A recent trip to France convinced me that, ironically, the best place to drink French wine nowadays is in California. Let me give you an example: a red wine from Cairanne in the Southern Rhône, a 2007 Côte du Rhône Villages from Domaine Catherine le Goeuil, which I bought at Kermit Lynch Wines in Berkeley last week for $23.
 
I love this Cairanne. It’s a mouthful of ripe red plums, earth, and that brambly Southern Rhone “garrigue” flavor. It’s got delicious aromas of framboise, blueberry compote, asian spices, and licorice. It’s totally dry but tastes sweet on the palate, enough to go *great* with the BBQ sandwich I am now enjoying. Clean, fresh, slightly soft mouthfeel, though not lacking in heft. I haven’t enjoyed an under-$25 bottle of wine this much in a long time.
 
Why is this wine so exemplary of my new theory? Click here to find out:
 
My guess as to why I’m loving this wine so much is that Lynch, Madame Le Goeuil’s importer, has taken the time to search her out (she’s from a lesser-known village in the Rhône), promote her methods (she’s organic and low-tech in the cellar), and do a bottling with his own name on the label. In contrast, during my recent trip to France, I made a guess that within France itself, wine buyers (especially at restaurants) are paying less and less attention to the particulars of the craft at the wineries they buy from, and no attention at all to new wineries in semi-anonymous regions. So all you can order from, say, Guy Savoy, is so-so wine from a recognizable name, but nothing startlingly good from people and places you’ve never heard of.
 
Cairanne sounds guy-RAN but starting with a k sound. As for Catherine’s last name, good luck! I’d say “luh-goo-EEY.” Let me know if I’m way off.

Despite the attacks waged by Wine Dictator magazine on poor Dry Creek Valley, after visiting 10 standout Dry Creek producers a couple weeks ago during their Passport party weekend, I remain thoroughly charmed. Although the chief California editor believes Dry Creek lacks a signature varietal, I think it’s clearly zinfandel–in fact, two zins and a cab blend made from grapes from the Rockpile AVA at the northern end of the valley were favorites of the day, so I’d even go further and say that Dry Creek has a signature grape and at least one premier cru-ish terroir. Finally, the Wine Dictator insists the valley lacks a flagship winery, too, but after tasting our way through up-and-coming Mazzocco’s delicious line-up, I’d say that even if it’s true, it won’t be for long. Or was it just the belly dancers? I’m not sure.
 
For our faves of the weekend, click here:
 
Seghesio Family Vineyards’ “Rockpile” Zinfandel 2007 ($36)
A serious zinfandel! Smokey nose, raspberry-black cherry palate, definite tannins, and a long, long finish. Soft white pepper notes, structured for a zin. **1/2
 
Mauritson Wines’ “Rockpile Ridge” Zinfandel 2007 ($35)
A huuuuge zin, more on the hedonistic side than the Seghesio. Ripe, black cherry and blackberry flavors, strong notes of chocolate and vanilla. This wine tasted so good with sliders a la Charlie Palmer, we came back Sunday for more. **1/2
 
Mauritson Wines’ “Buck’s Pasture” Red Wine 2007 ($50)
We tasted this cab, cab franc, petit verdot, and malbec blend (all fruit from the Rockpile Ridge vineyard) from barrel, and were extremely impressed with the young wine. Powerful and graceful at once, with big blackberry, cassis, and other classic Bordeaux flavors like tobacco and earth. Oak very present now but should relax. **1/2
 
Other faves of the day:
 
All of Mazzoco’s 2006 single-vineyard zinfandels:
 
Lytton ($29) A real step up from the Sonoma County cuvee, this was the most accessible zin Mazzocco was pouring. Nice nose, with loads of fruit and pepper. Beautifully integrated dark-fruit flavors. **
Stone ($29) The darkest, sweetest of the bunch. **
Warm Springs ($32) The most serious zin we tasted here, very structured, with definite tannins, delicious fruit, chocolate notes, and a long finish. **
 
Ridge “Lytton Springs” Zinfandel 2006 ($35)
A darker fruit profile, notable balance, a classy zin with dusty tannins. From 115 year old vines. (My friend Jen and I are standing in front of them in the photo above.)
 
Sbragia Family Vineyards’ Home Ranch Chardonnay 2007 ($26) 
A full-throttle California-style chard, with plenty of vanilla notes and some creaminess on the texture. But balanced, with lots of tropical fruit flavors and good structure. Delicious with the seafood bisque the winery was serving up. **
 
Mazzocco Chardonnay Stuhlmuller Reserve 2006 ($36, but on sale at Passport 50% off per case)
I had to laugh at myself: after a full two days of the big red wines of Dry Creek, I went home with a case of chardonnay. I just couldn’t resist the beautiful tropical fruit flavors and spicy complexity (nutmeg, clove) of this chard–not to mention the sale price. I like how only half this wine saw new oak, and only 40 percent underwent a second fermentation. It’s like you got the best of both chardonnay worlds, the big creamy California style versus the crisp fruity Chablis style.
**1/2

Dry Creek Valley just can’t get no respect. Lately James Laube, the chief California taster for the Wine Dictator Spectator magazine, has been pointing thumbs-down on the entire appellation, a bucolic stretch of vineyards and dairy farms tucked into the northwestern corner of Sonoma county. Dry Creek, he laments, has an identity problem: it lacks flagship wineries to bolster its reputation, as well as a signature grape to serve as a rallying point for fans.
 
On the occasion of the Winegrowers of Dry Creek Valley’s Passport weekend, I spent last weekend tasting up and down the creek. And although there’s some truth to Laube’s assessment, click here for some important exceptions to the dictator’s rule:
 
First of all, it’s not true that Dry Creek Valley has no “signature grape.” It’s zinfandel, and anyone who actually visits and tastes her way through fifty zins at twenty Dry Creek venues, many of them offered in series of single-vineyard bottlings, all of them made with the pride and care that a Napa vintner would put into her cabernets, will agree.
 
A good example is Ridge Lytton Springs, one of our favorite stamps on our passport. They make two zinfandels, one from the gnarly, 115 year old vines behind the winery and the other from a vineyard called Del Carlo. The Lytton Springs zin was very serious, with gorgeous aromas cherry and pepper aromas, plus a delicious, balanced feel on the palate. Some tannins. Nice long finish too. Plus we loved any zins that came from the Rockpile vineyard, especially Seghesio’s. And although I tasted lots of good cabernet over the weekend — including the culty A. Rafanelli
– thee best wines of the weekend were zins, and in genereal I felt as though when I was drinking them I was tasting Napa cabernets, at one-third the price.
 
For my full report on the wines we tasted, plus the embarrassing fact that among all the big reds we tasted, I came home with a bottle of chardonnay (which one?), stay tuned.

I just got back from vacation on the Riviera Maya in Mexico and although it’s pretty hard to find fault with 10 days of snorkeling, sunbathing, and shooting tequila, I did miss drinking good wine. When we were on Isla Mujeres and our only source was the local Supermini (now there’s an oxymoron for you), we subsisted on a cabernet franc from Monte Xanic — which we renamed Mount Xanax because it was both tranquilizing and tasteless — and a blowsy off-dry white from a Spanish house called Don Simon. When we moved south to Playa del Carmen, though, our hotel restaurant had a wine list with selections from all over the world, a rarity in Mexico. The markups were ugly, but the Mariachis were lively, so we bypassed the margaritas and went for wine with dinner.

Turns out our favorite from this international list was a homegrown surprise. For my notes, proving good Mexican wine isn’t another contradiction in terms, click here:

Casa Pedro Domecq’s Tinto (Baja California) is the signature red from this, Mexico’s largest winery. Like most other Mexican wines, it hails from the Valle de Guadalupe in Baja California. But what made this blend of cabernet sauvignon, nebbiolo, and merlot stand out for us was an earthy component presented in a bold, structured mouthfeel that reminded us of a good, if not great, wine from Bordeaux. The Domecq Tinto stood up bravely to my chicken mole and I have to say, it’s the only Mexican red I’ve tasted that I’d look for again.

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:

2006 Viognier ($20): Full of apricot and melon flavors and flashing a pretty, flowery aroma, this viognier has good fruit but also a fresh mouthfeel. I was really impressed with its structure; so much viognier from California turns out flabby, but Cedarville’s is sinuous and silky. Jonathan Lachs says he’s aiming at Condrieu, the gorgeous French white made from viognier, and it shows.

2005 Syrah ($25): This syrah is programmed for pleasure. It’s loaded with sweet black fruit flavors and tinged by chocolate and black pepper notes. It just tastes so well done, like all its parts are put together in perfect harmony, but with an emphasis on enjoyment. Soft mouthfeel, viscous texture, everlasting finish. We regret giving one of our purchases to our neighbors who babysat our dog.

If you visit Cedarville, be sure to make an appointment. The owners, practically bursting with pride, will take you on a loving tour of their four-room winery, every ingenious detail of which they planned out themselves. I’ve never seen cement culverts put to such noble use.

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:

The low note of our wine explorations was sounded, unfortunately, at a tasting bar near our bed and breakfast in Sutter Creek. When I walked in, a handful of visitors were involved in a heated argument over their favorite sample: was it the peach, raspberry, or pineapple sparkler they liked best? No, wait, it was the almond! Alarmed, I steered right over the sweet bubblies and landed on a 2003 chardonnay from Le Mulet Rouge ($18/bottle), which sports a mule on the label. (The winery’s take on the cute animal trend? Perhaps. In any case, it was my first taste of the area’s tendency toward homey humor.) “Junk heap,” my notes begin. “Smells like garbage, tastes like soap and rotten nuts.”

I should have run from this dog right then. But I got distracted by a decent 2006 viognier from Crystal Basin Cellars ($20), which had loads of pear and apricot on the nose, followed by some tropical fruits and a nice tangerine zing. But before long I was assaulted again, this time by Gold Hill’s Red Wine 2005 ($29/bottle!), which despite its cab-merlot pedigree came off as “a little thin, some good aromas of berries, but boring on the palate.” Off flavors, including one zinfandel’s “tinny” aftertaste, came up again and again. Overall, the wines from Crystal Basin fared best, with the exception of their 2006 malbec ($25), which the list described as having a “Houdini finish.” Thinking this must mean the wine had a complicated or surprising aftertaste, I asked for a sip. “No,” the bartender corrected me. “It means ‘disappearing.’” And he was right. But I’m still stumped as to why anyone would think this would be a positive attribute to a wine, worthy of advertising.

Later, at a fun dinner at the Imperial Hotel (a former whorehouse that’s now a legitimate hotel with an ambitious restaurant), we had a 2004 merlot from Stevenot. Its thin profile and short finish convinced us that wineries in the Sierra Foothills are still struggling with a shortish growing season, high temperatures, and soils that may not lend themselves to the most familiar and marketable varieties, like merlot.

Thankfully, we did taste some wine that I found recommendable. Stay tuned for a redeeming trip to Cedarville Vineyard and my first, long-awaited taste of a zin made from centenarian vines.

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:

I revisited the place in June and the proprietor – whom I found sitting at his wine tasting bar making orders – specifies that although he now has a regular wine list, he still allows, even encourages, diners to hand pick a bottle from his shelves. He adds that he’s now marked up his bottles by 33 percent, but that’s still an outrageous bargain considering that the usual restaurant mark up is three times that.

Wine Spectator’s current cover story is on how dissatisfied diners are at restaurants’ wine service. The loudest complaint was – surprise – heinous mark ups. Well, Mr. Fine has a solution: restaurateurs should treat their wine like they do their food. Carefully choose it as close to the source as possible, pay wholesale, and mark it up reasonably, just once.

You see, the reason wine is so expensive in restaurants is because it’s pegged at 100 percent over retail, that is, 100 percent over an price that’s already considerably more than wholesale. It’s as if wine gets marked up twice. And that’s just not fair.

Suddenly I get another meaning to Fine Cellar’s tagline, “Where Wine is Food.”

“A rosé? I’ve never heard of that.”

Okay: we were in West Hollywood, rooftop-poolside at our hotel, so I admit I wasn’t swimming in a deep demographic pool of enophiles. I’d been shocked all weekend, in fact, at how un-wine-savvy the Los Angeles scene is. Even at the popular sushi spot Koi I felt like a big thirsty fish in a little pond stocked with cocktails and sake, but not much in the way of fruits of the vine. All I could devise to drink with my jalapeno hamachi was a California sparkler, one of only two offerings by the glass. Not a riesling or a gewürztraminer in sight.

But to overhear a waiter say that not only did he not have any rosé but he hadn’t any idea what it was — click here to find out what I wanted to do.

It took all the self-restraint I have not to stand up and shout, “It’s a WINE! And it would be perfect for this man who’s standing chest-deep in the water!”

Poor rosé. Already it must struggle to transcend the evil associations many of us still have with “pink” wines like white zinfandel or (going way back here) Lancers. That’s assuming we even know what it is. Here, I was witnessing a rosé trying to bloom in total obscurity.

I’ve said it before, but I will say it again: a real rosé–that is, a blush wine made from red grapes (usually grenache or pinot noir), fermented completely dry, and hailing ideally from France–is one of the wine world’s greatest, cheapest, and most refreshing joys. It’s not sweet, so it’s delicious with food and thirst-quenching in the heat of summer. And the best of it is not an afterthought: it’s made with the same care a winemaker puts into her whites and reds.

My recommendations? Any rosé from the south of France. Languedoc, Bandol, and Lirac are some areas that are known for exceptional rosés; wineries to look out for include Chateau La Roque, Domaine de l’Hortus, Gros ‘Noré, and Tempier. (Caveat emptor, though, in the case of the Domaine Tempier rosé. This year’s release of this benchmark, very distinctive rosé will set you back around $30, which twice what I think anyone should spend on a rosé.) Californian versions tend to be too full-bodied for my taste, but I won’t turn down a Vin Gris de Cigare from Bonny Doon or a Ramona Rosé from Nicholson Ranch. Finally, the Goats do Roam from South Africa is a lip-smacking steal for $9.

Dear Wine Girl:
I’m going to Bandol, France in July and looking for tips on visiting the friendlier wineries. Also, do all of them offer tastings and is it a walk-up-and-pay setup?
Thank you,
Bound for Bandol

Dear Bound:

Wine tasting in the south of France is one of my favorite life memories. In 2002, we spent three days tasting our way through the great red wines of Bandol, located just about an hour’s drive east of Marseille. Bandol is one of my favorite wines: unique, since it is made from 100 percent mourvedre (without the Provence staples of syrah or grenache); burly, because it is filled with the flavors of blackberry, brambles, earth, and to me, a tell-tale note of diesel; and long-lived, since mourvedre has a special ability to stave off oxidation. Except for the exchange rate on the euro, I’m so jealous of your trip.

Quick answer: there aren’t a lot of friendly, much less friendlier, wineries in Bandol — actually, in all of France. But don’t kill the messenger. Click here for the spots that will bountifully reward your perseverance:

The key to wine touring in Bandol — and this is true for most anywhere in France — is that appointments are almost always necessary. So brush up on your French, because it’s also a truism that most of the people who work in wineries there don’t speak English. (These days you can email a request for a tasting to some wineries, which is great, because you can avoid having to vous-votre on the phone.) There is usually no charge for an appointment, though, and typically it includes a tour.

Most importantly, give yourself an extra half hour to get to your appointments and do not leave your hotel without a GPS-equipped rental car and a good, detailed map. This is because is because the further you get into the French countryside, the more the locals practice what my expatriate sister-in-law calls “conservation of signs,” so you will get lost. And the staff, who are often the same people who own the winery and make the wine, get very angry if you are late. You do not want to get yelled at by a red-faced vigneron who should at that moment be eyeing his fermentation, so mark my words.

Most Notable
Domaine Tempier: The most noted of all Bandol, run by the well-respected culinary and viticulturist family the Peyrauds. Stand in the pergola-shaded patio and imagine the wine celebrities, from Richard Apple to Robert Parker, who’ve dined there. Drink the dry rosé that single-handedly sparked a revolution that changed American minds about pink wine.

Most Impressive
Château de Pibarnon: Set into the crest of a huge natural amphitheater, whose spectators are vines seated in rows and gazing out over the valley (plus a peek-a-boo glimpse of the Mediterranean to your left), this winery looks as awesome as its Bandol tastes. I especially enjoyed the spittoons, which are used barrels filled with sawdust.

Most Visitor Friendly
Domaine Bunan: One of the largest wineries in Bandol, Bunan has an easy-to-find, welcoming tasting room that does not require an appointment. Bunan is a name you’ll likely see again on wine lists when you return to the states, and their more luxe label, Château Rouvière, is often delicious.

Most Up-and-Coming
Domaine Gros’ ‘Nore: My new favorite Bandol comes from this oddly-named producer. Earthy, powerful, and well-priced. I see that you can make an appointment at their website, which makes things easier.

Bon appétit!

One of the most contentious and (to many wine lovers) depressing things about wine is how much restaurants mark it up. On the average, restaurants will inflate the retail price of a bottle of wine by 100 percent — to cover, they insist, the cost of acquiring, storing, serving, and absorbing the expense of the occasional spoiled bottle of wine.

Naïfs accept this explanation; cynics, though, believe that because restaurants don’t make as much money as they want by serving food, they compensate with unfair mark ups on wine. Wine drinkers, then, are paying a surcharge to cover the penny-pinching teetotalers at the neighboring table — not to mention the greed of the restaurateur.

The truth lies somewhere between. This was brought home to me, as it were, while I recently abroad. Find out how by clicking here:

My sister and I went to lunch at her favorite Italian spot near her home in Plaza Chueca in old Madrid, where we had mouthwatering pizzas dotted with prosciutto, anchovies, and olives. And although Spain makes plenty of super quaffers that would have washed down our pies without a hitch, we did as the Romans do and ordered a 2004 Ramitello, a sangiovese-anglianico blend from a winery called Di Majo Norante in southeast Italy. We loved it. It was smooth, medium bodied, and surprisingly polished, with ever-so-slight flavors of leather and smoke. And was that a black olive note, or was that the pizza?

Anyway, we paid 17 euros for the Ramitello, which may seem like a lot for an Italian “country” red, especially considering how flaccid the dollar these days. (Seventeen euros comes to about 23 bucks at the current exchange rate.) But truth is, our pizza wine was a bargain. Stateside a bottle of Ramitello retails for $15 or more. I spotted a 2003 at a New York shop for $19.99. Which means that if my sister and I were sitting in an American venue, we’d have paid between $30 or $40 for the same bottle.

The lesson here? In general, European restaurants mark up their wine only slightly. (That’s because wine for Europeans is like another food group, and no restaurateur would think to mark it up differently than she would a croque monsieur or paella.) And yet they still manage to stay in business. In contrast, in the U.S., until very recently most people considered wine a luxury item, and that’s probably why restaurants can get away with charging diners higher a mark up.

So I conclude: the 100 percent mark up on restaurant wine is mostly ideological. Too bad we can’t demand a discount for having a raised consciousness.