do end up with truly fantastic wines, the common denominator is not money (though most certainly have that in common) it is something much harder to come by: a combination of knowing what the hell you are doing and the willingness to work your ass off.

Jess Jackson most certainly qualifies for the designation of a guy who knows his stuff. One of the most successful wine moguls of America, Jackson's successes range from the amazingly consistent supermarket wines of his Kendall Jackson brand to the luxury wine of Cardinale. So when Jackson decides to buy a few of Sonoma county's best hillside vineyards, plunks a house down amidst the rows, and begins a "little project" to make world-class Bordeaux blends, one should pay careful attention.

Vérité Wines is Jackson's "little project." Founded on the simple premise of farming the absolutely best quality Bordeaux varietals possible in Sonoma County and then turning them into carefully blended masterpieces, Vérité is one of the few highly sought after wines from Sonoma County that is not made from Pinot Noir.

Winemaker Pierre Seillan comes to Vérité after a long and distinguished career of winemaking in Armagnac, the Loire Valley, and Bordeaux, where he spent nearly 20 years as technical director for seven chateaux in the region. Recruited by Jackson in 1997, Seillan holds the title of "Vigneron," by way of explaining his role both in the cellar and in the vineyards, much like the winegrower-winemakers that are much more common in Europe. Seillan wields total control of the winegrowing and winemaking operation at Vérité (with an awful lot of help, of course) to produce wines that reflect his particular vision of what his vineyards have to offer the world.

Seillan describes his three vineyard sites in terms of "micro-crus" -- small sections within the vineyards which possess their own unique characteristics, and which Seillan attempts to harness like a conductor managing the various tones of a chamber orchestra. With all the notes available to him, Seillan constructs three melodies each year, named La Muse, La Joie, and Le Désir. Each is a particular blend of varietals, vineyards, and flavors that walks the line between paying homage to the Old World while embodying the New. La Muse emphasizes Merlot, La Joie, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Le Désir, Cabernet Franc.

This fine line between classic Bordeaux styling and California power is a difficult one to walk, and in this, my first taste of these wines, I'd have to say Seillan does it remarkably well. These wines have a brawn that you'll rarely find in Bordeaux, but they are miles from the extracted, oak-laden Cabernets that are far too common in California.

That isn't to say these wines don't use oak. After careful harvesting, sorting and individual fermentation of the grapes from each block of the vineyard, the wines spend 16 months in new French oak barrels, but despite this long engagement, the wood has only a suggestive presence in the wines, rather than a dominant flavor. After barrel aging, the wines spend another 18 to 24 months in bottle before release. Less than 1000 cases are made of each.

As I mentioned, this is my first time tasting these wines, and I found them to be truly impressive.

Full disclosure: I received these wines as press samples.

2004 Vérité "La Joie" Bordeaux Blend, Sonoma County
Inky ruby in color, this wine has a rich nose of dark roasted espresso, leather, and forest floor aromas that jump out of the glass. In the mouth it is surprisingly lithe given its powerful nose, and once past a deeply earthy first impression it offers beautiful flavors of cherry, tobacco, cassis and notes of herbs that seem like a light haze mixed in with the fine dusty tannins. The finish is long and dry. A very pretty wine. 66% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20 % Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc and 4% Petit Verdot. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $200. Where to buy?

2004 Vérité "Le Désir" Bordeaux Blend, Sonoma County
Medium to dark ruby in color, this wine has a surprisingly Old World nose of earth, graphite, and the unmistakable scent of green bell pepper, which manages to hover well below the range of objectionable. In the mouth that greenness manifests as a hint of green wood studded in a matrix of bright cherry fruit dusted with fine tannins. Beautiful texture and a long finish make for lingering pleasure on the palate. 49% Merlot, 47% Cabernet Franc, 4% Cabernet Sauvignon, with a splash (0.1%) of Malbec. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $200. Where to buy?

2004 Vérité "La Muse" Bordeaux Blend, Sonoma County
Dark ruby in color, this wine has a brawny nose of pipe tobacco, cola, and incense. In the mouth it reminds me of an operatic baritone -- rich, clear and resonant with flavors of cherry, tobacco, cola, and beautiful cedar notes that merge with the drying, powdery tannins. "Hot damn" I wrote in my notebook, "this is definitely the best Bordeaux blend I've ever had from Sonoma County." And all the while the finish kept going and going and going. 86% Merlot, 8% Cabernet Franc, 4% Cabernet Sauvignon, 3% Malbec. Score: around 9.5. Cost: $200. Where to buy?

This particular reader was in Hong Kong and was proud of being part of my international contingent of readers, but wondered where else around the world I get traffic from.

Well, since you asked, I include below the list of the places that readers have come from in the last month, in order of descending traffic.

For those who care about (or who are geeky enough to wonder about such things) these statistics are filtered by Google Analytics for bots and crawlers of all kinds, though they can't completely be be scrubbed clean if the bots are spoofing a specific web browser in their HTTP request header. Translation: this is the best I got, and you're free to doubt or discount this data to whatever degree you feel appropriate.

So without further ado, here's who was visiting in the last 30 days in descending order of number of visits:

United States
Canada
United Kingdom
Australia
France
Italy
Germany
Brazil
Japan
Spain
Netherlands
Hungary
India
Singapore
New Zealand
Hong Kong
Switzerland
Denmark
Belgium
Sweden
Argentina
Mexico
Poland
Ireland
Philippines
Portugal
Norway
China
South Africa
Taiwan
Finland
South Korea
Turkey
Russia
Israel
Malaysia
Greece
Chile
Thailand
Austria
United Arab Emirates
Czech Republic
Egypt
Iceland
Bulgaria
Romania
Puerto Rico
Indonesia
Slovenia
Slovakia
Croatia
Saudi Arabia
Vietnam
Serbia
Peru
Bolivia
Ukraine
Colombia
Pakistan
Nigeria
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Dominican Republic
Estonia
Venezuela
Malta
Uruguay
Latvia
Iran
Costa Rica
Macedonia
Cyprus
Bermuda
Cayman Islands
Macao
Kuwait
Morocco
Kenya
Bahamas
Panama
Georgia
U.S. Virgin Islands
Lebanon
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Jamaica
Mauritius
Barbados
Ecuador
Nepal
Qatar
Aruba
Bahrain
Montenegro
Ghana
Jordan
Ivory Coast
Yemen
Guam
El Salvador
Ethiopia
Netherlands Antilles
Sri Lanka
Azerbaijan
Bangladesh
Algeria
Monaco
Senegal
Laos
Trinidad and Tobago
Turks and Caicos Islands
Fiji
Cambodia
Moldova
Belarus
Saint Lucia
Libya
Syria
Guatemala
Cape Verde
Bhutan
Uganda
Armenia
Albania
French Polynesia
Sudan
Martinique
Eritrea
Congo - Kinshasa
Maldives
Kyrgyzstan
Namibia
Guyana
Seychelles
Paraguay

In case you didn't bother to count, that's 135 countries. The last 20 or so in the list only had a couple of visits in the last 30 days, and the top few had several tens of thousands of visits in the same time period.

Anyone know any wine lovers in the Congo or Sudan? Those sort of floor me a little. It's also interesting to see such a separation between Hong Kong and mainland China in terms of the number of visitors.

If you're yawning, well, we now return you to your normal programming.

And then there are those people who somehow seem destined for it -- people whose stories you hear and you think, how on Earth did you manage not to do this earlier?

If Stephen Singer was going to fall into one of these categories it would most certainly be the latter. In 2003 he became the proprietor of a small winery called Baker Lane, which was the end of a long road, and will no doubt be the beginning of another.

Singer has been in the wine business in the San Francisco Bay Area for decades, starting with a small wine shop and distribution business in the City that began over 30 years ago. His retail skills and wine knowledge were parlayed into wine consulting for many restaurants, eventually landing him at Chez Panisse, where he was the wine director for many years (and also was married to owner Alice Waters). After leaving Chez Panisse, Singer went on to become a restaurant owner and entrepreneur, a career which still takes up much of his time. He is a partner in the popular Cesar in Berkeley (next door to Chez Panisse) and the newly opened West Country Grill in the town of Sebastopol in Sonoma County.

As if that weren't enough, Singer has been importing artisan olive oils and vinegars from Italy for over ten years. I find myself asking, is it any wonder that this guy eventually had to get his hands on a vineyard?

Singer was waiting for just the right piece of land, apparently, and eventually found it in a ranch just outside of Sebastopol, where two sloping edges of small valley in the Laguna de Santa Rosa watershed offer good exposure for Syrah and Pinot Noir.

To make his wine, Singer has enlisted veteran winemaker Steven Canter, who currently spends most of his time as winemaker at Quivira. Canter, who comes to winemaking first via music and then via a series of jobs in most every facet of the wine industry, has developed his craft through experiences working at Torbreck Winery in Australia, Foris Vineyards in Oregon, and Davis Bynum in California, among other places.

Canter makes this wine from grapes grown on the east-facing slope of a hillside vineyard that sits nearby Singer's property near Sebastopol. The Hurst Vineyard is planted with the Pommard, 777, and 115 clones of Pinot Noir, which are hand harvested and fermented in small lots. The wines age in large (450 liter) French oak casks, of which 40% are new and the rest (including some smaller barrels) are old enough to be classified as "neutral," meaning that they impart little or no additional flavor to the wine. The 570 cases of this wine that are made are bottled without fining or filtration.

The 2006 vintage represents the third commercial vintage (and the second I have tasted) from this small winery. It confirms for me that Baker Lane is on the path to being another coveted producer of excellent Sonoma Coast Pinot Noirs. 2006 wasn't an easy vintage for Pinot Noir in many places, but this wine shows a steady hand in the vineyard and cellar.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Cloudy medium ruby in the glass, this wine has a pretty nose of exotic spices and raspberry fruit aromas. In the mouth it is beautifully soft, like baby skin or velvet, and offers bright raspberry fruit flavors laced with mixed herbs that seem to expand on the palate as the wine lingers in a long finish that elicited a "wow" note in my tasting book. This is an honest, excellent wine that is a pleasure to drink.

Food Pairing:
Not overbearing in the slightest, this wine is very food friendly and I'd gladly pour it alongside grilled rosemary and pork tenderloin brochettes.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $39

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Unless you've been hiding under a rock lately, you'll know that here in California we're having an unprecedented fire season. Somewhere over 3000 blazes in just the first month of the summer, when in some years the total number doesn't even break 500. Blame a combination of hot weather, lightning, and a very dry Spring, but pretty much everything is burning down in California, even the famously fire retardant redwoods.

As I drive up Highway 29 in Napa, I often wonder to myself just how much all those vines that sit about 4 feet from the edge of the highway deal with all the car exhaust and grime. I guess what I really wonder is how the winemakers deal with it. It's not like you can just wash them very easily....

A bit of highway grime is one thing, but several weeks of heavy smoke represents an entirely different challenge. Despite plants' (including grapevines') tendency to filter the nasties out of the air and replace them with nice pure oxygen, there's just no way for most flora to cope with extended periods of smoke. It permeates their membranes, and doesn't make them very happy in the process.

The same is true for fruit. I can remember picking apples as a kid from an orchard that was downwind of a blaze, and despite carefully washing the fruit, tasting something that most certainly prevented me from finishing the apple.

Scientists in Australia have clearly proven that wine grapes are affected by smoke. In 2004 a series of fires significantly compromised a number of vineyards in Western Australia, and the farmers are still seeking compensation for the damage from the government.

Apparently it is possible to remove the smoke taint from wine, just as you can remove a number of other unwanted compounds or particulate matter. You filter and fine the wine. Apparently just the right filter can remove most of the "effects" of smoke on grapes. But what else has to be remove in the process I do not know.

When given the option to drink unfiltered, unfined wine, I always choose to do so, but when it comes to the 2008 vintage in some parts of Northern California, some may be forced to seriously filter their wine, or risk not having much of a wine at all. Or maybe some Napa Syrah will just have an extra note of smoke this year.

The Tinsel Vineyard
"As soon as the vines begin to bear fruit, they become targets for all manner of attacks from the natural world. From bears to boars to birds, the list of animals that consider wine grapes a tasty snack is long. Birds are often dealt with using strips of mylar that glint in the sun as the air moves them and which presumably scare off the airborne predators. They also happen to make the vineyards look festive for the rest of us." -- Alder Yarrow

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One of the oddest e-mails I've ever gotten however, was an e-mail that simply read something along the lines of, "Thank you for reviewing a Hungarian wine. This is a good wine, but there are many good wines in Hungary. I would like to bring you some one day."

I respond to all the e-mail I get, so I naturally wrote back thanking the gentleman for his offer and said he'd be welcome to if he really wanted to go to the effort. And then I promptly forgot about the exchange.

A little over a year later, however, I got another e-mail from the same guy telling me that a friend was going to be passing through San Francisco, and he had a package for me. Sure enough, a few days later, there was a stranger standing on my doorstep, thrusting a brown box into my hands and fleeing down the stairs with little more than a shy "OK!" and my call of "Thanks!" at his heels.

I'm used to getting wine from wineries, publicists, and importers. Most of the time they don't even bother asking me if I want it, it just shows up. But I'm quite unused to strangers offering me bottles simply out of what I assume in this case is immense kindness coupled with some national pride. Wine sparks something special in people that never ceases to amaze me.

Carefully wrapped inside the heavy brown box, triple sealed with tape, double wrapped with bubble wrap, I found a little treasure trove of Hungarian wine. I have no idea how my mysterious benefactor selected these wines, or whether he has any relationship with these vintners, but they represented a wider selection of Hungarian wine than I had ever had access to before, so there was only one thing to do. I sat down and tasted them.

Hungary is one of the least known wine regions of Europe, especially as far as most Americans are concerned. Those who are serious dessert wine lovers, however, may likely have heard of Tokaji Aszú, an amber colored sweet wine that has been coveted by wine lovers and royalty since the early 17th century.

In many ways the fame and popularity of Tokaji Aszú has eclipsed what is a broad and beautifully diverse wine region that produces many interesting red and white wines. Many people consider Hungary to be a serious up-and-coming concern in the wine world. Over a drink a few months ago, Lettie Teague, Executive Wine Editor for Food & Wine Magazine let it slip that she thought dry Furmint was the veritable Next Big Thing, at least as far as white wines were concerned. I raised an eyebrow, but she was dead serious. Furmint is one of several white wine varieties native to Hungary (it's one of the components of Tokaji Aszú), and alone it can be made into lovely dry and off-dry wine.

In addition to whites, Hungary's next most famous wine would probably be Bikavér, or "Bulls Blood," a red wine of generally mediocre quality that has been a favorite in Eastern Europe for centuries. Where one finds middling red wine, however, it is often possible to find much better, and that is certainly true of Hungary, especially in the 21st century. With a long tradition of growing red wine grapes, including Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, there are more and more producers who are attempting to make wines of extremely high quality, and some are succeeding.

Needless to say, as someone who enjoys "exploring" wine regions off the beaten path, this gift of wines was a real treat. Thank you, Richard.

TASTING NOTES

2006 Hollóvár Pincészet "Somloi" Furmint, Száraz Minõségi Fehérbor, Hungary
Medium blonde in the glass, this wine has a hint of honey and roasted wheat aromas in the nose. In the mouth it is smooth and lush, and bursting with fruit flavors that range from yellow plums to kiwifruit, with overtones of chamomile and other floral scents that linger into a long finish. Score: between 8.5 and 9.

2006 Royal Tokaji Furmint, Hungary
Pale gold in color, this wine has a very peculiar nose of celery and lipstick aromas. In the mouth it straightens up and flies right with flavors of unripe apples and candle wax, but doesn't manage much more than pleasant flavors. Score: around 8. Cost $15.
Where to buy?

2004 Grof Degenfeld Tokaji Furmint, Hungary
Pale green-gold in the glass, this wine has a waxy nose with subdued but juicy aromas of starfruit. In the mouth it offers nice flavors of unripe apple and starfruit, combined with a slightly waxy quality. Unfortunately the wine doesn't possess quite as much acidity as it should in my opinion, which makes it fall a little flat on the palate, despite delicious flavors. Score: around 8.5.

2006 Kiralyudvar Tokaji Sec, Hungary
Pale green-gold in color, this wine smells like what I think a melon perfume might smell like if anyone ever tried to make one. In the mouth it offers gorgeous flavors of a cornucopia of tropical fruits. I'm sitting here looking at my tasting note feeling a little ridiculous at the string of adjectives I wrote down: golden apples, melon, yellow plums, gooseberries. Great acidity gives this wine a bounce on the palate and a juiciness through its long finish. Excellent. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $28 .
Where to buy?

2006 Kiralyudvar "Lapis" Late Harvest Tokaji Furmint, Hungary
Yellow gold in the glass, this wine smells of honey and sultanas. In the mouth it feels satiny and thick on the tongue and offers slightly sweet flavors of apricot, honeysuckle, and pineapple, with a spicy undercurrent that lasts through the moderate finish. This is a very unique wine with a great personality. Score: around 9. Cost: $20

2000 Hetfurtos Tokaji Aszú 6 Puttonyos, Hungary
Bright orange-gold in color, this wine has a heady bouquet of honey and tamarind fruit. In the mouth it is thick, liquid silk that is buoyed up by bright shining acidity meaning that instead of being syrupy, this wine is a live, electric stream of apricot essence straight to the taste buds. It is however, so sweet it makes my teeth hurt, but no matter. This is dessert we're talking about here. Score: between 9 and 9.5.

2004 Malatinszky Kuria Cabernet Franc, Villanyi, Hungary
Medium garnet in color, this wine has a distinctive, nutty set of aromas on the nose. In the mouth that nutty quality continues with flavors of hazelnuts, almond skin, and leather wrapped around a core of red fruit, and structured with slightly grippy tannins. Score: between 8.5 and 9.

2004 Weininger & Gere Cabernet Franc, Villanyi, Hungary
Inky ruby in the glass, this wine has a lush nose of cherry and plum aromas. In the mouth it has a lovely balance between bright cherry and plum fruit, and a green wood quality that gives it an earthy depth and attitude. Nice length on the palate and smooth texture make this a very nice wine. Score: around 9.

At the time everyone, including myself, believed there would be a political resolution to the issue by the time the current vintage went into bottles. And indeed, the issue yo-yo'ed back and forth several more times as the French bureaucracy and the lobbying bodies tussled over the issue.

Unfortunately, however, the clock finally ran out on July 2nd, 2008, and the appeal failed. The courts ruled with finality that the 2006 reclassification, which shook up the established hierarchy by demoting several Chateaux and promoting a number of others, was invalid.

The implications of this ruling include the fact that many Chateaux cannot legally label their wines now, because those labels contain, in some cases, Cru designations that are null and void.

But wait, this just in!

On Friday, at the request of the INAO (Institut National de l'Orgine et de la Qualité -- the government body responsible for wine regulations) the French government issued an emergency decree that extends the last classification (revised in 1996) for the next three years.

The poor winemakers of St. Emilion must have whiplash by now.

This latest episode of what may prove a modern day Jarndyce and Jarndyce, doesn't really help anyone, as most winemakers concerned will have to re-print their labels, but at least it will allow wines (if properly labeled) to be sold.

Maybe in protest the winemakers should just label all the wines with varietal names.

Read the full story.

Alsace has long been a place apart, both from France and Germany, each of which have laid claim over the valleys and hills that lie west of the Rhine river which currently demarcates the border between the two nations. It's easy to characterize the region as a smooth and quirky blend between the two countries, but such a simple description belies the unique nature of the region, especially when it comes to its cuisine and its wine.

Alsace is the only region of France whose wines have historically been labeled with varietal names (though since 2001 they can now bear the names of their Grand Cru vineyards). Alsace was also the first wine region to adopt Biodynamic viticulture, the holistic growing and winemaking regimen based on the teachings of Rudolph Steiner. Since it's first Biodynamic vineyard in 1960, Alsace has been at the forefront of the movement. The region can now claim to be the most Biodynamic winegrowing region in France, with more than 37,000 acres of vineyards and more than 57 producers adhering to the strict and often bizarre methods of cultivation and winemaking.

Though I count myself as a skeptic of many of the processes and beliefs associated with Biodynamics, I must also admit that some of the greatest wines in the world (not to mention the greatest winemakers of the world) are Biodynamic. So there's clearly something to it.

Which is why when Alsatian vintner Marc Kreydenweiss talks about selecting vineyard sites based on their exceptional vibrations and constructing his wine cellars using the golden ratio and an "accumulator to charge the telluric and cosmic forces" I have to roll my eyes a bit, but then enthusiastically explore his range of distinctive wines that are made in small quantities and with the extreme care that characterizes Biodynamic methods.

Kreydenweiss took over the farming and winemaking of his family's domaine in 1970 at the tender age of 23. At the time, the 12 or so acres that his family owned were producing grapes for sale to neighbors, despite a history of winegrowing in the very same vineyards that stretched back nearly three centuries and included periods of great renown for the little hillsides of schist and sandstone. Kreydenweiss set out to recapture some of the glory of this history, and spent the next two decades acquiring additional neighboring vineyard plots and overhauling the domaine's winegrowing practices to focus on low yields and strictly organic farming. In 1991 Kreydenweiss converted the first of his vineyards to Biodynamic techniques, and the rest of the vineyards soon followed.

Today Kreydenweiss farms a little less than 30 acres of vineyards in Alsace, which include portions of three Grand Cru vineyards: Kastelberg, Moenchberg, and Weibelsberg. The domaine produces a number of small production wines from the typical grapes of the region.

Like most of the long time winemakers of Alsace, Kreydenweiss is fervently dedicated to his terroir. But unlike many of his colleagues, he harbors a desire that is hard to quench with the soils and the wines of his home: deep red wine.

Alsace grows a bit of Pinot Noir, of course, but it is almost exclusively a white wine region. So when Kreydenweiss wanted to make himself a red wine, he needed to look elsewhere. His quest for distinctive terroir eventually led him to the far south end of the Rhone valley, in an appellation called Costieres de Nimes. Here he found rich soils supporting old-vine Carignane, Mourvedre, Syrah, and Grenache, and a place to make red wines with the same passion as his whites. This review does not include these wines, but they are quite good, and are excellent values, to boot.

Only about 20% of the estate's small production levels reach the United States. I have tasted the domaine's wines each year for the past three years and found them quite consistently good. I often have a small complaint -- that they tend to lack enough acidity for my palate -- but the most recent vintages seem to have improved in this department. The wines below are some of the best I have ever had from the domaine.

Full disclosure: I received these wines as press samples.

TASTING NOTES:

2005 Marc Kreydenweiss "Wiebelsberg" Riesling Grand Cru, Alsace
Pale green gold in the glass, this wine has an amazing nose of star fruit, herbs, floral notes and unknown, exotic scents. In the mouth it is bright and beautiful, with nice acidity wrapped around flavors of apples and exotic fruits. Like some of the best Rieslings, it manages to be sweet without any trace of sugar, but also savory in some obscure respect. A forever finish makes this a wine to savor, quietly, alone or with friends that require little conversation. Score: around 9.5. Cost: $35. Where to buy?

2006 Marc Kreydenweiss "Kritt" Pinot Blanc, Alsace
Pale gold in the glass, this wine smells of honey and old parchment. In the mouth it offers a light sweetness (it is slightly off-dry) flavored like delicate honey, and aromas of white flowers that soar into a long finish. The wine has a soft character (just a hair light on acidity), but this cannot mar what is otherwise a lovely concoction. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $30. Where to buy?

2005 Marc Kreydenweiss Andlau Riesling, Alsace
A pale green gold color, this wine smells of honey poached pears. In the mouth it is gorgeous chalky and dry, with beautifully balanced flavors of honey, white flowers, and citrus zest. The long finish is mostly citrus dominated, and lovely to behold. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $22.Where to buy?

2005 Marc Kreydenweiss "Kritt" Pinot Blanc, Alsace
Pale green gold in color, this wine has a stony nose of apple and pear aromas. On the palate it is a little waxy in flavor, with a nice texture and a smoky quality that wraps around core flavors of unripe apples, and spiced pears. Like its brethren, the wine possesses a lovely finish, though perhaps less complexity. Score: around 9. Cost: $24. Where to buy?

2005 Marc Kreydenweiss "Clos Rebberg" Pinot Gris, Alsace
Light gold in color, this wine has a nose of chamomile, dried herbs, and yellow flowers. In the mouth it offers quite distinctive flavors of bee pollen, dandelions and honey. Well balanced with a lovely finish, the wine dances on the palate. Score: between 8.5 and 9. Cost: $32. Where to buy?

The question at hand is whether subjective judgments have any place in proper wine criticism. To put it plainly, should wine critics evaluations of wine include notions of "enjoyment" or "personal preference" ? If you want to witness the origins of this discussion, you'll need to read the comment thread on my recent post about the Myth of the Monolithic Palate.

My reader friend Arthur, who runs his own wine blog called Winesooth, suggests that the inclusion of such judgments in wine criticism may be responsible for the fact that people blindly follow some critics and their scores. According to him, if I correctly interpret his point of view, the wine world would probably be a much better place if critics focused their evaluations of wine on purely "objective criteria" like flavor, texture, color, finish, aroma, etc. The idea being that it's much better for a critic to simply tell you, for instance, the ingredients and cooking method for a given plate of food, and let you make up your own mind about it, than to tell you how wonderful a dish it is (in addition to what it might be made of).

I, on the other hand, suggest that not only is it impossible to eliminate subjectivity from wine criticism, but that such subjectivity itself is quite possibly the most important aspect of wine criticism. I'm of the opinion that merely telling you the ingredients of a dish (or the organoleptic qualities of wine) is not criticism at all, or if it is a kind of criticism, it is certainly not useful. I've had lots of Merlot that tastes like plum, cherry, and chocolate, but some of it is total crap, while others transport me to fantastic, sensual places.

If you'd like to dive deeper into the philosophical nature of aesthetic criticism, and wine criticism in particular you'd be hard pressed to find a better set of blog posts than two recent ones I recently discovered.

The first is by a guy named Ben Sherwin, who barrels headlong into the guts of aesthetic epistemology by asking, and answering the question, "how do we know if one wine is really better than another?" Specifically, he addresses the question of whether Lafite-Rothschild is really, truly better than Boone's Farms, and why? (The answer, in case you were wondering, is most definitely yes).

Ben's post inspired Keith Levenberg to explore the nature of subjectivity versus objectivity in aesthetic evaluations. Keith suggests that those who are experts in an aesthetic field are capable of making objective judgments about things which most people find to be subjective. Many people like one artist or another, but expert critics, and the establishment that they make up as a group are quite capable of making a definitive judgment about what artwork is better than another, or even what really constitutes art in the first place.

In the service of my argument with Arthur, I might suggest that the subjective judgments of wine critics (especially those who actually know what the heck they're doing, as opposed to hacks and bloggers ;-) are actually produced through the synthesis of the type of objective aesthetic judgments that Keith explicates nicely in his post.

The appreciation of beauty is ultimately an emotional, subjective act, but the detailed and complete apprehension of beauty, especially in its complex forms such as music, art, and wine requires a body of knowledge and a set of objective observations. The two go hand in hand. Appreciation without knowledge may be pleasurable, but it is shallow. Apprehension without appreciation may be detailed, but it ignores our humanity and the truth of emotion.

We look to critics not just to analyze, but to make aesthetic judgments, and their assessments are necessarily born of the human condition: we have both perceptions and emotions, and we can no more divorce the two than we can give up our humanity. The real question is whose perceptions and emotions do we trust?

Thanks to Jack at Fork & Bottle for pointing me to Keith's post, which led me to Ben's.

There are two clear reasons for this.

The first is that the product I am endorsing is free. The second is because I designed it.

Those of you who know a little bit about me may be aware that by day I run an interactive design and strategy consulting firm called HYDRANT, which, among other things designs some of the best e-commerce and web applications in the world. Apart from employing my company's expertise a little in the design of this blog, I generally tend to keep these two careers of mine entirely separate. Or at least I did until about 18 months ago when we agreed to help a company called Vinfolio build the best wine cellar management software on the planet.

And today I am extremely proud to announce the launch of a public beta of that software, under the name VinCellar. This is a beta version of a web-based software product, which means that it still has some rough edges, only includes about 80% of the functionality that we have designed, and is subject to somewhat radical modification at any moment as we see fit, but in spite of that, it totally kicks ass.

VinCellar is designed to help a specific type of wine lover: anyone who has a wine collection that numbers at least one more bottle than they are capable of remembering off the top of their head. The more wine you own, the more useful you will likely find this software application, but even those with a very modest number of bottles may discover that this software will help them manage, maintain, and enjoy the wine they own.

Until today, there has really only been one truly sophisticated wine cellar management solution out there. While there are a host of desktop and web based software systems on the market, ranging in price from free to several thousands of dollars, I've seen almost all of them, and the only one that actually has most of the functionality needed to help wine lovers manage their cellars is a free web-based application called CellarTracker.

The only problem is that in addition to sophisticated functionality, CellarTracker offers its users an incredibly horrible, teeth-grindingly painful, ugly, and all around completely unusable user interface. Of course, that doesn't mean that thousands of people haven't gritted their teeth and learned to use it despite these massive usability flaws.

But the best tools should not only NOT be painful to use, they should be pleasurable. Just ask an iPhone owner if you need a further explanation of this principle.

And just as Apple's graphical user interface showed the world that there was an alternative to DOS based computing in 1984, it is my hope that many wine lovers will recognize the degree to which VinCellar represents a new paradigm in interacting with your wine collection. In short, wine cellar management just got a hell of a lot more fun.

The main purpose of this application is, of course, helping you do stuff with (or to) your wine collection -- from figuring out what you've got, where it is, how much it's worth, what you've bought, and what you want to drink, to what you probably should drink, what you should sell, and what you might not know about your wine consuming habits because you've never looked at the trends before.

In addition to tools to easily add, remove, reposition, edit, sell, analyze, and generally keep track of individual bottles or whole collections, the application also allows you to rate wines, add your own tasting notes, and see the scores and notes that others (including major wine critics) have made on any wine. These notes are pretty much the most useful part of CellarTracker, and they will likely become a very important source of value in VinCellar over time as well.

Finally, while it might be just enough to change the game by offering 98% of the same functionality as your major competitor with a much more usable interface, VinCellar today has dozens of useful (and entertaining) features that don't exist in any cellar management application, such as the ability to visually browse your wine cellar by label image, the ability to perform actions on multiple wines at once, and the tools to do sophisticated graphical analysis on all or a portion of your collection. And that's just for starters. Some of the features we've designed are so cool that we're not finished implementing them yet, so you'll just have to hang in there.

If you've read this far, thanks for indulging my excitement, and I hope you'll take the time to go check out VinCellar. Set up an account and add or import some wines to check out how the thing works.

It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn good. A few more features, a few bug fixes, and a bunch more tasting notes will take it from pretty good to awesome.

Let me know what you think: www.vincellar.com

"Spring Snow" is a pretty good nickname for a sake because it sounds not just delicate and natural, but outright freaky when you think about it. Snowing in springtime? You don't see that often.

Same for its sake namesake -- although in this case, blame not Mother Nature, but the US government.

Akitabare "Shunsetsu" ("spring snow") Nama Honjozo is highly unusual because it combines a class of sake we often see in the U.S. -- nama -- with one that we don't, honjozo.

Honjozo sakes are basically the same quality as junmai sakes, because at least 30 percent of the outer part of the rice is polished away. They're very popular in Japan. But because of US tax law on imported sake, they're uncommon here.

"Junmai" means "pure rice": nothing but rice, water and koji mold goes into a junmai sake.
For honjozos, brewer's alcohol may be added during the process. Usually this is done to create a lighter, less intense, more subdued style. Think about the difference between Italian Pinot Grigio and Alsatian Pinot Gris. The honjozo is more like the Pinot Grigio -- crisp, light-bodied, meant for food, at the sacrifice of some aromatic and flavor intensity. Yet there are plenty of mild dishes in Japanese cuisine that a richly flavored sake (or a full-bodied, super-aromatic Pinot Gris) would overpower.

Honjozo sakes are big in Japan partly because of their food friendliness, and partly because their easy quaffability makes it easy to drink quickly enough to get shitfaced. Japanese don't drink halfway.

However, while honjozo sakes are generally the same price or cheaper than junmais in Japan, in the US they are significantly more expensive. The US government taxes them at a higher rate because alcohol is added, so they drop into the same category as fortified wines like Port.

That, and the fact that junmai has the better connotation in the US of being "pure," has kept honjozo sakes from making any headway in this market.

This honjozo is an oddity because it's also "nama," which means unpasteurized. It doesn't taste like any other sake I've had on these shores. More on that in a moment.

The brewery, based in Akita prefecture in chilly northern Honshu on the Japan Sea side, claims to be bound by tradition. The company's junmai label proclaims "koshiki junzukuri" -- the old way. And the brewery claims to have been using some of the same tools for the past century (In case you're wondering, the US Air Force didn't bother flying that far north.)
And yet, Akitabare's sake lineup is pretty innovative. The daiginjo is bottle-aged for two years, which is almost heresy in an industry focused on freshness. And then there's this sake, which -- because it's nama -- is most definitely "drink now."

Before that spring snow melts.

Tasting Notes:
The aroma is complex, with notes of cream, mustard powder, orange rind, oyster shell, melon and shrimp. But it doesn't prepare you for what you're about to taste. Neither does the mouthfeel, which is a big plus: it's tight and creamy at the same time, with a taut center and a long taut finish.

What I taste from this is melon, and plenty of it -- the characteristic of a nama, but definitely not a characteristic of most honjozos. I also taste notes of cream and oyster shell. It's a little pungent and never fattens up. That's a good thing -- it's very food-friendly.

Food Pairing:
I had it with Chinese delivery food -- sliced fish sauteed with bok choy, spinach with garlic and vegetable chow mein -- and it was excellent.

Overall Score: around 9

How Much?: $20

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.