Malbec, the signature varietal of Argentina, isn’t a red wine that most people reach for as a rule. Its South American provenance has only been on fine wine drinkers’ radar for a couple of decades, and the vine itself — with its sensitivity to frost and disease, plus its tendency to make ham-handed, tannic wines — just hasn’t been able to achieve the kind of profile of, say, cabernet sauvignon or merlot.

And that’s a crying shame. Or at least that was the conclusion of the Ladies Tasting Society after blind-sampling our way through nine delicious malbecs last week. Overall, we thought these wines were expertly crafted, surprisingly drinkable (even “silky” and “juicy” by some ladies’ estimation), and attractively priced (our average expenditure was $24 per bottle, even though we set ourselves a limit of $45). Not one struck us as clunky or flawed. All of them underlined our mental note-to-self to buy, pop, and enjoy more malbec in our lives.

For the results of our tasting, including a delish best value: click here: More

There are a number of wine tasting party kits on the market, all of them having the advantage that a wine tasting event, no matter how poorly organized or equipped, is kind of hard to torpedo. A pretty table, delicious snacks, good friends, ten bottles of wine … what possibly could sink this ship? So I had my doubts when I received an email from Time to Wine asking if I’d test their kit for Wine Girl Online. My pessimism deepened when I took the bonus quiz ahead of time and discovered an ill-posed question and an ugly typo.

For how this kit soon cured of my crabbiness, click here: More

Everyone, not just wine lovers, should see Bottle Shock for the same reason that everyone, not just Republicans, should have listened to John McCain’s acceptance speech last night. That’s because the film lit a similarly patriotic flame in my heart (me, a shameless liberal elite whose New Year’s resolution was to buy more French wine and who has never voted GOP). But after Bottle Shock, the new feature film based on the infamous 1976 blind tasting in Paris when a handful of upstart California reds and whites bested their French counterparts, I walked out of the theater with a big heart of love for the Napa vintners who believed, against all ideological odds, that they could make fine wine to rival the greats of Bordeaux and Burgundy. (I also left with a burning thirst for a decent glass of homegrown Amurican cabernet sauvignon.)

Similarly, McCain’s speech — especially the parts where he recounted his experience as a P.O.W. in Vietnam, and especially the story of how he declined to be released early because of the armed forces code of “first in, first out” — made me proud of my native country’s characteristic bravery, heroism, and mule-headed optimism.

Don’t worry. I’m not going over to the red side come November. And as for the rest of Bottle Shock, well, let’s just say Sideways has nothing to fear. For more on the movie, including the truly shocking historical inaccuracies, click here: More

Riesling, the rich white native to Germany, is one of the most underappreciated wines of all time. There are two reasons for this: the common (and mistaken) impression that all riesling is sweet, and the indecipherable labeling on most Old World examples. Lucky for white wine lovers, a superhero has stepped forward to save this wine from total obscurity. Its name is Australia and its secret power lies in dry, simply-labeled rieslings that also happen to be appealingly priced (though that was never a problem with this underdog varietal).

For two Aussie rieslings, one to quaff and one to avoid, click here: More

I gained a friend at a party last weekend thanks to an embarrassingly nerdy discussion we had about, of all things, storage. (I promise I am not usually such a dweeb at parties, but I was standing around with a handful of Internet and high tech types.) My new friend was delving deep into the intricacies of archiving film and video, which I was surprised is not as easy as copying onto a big hard drive. As she was wrapping up by citing some technologies that look promising, but haven’t been time tested, I got to thinking about wine.

“That sounds like the great cork debate,” I said. To follow my logic, click here: More

I have a suggestion for novices who find themselves in possession of the wine list at a restaurant but at a loss for what to do with it. Before I break it down for you, though, I have three caveats.

First, my trick will only work at a certain kind of restaurant, that is, where somebody — the owner, usually, but perhaps the head chef or a partner — has put more than a thought or two into the wine. Fortunately, this sort of spot has become ubiquitous, even at levels below “special occasion” restaurants. You can tell you’re in the right place if the wine list has more than two pages, more than three wines by the glass, and lots of wine names you don’t recognize.

Second, if you’re on a date, and you’re stressed to impress, I recommend you conceal your strategy from your companion. You’ll see why in a moment.

Finally, you will need to decide first whether you want to drink a white or a red. If you can’t do this, I can’t help you. Otherwise, for my proposal click here: More

In a landscape of rolling, oak-dotted hills and vineyards producing loads of forgettable wine, one Sierra Foothills winery is determined to make its mark. It’s called Cedarville Vineyard and it’s run by “tech refugees” and UC Davis oenology graduates Jonathan Lachs and Susan Marks. (That’s me with Jonathan at their tasting room.) Cedarville’s acreage is well-positioned on a hillside at a slightly higher altitude than most of the area’s wineries, so the grapes are protected from late frosts and kept cool at at night. Just as importantly, the husband-wife team is keeping quality high by keeping quantity under control: low yields in the vineyard, hands-on attention in the winery, and a very small production. (They do less than 2,000 cases a year and have no plans to grow beyond that.)

For our special favorites from Cedarville’s current line up, click here: More

Normally the words “emerging wine region” should merit a wine lover’s attention. With demand (and prices) rising for well-known labels, emerging wine regions are often the source of easy-to-find, easy-on-your-wallet palate pleasers. Such is the case, for example, with South Africa or Languedoc-Roussillon in the south of France.

Unfortunately, the term can also refer to an area that is, on the whole, still struggling to get around some of the climate and soil issues that prevented it from being a prestige wine region in the first place. Such is the case, I’d argue after a recent visit, to the Sierra Foothills in California.

Also known as Gold Country because of the famous gold strike near Sutter’s Mill in 1848, the region lies mostly in Amador and Calaveras counties, about halfway between Sacramento and Yosemite. Many wild-wild-West remnants of the great rush remain, but these days in the Sierra Foothills it’s safe to say that red, white, and rosé is the new gold.

Not in the 14-karat sense, though. For my terrifying encounter with a junk-yard dog of a chard, click here: More

What if I told you that the best wine list I ever saw didn’t really exist?

No, it wasn’t in cyberspace or science fiction. It was at Fine’s Cellar, a smart restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona I visited not long after it opened last winter. Partly because the paint was just dry, but mostly because the owner Michael Fine is himself a wine retailer, at that point the bistro-esque spot had a printed list only of wines by the glass. If you wanted a bottle, you got to wander – really, on foot – through a small but very well edited store in the front of the building, pick one out, and drink it at retail cost.

We enjoyed a relatively hard-to-find, over-the-top rich, 2004 Two Hands’ Shiraz “Bella’s Garden” for a mere $47. We were severely tempted, too, by a 2003 Carruades de Lafitte, the prêt-à-porter version of Lafitte Rothchild, for about the same price. At any other restaurant, we’d have had to slap down a hundie at least for each.

For the secret to Mr. Fine’s fine idea, click here: More

I’ve had a lucky streak with barbera. Three standout glasses of this Italian-native varietal from two very different places made a recent impression on me; the samples I drank on a recent trip to the Sierra Foothills helped redeem an entire wine region. And unlike in “Goldilocks” no personal property was vandalized in my pursuit of satisfaction.

For my list, starting at the bottom with a rich red with roasted coffee notes, click here: More