With the exception of an occasional mimosa — and only when the sparkler destined for adulteration isn’t one of my favorites — I’ve never been much of a wine-cocktail drinker. Oh, and then there’s the sangría we serve every year at our Fourth of July pool party (again, made with zinfandel of a quality that wouldn’t highly recommend itself for savoring alone).
 
That’s because wine, to me, already represents a finished work of art. In my opinion, the ultimate mixologist is the winemaker: she worked hard to source the best ingredients, blend at the perfect levels, and serve in a pretty package. Why would I want to muck up her creation by throwing soda pop at it?
 
But I surprised myself last night not only by serving “Late Harvest Wine and Campari Cocktails” before a dinner party, but by improving the recipe with a stealth ingredient. For my recipe, click here:
 
The surprise deviation from the recipe was a bottle of Moscato d’Asti I had in the fridge. This off-dry, slightly effervescent sweetheart of a deal (the Tintero “Sori Gramella” cost me $9) had all the residual sugar needed to replace the late harvest riesling called for by the recipe. Plus, its fizz made this refreshing drink even more thirst quenching.
 
3-1/2 cups Moscato d’Asti
2-1/2 cups OJ
1 cup Campari
 
Mix, chill, and serve over ice in a tall glass. Cheers!

My wife likes to tease me by saying that I “woefully under-decant.” I don’t think so. But it is true that I rarely decant. And I admit that a few times I’ve been burned by not decanting — take the example of the Glen Carlou 2005 Grand Classique I wrote about recently. In fact, the Grand Classique, which tasted “weird” when I opened it but delicious the next day, inspired me to review my theory about when (and when not) it’s a good idea to decant. For my guide, click here for more:
 
As most of you know, decanting is a process whereby you pour a bottle of wine into a larger vessel, usually designed to expose the wine to oxygen, so that it can sit and aerate. Depending on the wine, some people will decant for hours before drinking. The idea is that the exposure to oxygen softens the wine and allows hidden aromas and flavors to emerge. That’s it — unless you want to get into the snob factor behind decanting, which is definitely at play for some drinkers, since somebody apparently is spending almost $500 on penis-substitutes like this three-foot-high python-shaped disseminator.
 
The first instance in which, in my opinion, it’s a good idea to decant is when the wine you’re drinking is very fine and very young. See, unlike everyday wine which is made to be ready to drink (and indeed, 90 percent of all bottles of wine are ingested within 24 hours of purchase), fine wine is made to be unfit for immediate consumption. With collectible, expensive wines, the ideal drinker is a devotee who buys it every year, often by the case, cellars it, and enjoys it over time. She likes to witness how — because of the micro-oxygenation that occurs with the air left in the bottle, plus the tiny bit of porosity of the cork — the wine pokes its head out, blossoms, fades, and then dies, sometimes over the course of 20 years or more.
 
Sometimes, though, you just can’t wait. And that’s when a decanter comes in handy. It fast-forwards the ageing process, so that wines built for the long haul can be enjoyed in the short term.
 
The only other time I think wine should be decanted? Precisely the opposite situation: when the wine is very fine and very old. This is because after a fine wine has sat around for a long time, it tends to throw off sediment, and you don’t want that bitter, mucky stuff going into your glass. So decanting — even the seemingly pretentious method you see in restaurants, where the sommelier pours the wine from the bottle to the decanter over a candle — helps you see when the sediment starts to travel toward the neck, at which moment you stop dispensing. Then I recommend you serve the wine in the decanter immediately. In this instance, we are dealing with a wine at its maturity, so decanting is not about aerating. In fact, further exposure to oxygen can cause a delicate old wine to expire before your eyes.
 
So now you see why I rarely decant. Fortunately, it’s very rare that I risk infanticide on a fine young wine. Unfortunately, it’s even rarer that I get a chance to drink very fine, very old wines. In fact I might never decant if there weren’t two corollaries to my rule. For example I am coming around to my wife’s opinion that, young or old, French wine should always be decanted. She feels that Burgundy and Bordeaux in particular taste horrible upon first sip but then delicious if you revisit a half hour later. Alice’s axiom was reinforced for me recently at a dinner party when I poured sans decanting a 2002 red Burgundy, a Chambolle-Musigny from Pierre Bertheau et Fils. After we toasted and took our first sip we reared back, surprised by the utter absence of flavor. “It’s over the hill already!” I exclaimed, embarrassed. But on Alice’s advice we simply put our glasses at the end of the table and then came back 45 minutes later. And what a change. It was as if the wine woke up, gasped, literally filled its lungs with air, and was reborn with all its fruit and earth and spice flavors intact.
 
A final, related addendum to the rule: if a wine you expect to be good tastes bad, try decanting. Often, strange aromas and flavors can “blow off” in a decanter. Again, this may be especially true of wines of foreign origin, such as the Grand Classique from South Africa that got me started on all this. You can bet that (even though the Grand Classique is cheap, young, not French, but as it turns out delicious) I’m going to decant the weird stuff right out of my next bottle before I take a sip.

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:

So here it is, ladies and gentlemen: My modest proposal is that you go your Whites or Reds section, briefly scan the offerings, and choose the cheapest. That’s right, the cheapest bottle. If you have zero recognition of this wine’s name and no clue how to pronounce it, that’s actually a major bonus. Don’t panic; just say to the server, “We’ll have this bottle,” point, and listen carefully as he enunciates for you. (That way you can repeat it to your date if he says, “Wow, what is that you ordered?”)

Why on earth would you do this? Because if the person behind that wine list is really passionate about wine (and remember we have determined that she is), she will have put a lot of thought into that bargain bottle. She will want each option on her list to be delicious, but not all of it can be super expensive, so she will have been inspired by the challenge presented by her meanest selection. In the end, that Chateau LaCheapeau will be in its lowly position not just because of its great price, but because of its great “price-quality ratio,” that is, the steep inverse proportion between amount it costs and the amount of pleasure it will deliver.

Note that you should not choose the second-least expensive wine, a symptomatic move made by many panicked diners, so much so that (according to “The Smart Woman’s Guide to Reading a Wine List“) some scheming wine directors will put in that position a yucky wine they have lots of and want to unload.

Above all you should not be afraid of the unknown. In fact, if you follow my advice and are assiduous in your bottom feeding (bottom drinking?), I guarantee that you will encounter lots of wine that is new and exciting to you. That’s also thanks to our smarty pants behind the wine list. He knows that many great wines are hiding behind obscure labels, often at sleeper prices. (In fact, another nasty tendency among less-than-righteous wine directors is, knowing that novices will choose within their comfort zone, to mark up very recognizable wines even more than the usual 100 percent). Just don’t share your strategy with your date, or at least not yet. If you’re lucky she’ll turn out to be another Chateau LaCheapeau aficionado.

Just in time for tax season, here’s a list of my ten favorite wines that cost less than, well, a lot of stuff, including a bouquet of flowers, three trips across the Golden Gate Bridge — even Madonna’s new CD. To make it easier to find the wines, I’ve listed the four reds, one rosé, and five whites by type, and then supplied a particular example from a producer I’ve grown to love. So if, say, you’re inspired to cop a highly-recommended cheap thrill off a pinot bianco from Italy, but can’t find my favorite from Terre di Gioia, trust me. Pretty much any pinot bianco in this price range will do the trick. For less than $3 per glass on the average, these wines will also take the edge off that check you’re writing April 15 to the military industrial complex.

For this year’s list of top ten wines less than $15, click here:

Grenache from Spain
(Borsao “Tres Picos” Garnacha, Campo de Borja, $13)
When it’s picked right and comes from older vines, grenache (“garnacha” in Spanish) can make a rich, round wine with loads of sweet cherry flavors. Examples coming out of obscure pueblos like Borja can be amazingly low priced.

Petite Sirah from California
(Bogle Petite Sirah $11)
Remember Gallo’s “Hearty Burgundy”? It’s no surprise this satisfying jug wine had nothing to do with real Burgundy. But did you know that a key ingredient was petite sirah? Bogle’s bottling is as ubiquitous as it is tasty.

Sangiovese Blend from Italy
(Falesco “Vitiano” Umbria $10)
Forget Chianti. Look outside this famous region for innovative, well-priced riffs on its main grape sangiovese. Falesco’s is fleshed out with merlot and cab but still packs a spicy, food-friendly punch.

Red Table Wine from Portugal
(Symington “Altano” Duoro $7)
Drink up these big, dry, earthy bargains before the rest of the world catches on. Altano, a blend of tinta roriz and touriga franca from the great Port producer Symington, is a little tannic but a whole lotta fruit-forward too.

Dry Rosé from France
(Domaine de l’Hortus “Bergerie l’Hortus” Pic St. Loup, Rosé Saignée $12)
Perfect for a hot summer afternoon when you just can’t stomach a red, real rosé has made a comeback recently. L’Hortus’s is delicious proof that pink can mean crisp, refreshing, and a tad interesting — not sweet, cloying, and simple.

Fume Blanc from California
(Chateau St. Jean Fume Blanc $13)
“Fume Blanc” is what Robert Mondavi renamed sauvignon blanc to make it more marketable. He also aged some of it in oak to give it a touch of creaminess. Chateau St. Jean’s is one of the best — and cheapest — examples of the style.

Pinot Bianco from Italy
(Terre di Gioia Pinot Bianco $11)
When they hear “white wine from Italy,” most people think pinot grigio, not pinot bianco. But the latter has been like a lifeboat thrown into the mediocre ocean of the former. The name of the winery Terre di Gioia is easy to remember: just think “joy.”

Vouvray from France
(Champalou Vouvray Sec $14)
Vouvray comes from the Loire River valley and is made from the wondrously versatile grape chenin blanc. So it can come dry, sweet, still, sparkling, and everywhere in between. Whichever, it’s appley, minerally, honeyed, and great as an apéritif.

Sparkling Wine from Spain
(Jaume Serra “Cristalino” Cava Brut $8)
Many bubbly fans don’t realize that Spain makes an amusing sparkler called Cava. It’s not got any of the steeliness or complexity of Champagne. And xarel’lo, one of the grapes it’s made of, is no chardonnay. But at less than a ten-spot, Cristalino’s got some dough (and some tangerine, grapefruit, and toast flavors, too).

Gewurztraminer from Anywhere
(Navarro Gewurztraminer “Cuvee Traditional” Mendocino $14)
Poor gewurztraminer. It’s the most overlooked varietal in the wine world. But lucky us; we can get damned good gewurz for very few greenbacks. Navarro’s makes theirs in a dry style, but with all the floral and spice notes you need.

Dear Wine Girl:
I hosted a holiday dinner party recently and one of my guests brought a very special bottle from his cellar: a 1986 Château Margaux, in fact, which he’d bought upon release way back when. I was so honored — and so flustered — by his generosity that when we decanted the bottle and I noticed some off aromas, I dismissed them, telling myself that the wine couldn’t be bad. Also I didn’t want my guest to be embarrassed. But more than halfway through our plates of Argentinian carbonada (all of us trying, but failing, to enjoy the Margaux with it) my neighbor finally confessed he thought the wine was “really tannic.” Truth is, it was corked and the meal was ruined. What should I have done?
Signed, Corky in the Wine Country

Dear Corky:
Lots of bad things can happen to a good bottle of wine. My sister in law once ordered a case of artisinal zinfandel shipped to her home in Phoenix, Arizona, which seemed very convenient until the UPS driver left the package on her front doorstep on a 110-degree afternoon. By the time she came home from work, that big zin had boiled up through the corks, seeped through the seals, and puddled all over the bottom of the box. She tried a sample, but it was truly “cooked”: tinny, a little burnt, and just not fresh.

I’ve also tasted wines that are oxidized, which means that too much oxygen has been absorbed into the wine, either because I let it age for longer than I should have, or because it was bottled improperly in its youth. In this case, again the wine will look pale and taste flat and overalcoholic. (That’s because tiny bits of oxygen will soften and eventually erase a wine’s fruit flavors, leaving you with tasteless booze).

But what does it mean when a bottle is corked, and what should you do if this horror befalls you?

As for your Margaux, Corky, you seem sure it was corked, probably because you spotted the tell-tale wet cardboard taste of a corked wine. A bottle is deemed corked because it had the misfortune of being stopped up with a tainted cork. The chemical compound behind this tragedy is called TCA, and is actually very widespread in the cork-making industry. Some say one in ten bottles is stopped with a tainted cork, though how much TCA there needs to be in the cork before your average taster can detect its effect, is still hotly debated among the experts.

Don’t feel bad for not having identified the corked Margaux before it was too late. It’s hard to summon up the courage to declare a wine bad, whether you ordered it from a restaurant, bought it yourself, or (perhaps hardest of all) received it as a gift. There can be ego, expectations, and often a lot of money tied up in a wine. Not long ago I ordered a bottle of 2002 Brewer Clifton “Clos Pepe” chardonnay for $79 at a favorite restaurant in Sonoma, and because I’d spent ten minutes bragging about my smart selection and telling the whole history of the Clos Pepe vineyard, when the bottle arrived corked I wasn’t inclined to say so when the waiter gave me a taste. Let’s just say nobody, especially he, was pleased when I had to send the chardonnay back after it had been poured, sipped, and rejected by the entire table. By the time we got a new bottle and fresh stemware, we were done with the course I’d intended to pair the wine with. Boo, hiss.

So, to any reader saddled unexpectedly with a corked wine, I beg of you: speak now or regret later. Yes, if you detect anything off about a wine, it’s absolutely imperative that you raise a big red flag right away. In a restaurant, your waitstaff should be happy to taste and confirm your suspicions (or, if you’re being overly cautious, to reassure you that the wine’s not corked, but filled with the earthy flavors typical of this region, blah blah blah.) The trick is you’ve got to search out and destroy that corked wine before it gets into your friends’ glasses and literally leaves a bad taste in every one’s mouth.

Now, in your case, you had an easy out that could have saved both dinner and face: as you are opening any fine, older wine at home, you should taste it first. Explain to your friend that you are making sure it’s ready to drink or if it needs some time to breathe. If it tastes even slightly off, tell your donor that the wine seems okay, but has some funky aromas that are sure to blow off after a few minutes in the decanter. Serve the back-up bottle you pulled in case of emergency, and then after 15 minutes or more come back to your guest’s wine. If indeed it still tastes corked, then give a taste to your guest; especially after he’s been drinking an untainted vintage, he should be able to agree that –woe is me — the Margaux was cursed from birth.

Most of all, it’s good to remind yourself that after all, wine is not about ego or price; it’s about pleasure. And since no one wants to drink unpleasurable wine (no matter where it came from or how much it cost), there’s no shame in raising a red flag about a corked wine.

Oh, and feel free to ask your guest if he bought more than one bottle of that Margaux. If so, that’s great, because he can look forward to trying them; chances are, they’re fine, and he can experience them in all their intended wondrousness. There’s nothing so silky, so opulent, and so ethereal as Château Margaux. Maybe he’ll invite you too.

From the spit-not-swallow department: Some of you may have read the hilarious report in the New York Times yesterday about “wine tasters gone wild” in the Long Island wine region of New York state — complete with stories of limo-loads of bachelorettes dancing on table tops, inebriated haywagon riders running naked through the vines, and garden variety drunks demanding that tasting room pourers “fill ‘er up!” Apparently some Long Island wineries are disallowing party vans and limousines in an effort to cut down on this alarming trend. The Times reminds its readers that wine touring is about the wine, not the buzz, using the same tone as winery hosts who are having more and more to snort the self-righteous shibboleth at would-be guzzlers: “this is a tasting room, not a bar!”

But why doesn’t anyone point out that there’s one simple way to avoid being an Ugly American wine tourist:

Spitting. Using a spittoon may not seem civilized at first. Indeed, my wife is always telling me in tasting rooms that I’m gross when I spit, and (worse?) “wasting the wine.” But which is less polite? Spitting discreetly in a visitors’ center, or standing up through the sun roof on the drive home, trying to rap to “The Chronic”? I didn’t object to this stunt when it seemed like a good idea to a fellow taster a few years ago, since it was amusing. But my point stands. Plus, I just don’t understand how wineries, most of which are located in rural areas and accessible only by car, don’t for safety’s sake encourage more spitting. Again, it’s a hundred times less shameful to duck briefly over a spittoon than to squat publicly on a jail toilet, “DUI” forever on your record. Now there’s a waste of wine.

As Maya put it in Sideways, wine is a living thing. And she’s right: as it arcs through a youth, a middle age, and its golden years, every wine changes. And then, like all living things, it dies. So in the case of a good wine, or more specifically a fine wine that’s meant to last, the surprising answer to my titular question is never.

Even if it’s an ancient wine, robbed by the years of all its fruit flavors, and reduced by oxygenation to vinegar and alcohol, it’s not bad, just expired. I mean, you would never say of Diane Keaton for example that because she’s lost her figure she’s gone bad. She just plays a different role in your entertainment. Similarly, you would not say of ex-President Reagan that because he passed away he’s become pernicious; on the contrary, he’s now a legend. It’s the same with wine.

Now if any wine (fine or otherwise) is corked, cooked, or otherwise damaged, that wine would be bad, and you’d be correct to send it back in a restaurant. Or, if a wine is intact but not your style, then from your perspective you’re right to call it bad, but I wouldn’t recommend that you try to return it to the store you bought it from.

But a good wine is never bad. This was proved on me a few weekends ago by a very special old cabernet from the Napa winery Charles Krug.

It was a 1974 “Reserve Selection, Lot F1” that my neighbors purchased from the winery right after it was released. Krug bought the fruit for this wine from the Fay vineyard in Stag’s Leap, a magical plot that made history two years later when Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ version came in first at the famous Paris blind tasting, California cabs versus French Bordeaux.

The bottle itself was in perfect condition – no leakage, cork deterioration, or ullage – and it bore the signature of Robert Mondavi’s father, Cesare, once-patriarch at Krug, on the pristine label. Although this brick-red beverage had held up admirably through 35 years of Time swinging its scythe around its foil cap, I thought it had lost most of its fruit and was starting to taste a little alcoholic and acidic. Everyone else loved it, though, and I noticed that they drank it down to the pile of sediment at the bottom of the bottle, ’til they could drink no more. In any case, the wine had definitely not gone bad. To my companions it was toothsome, to me, a little long in the tooth.

Krug, by the way, is not to be confused with the French Champagne maker Krug — even if it was by my sister in law one morning, when she uncorked a bottle of Krug Grand Cuvée I’d got as a gift, thinking, she said, it was “only a [Charles] Krug.” The $200 replacement-fee lesson? Well, none really, since she and my wife’s parents couldn’t stop talking about how much they enjoyed that bubbly (my mother in law had two glasses, a rare event). Plus, when it comes to Charles Krug, there’s rarely an “only” to be said in connection with their wines. For years we were positively addicted to their “Generations,” a cabernet blend that was as delicious as it was affordable. We even liked their sangiovese, a difficult variety to make good wine from in California. And in the middle decades of the twentieth century Krug was considered, along with legendary wineries like Ingelnook and Beaulieu, to be one of Napa’s “Big Five.”

An important lesson from the age of food-and-wine enlightenment is that when a recipe called for wine, it does not mean the stuff they sell in supermarkets as “cooking wine.” Nor does it mean some half-consumed bottle that’s been in your fridge (or worse in your cabinet over the stove) for a year. Wine tastes so delicious as an ingredient because it started out delicious. As an analogy, you wouldn’t use rotten tomatoes in a home-made pasta sauce, would you? And unless you had some dietary restriction, you wouldn’t use skim milk instead of whole cream to make a creamy poppy-seed salad dressing. So don’t use denatured wine in your reduction.

But then the conventional wisdom took a big swing in the other direction. The axiom became: cooks should use only the wine that they’ll be serving with the meal once it’s finished. This silly rule led to a lot of abuses, like would-be French maîtres de cuisine throwing grand cru Burgundy into their coq au vin. The only good place for a $100 bottle of wine is in a glass, in your hand, on its way to your mouth.

For my rule of oven-mitted thumb on cooking with wine, click here:

Cook with a wine you’d enjoy if it were in your glass, but don’t cook with a wine you’d rather drink. That may seem like a fine distinction, but it’s not. My go-to cooking red, which I can still get on sale for less than $10, is an Italian sangiovese-merlot blend from Falesco called “Vitiano Rosso.” It’s enjoyable enough to drink casually, but no tears are shed when it is assigned to the salsa puttanesca. For whites, I look for anything from the south of France (a Côtes du Rhône, Costières de Nîmes) for less than $8. The grapes in the blend (which tend to be roussane, ugni blanc, rolle viognier, or any number of other under-the-radar players) will be just what you need: flavorful, not flabby, and cheap.

One final tip: although it’s not necessary to cook with the wine you’re going to pour at the table, it is fun to cook with a wine that comes from the region to which your dish is native.

These are my five keys to loving Italian wine, distilled from my five-class course with Luca of Zigzando wines:

1. Eat, Drink, and be Maria

Italian wines are food wines. They are made to be enjoyed during a meal. That’s why they tend to be light to medium bodied in weight, so their flavors can complement rather than overwhelm the food. For the same reason, Italian wines — both red and white — tend to show a pleasing, refreshing acidity. I know that may sound icky. But at the right levels, it’s the acid in Italian wine that allows it to be so literally mouthwatering. A good Italian wine should feel like it’s washing through your mouth, clearing it, and readying it for your next bite.

So, don’t serve your lovely Italian vintage as stand-alone substitute for a cocktail. Serve it with food. The only exception might be prosecco, the delightful bubbly from the northwest of Italy, which is ideal as an aperitif. Still, a good dry prosecco is so light and lively I like to bring it down to earth with a handful of baked parmesan crisps.

Only four more steps to Italian wine perfection, so click here:

2. Learn your Major Reds

Many Italian reds are still named in the traditional way, that is, after the region they come from, rather than the grapes they’re made from. So especially when you’re looking at a wine list in a restaurant, it helps if you’ve learned the major regions and what kinds of grape varieties and wine styles they specialize in. For our class, Luca divided Italy into four zones: Piedmont; the Northwest (Alto-Adige, Veneto); Tuscany; and the south (Sicily, Puglia, etc.). Get one bottle from each of these regions, enjoy them on successive nights, compare them, and then branch out. Here’s my recommendation for your sample pack:

Piedmont: try a Barbaresco (made from the nebbiolo grape)
The Northwest: sample a Valpolicella (made from corvina, rondinella, and molinara)
Tuscany: dive into a Chianti (made from sangiovese)
The South: hunt down a primitivo (made from the primativo grape, the grandfather of zinfandel)

3. Don’t be Afraid of the Italian White

Italy may be best known for its reds, but if you think about it, it’s a country surrounded almost entirely by water. Seafood and white wine, therefore, are staples on a real Italian menu. America is awash in decent pinot grigio (it’s our number-one imort, actually), but take my advice and skip any name you recognize, like Cavit or Santa Margherita. Many smaller wineries in Italy who used to sell their grapes to the big industrial exporters are now bottling their own, and their wine will have a lot more character. A stand-out from our class was Cortaccia Pinot Grigio 2004 from Alto Adige. My notes read: “rich, surprisingly so, with a sweet ripe pear and melon flavors and a bit of honey or butterscotch. Luca says “floral” but I didn’t get that. But liked its long, clean, grapey finish. Mountain vineyards, 30 percent aged in neutral oak casks.”

4. Feel Some Southern Pride

It’s in the southern end of the boot where really interesting things are happening in Italian wine. The south epitomizes the trend in Italy of smaller growers dropping out of their cooperatives, building their own facilities, and bottling their own wine. And whereas the enormous harvest of the south used to find itself shipped north to flesh out the rossos and biancos of the north — sometimes legally, sometimes on the sly, but always anonymously — now the fruit from Italy’s southern vineyards is putting its own name on the marquee. In the case of the south of Italy, you have a better chance of seeing the grape variety on the label; unfortunately, because of their many years playing supporting roles, you probably won’t recognize it. Again, don’t be afraid. Try a nero d’avila from Sicily. Bust out with a falanghina from Campania. On of our faves from the class was a primitivo from a winery named Antica Masseria del Sigillo in Puglia (the “heel” of Italy). It was a 2004, and a mere $14 gets you a sassy, forward nose of currants, dried bing cherries, clove, and pepper, followed by loads of red fruit on the palate, and a decent finish.

5. Marches to a Different Beat

Just east of the central Italian state of Umbria lies the Marches, an emerging region that should be on your to-drink list. (It’s also the home of the husband in the couple that owns Vino Rosso. Also, don’t be misled by the pun in my subhead here. It’s pronounced “MAR-kay.”) Believe me, if you bring a bottle of wine from Marches to your next dinner party, you will impress people both because it’s going to taste great and it will be unusual. Get these notes from a Lacrima di Morro 2005, made from 100 percent lacrima grapes (which are native to the area) by a winery called Conti di Buscareto: “Showy nose! Flowers (violets, stargazer lilies), spice, pinot-like, some pine-ish aromas. Someone said, ’smells like Tequilla.’ Light to medium bodied, a little weird but in an interesting way, in the mouth. Foresty notes, some pleasant bitterness, bing cherry, again some bitter notes on the finish. ‘Like you were hiking in the woods and ran into a winery, and then tasted the wine in the field,’ said one taster.”