The weather has been quite balmy, so we’ve been sitting out on the screened porch a lot, gazing at the backyard, watching the dogs gambol about, enjoying the paeans of birdsong and, after it gets dark, the thrumming of the tree-frogs. Until it gets unbearably hot, sometime in June, we’ll eat dinner out here.

Under the influence of such bucolic strains, what could I do at twilight this past Sunday but open a bottle of rosé, the first so far this year. This was the Forest Glen Magenta Rosé 2007, California, a well-known label from Fred Franzia’s Bronco Wine Co. The wine is made from syrah grapes.

The color is indeed a brilliant ruby-magenta-dark melon hue, with a slight blue cast at the center. It’s simple and tasty stuff, very strawberryish, with hints of cherry-berry, orange rind, candied melon and that ineffable element of Bazooka Bubble Gum. It’s zesty, a little sweet — more like soft ripeness than sweetness — and it finishes in classic style with touches of dried herbs and wet stones.

A great rosé? No, but a decent, satisfying rosé, yes, and we were happy to quaff it on our porch, while nibbling on flatbread, manchego cheese and almonds. I rate the wine Very good. And at about $8, it’s Good Value.

I don’t know what the weather is like in your neck o’ the woods, but here in what’s called the Mid-South, the corner where Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas touch — well Tennessee and Arkansas don’t touch because this big-ass river flows between —
the weather is absolutely gorgeous (after inordinate rain), and I wish it would never get hotter, as vain a wish as humankind ever made, because by July here it will be insufferable.

Anyway, since the clime is mild and pleasant and enjoyable, I offer six white wines, ranging from about $9 to about $20, that will serve you well in this transitional season.

Let’s start with Twin Vines Vinho Verde 2007, from the sprawling Vinho Verde (”green wine”) region of northern Portugal, which, oddly, lies to the north (mainly the north) and south of the Douro river and intrudes between the port vineyards and the coastal town of Oporto that is the center of the port trade. So, after that little geography lesson, this Vinho Verde ‘07, made by the Jose Maria da Fonseca winery, is exactly what you want in this wine; it’s notably clean and crisp, slightly effervescent, light, delicate and refreshing in its lemon-lime, grapefruit and limestone elements with a hint of talc and gunpowder. Yeah, it sort of tickles the nose. The grape varieties are loureiro 42%, trajadura 39%, pederna 19%. A simple and charming aperitif. Good+. About $9. Palm Bay Imports, Boca Raton, Florida.

The Vino dei Fratelli Pinot Grigio delle Venezia 2006 is as good as many examples at twice the price. It’s quite dry and crisp, weaving a dominant lemon character with a hint of lemon balm, with cloves, almond and almond blossom and a bit of dried thyme and tarragon. The texture is attractively silky, almost powdery, yet the wine displays crackling acid for backbone and a tide of limestone on the finish. Very Good, and at about $9, a Great Bargain. Imported by Quintessential, Napa, California.

Here’s an unusual blend of white grapes. Pillar Box White 2006, produced by Henry’s Drive in the Padthaway region of South Australia, combines 66% chardonnay with 20% sauvignon blanc and 14% of the Spanish verdelho variety. The result is a wine that feels pale gold and green in every respect, in color, of course, but also (trying to perform a feat of synesthesia by translating color into smell) in its jasmine and honeysuckle scents accented by roasted lemon, lime peel, pink grapefruit and pear. It’s pretty heady stuff. A few minutes in the glass bring in notes of almond and almond blossom, yellow plum, damp stone. Incredibly crisp and deftly balanced, the acid chimes like a gong though the wine’s texture is dense, almost lush. This was terrific with grilled swordfish marinated with soy sauce, lime juice and zest, garlic and freshly grated ginger. Very good+, and at about $12, it’s another Great Bargain. Imported by Quintessential, Napa, California.

There’s a hint of coyness about the label of the Clayhouse Adobe White 2007, Central Coast. If you add up the percentages of the blend of grapes listed on the label — chenin blanc 34%, chardonnay 17%, roussanne 16%, viognier 11% — the keen-eyed among you will notice that the figures come only to 78 percent. The missing 22 percent is made of princess grapes, a variety not sanctioned as legal for making wine by the federal TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau). Will the grape ever be permitted on the roster of “real” wine grapes; one’s reaction could be, “Oh, who cares?” but the princess grape certainly lends this spare, almost elegant wine interesting touches of spice and fresh flowers, a sort of amalgam of cloves, roses and jasmine. The wine also offers orange blossom and pear, a hint of lush peach balanced by the slight astringency of grapefruit and a cool mineral element. A little sweetness comes across as juicy ripeness. The roussanne is given a little oak; the rest of the wine was made in stainless steel. This goes down almost too easily; LL and I drank the bottle standing in the kitchen, eating manchego cheese and flatbread while trying to decide what to have for dinner after one of those long days at work. Um, I’m not sure what we ever decided. Very Good. About $15.

I’m an unabashed fan of the X Winery ES Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc from Lake County. For 2007, the wine is tremendously clean, fresh and crisp, boldly spicy and flavorful without resorting to the brash vegetal and herbal excesses with which sauvignon blancs from New Zealand can sometimes assault us. Not that the X Winery ES Sauvignon Blanc 2007 doesn’t just jump from the glass with sprightly notes of pear and melon, lime peel and jasmine, hints of mango and grapefruit, and not that it doesn’t practically vibrate in the glass, it’s so ringingly resonant, but that vibrancy and resonance derive from the purity and intensity of the grape and its minimal treatment in stainless steel, its shimmery luster of minerality. Almost too exciting to use as an aperitif, this would be great with grilled shrimp or mussels or with trout served with lemon-butter and capers. Very good+ About $17.

I served the Hugel et fils Riesling “Hugel” 2005, Alsace, with a pick-up pasta of penne with roasted chicken, roasted red pepper, green olives and chopped kale. This venerable firm’s “Hugel” wines are not estate-produced but are made from purchased grapes derived from long-term contracts, and there’s not a thing wrong with that procedure. This riesling is very dry, crisp and clean, and its tasty lemon and lemon balm flavors, infused with lime and grapefruit, are bolstered with bastions of damp limestone and chalk. The wine is quite spicy, and it displays a hint of the grape’s requisite “petrol” character with touches of pear and, less distinctly, peach. Well-made and attractive. Very good+. About $19 or $20 is the usual price, though on the Internet I have seen a range from $16.50 to $22. Imported by Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York.

LL was out of town and I needed to get dinner together for myself, and it was one of those days when eight hours at the desk feels like 8,000 hours, and I wanted to go to the grocery store about as much as I wanted to teach a wine class in Amish country. So I determined that when I got home, I would make dinner from whatever I found. Eggs, O.K., that’s good, we’ll try an omelet. Black olives, good again. Parsley and thyme, looking better. Half a head of radicchio left from a salad, that might be fine. Ah, some nice spring onions. Some sausages in the freezer, all it takes is a few blows of a hammer and in a trice one of those suckers is thawing in the microwave.

So, I sauteed the sausage, took it out of the pan and placed it on a paper towel, added a touch of butter, dropped in the chopped onions, waited a minute and added a little minced garlic, let those turn color slightly, and then dropped in the julienne radicchio and quartered black olives. Whisked three eggs with the chopped parsley and thyme, poured the mixture into the pan over the onions and radicchio and other stuff. Let it cook for a minute, lifted the edges with a spatula so the liquidy part would flow under, another minute or two and so on, watching carefully not to overcook, and there was my dinner, set on a plate with the sausage and a piece of wheat toast. I don’t mind eating breakfast for dinner, obviously.

As I usually do when I eat dinner alone at home — though one is never actually alone in a houseful of dogs — I set out four or five wines to taste as I ate: a Chianti, a merlot, a syrah, maybe a cabernet. (Though a lighter pinot noir or a hearty Beaujolais is good with an omelet.) My omelet, by the way, was delicious and looked good too; the hint of bitterness from the radicchio really balanced nicely with the earthiness of the olives and the sweetness of the onions. Yum.

So I opened the Chianti and poured a little in my glass, intending to go on to the other wines. I didn’t get to them.

Now I don’t want to oversell this wine, but the Vino dei Fratelli Chianti 2006 was not only terrific with the omelet, but it was a shining example of what a Chianti should be at its suggested price, about $10. Made from 95 percent sangiovese and five percent canaiolo grapes and seeing no oak, only stainless steel, the wine is incredibly fresh and lively, bursting with spicy black currant and plum scents and flavors with hints of cranberry and blueberry; something wild is there, something not just spicy but exotic and earthy. There’s a firm acid backbone and a foundation of tannin that lends dustiness and a dense, chewy texture. Yeah, I drank it with an omelet, but at the price it’s certainly worth buying a case to go with the food that’s going to be emerging, hot and crusty, from your outdoor grill this summer. Perfect with burgers, pizza, pork chops and such. I rate the wine Very Good+ and name it a Great Bargain.

It’s imported by Quinessential, in Napa, Ca. Visit quintessentialwines.com.

“Well, all right, F.K., this is more like it! I mean, those ‘Twelve Great Wines’ sound beyond fabulous (while people grow old until they’re drinkable), but they’re freakin’ expensive and, you know, we just want a nice case of wine to enjoy through the Yuletide season, a varied selection, a few wines for lunch or dinner or having people over for a bit of festivity.”

And here it is. I realize that trying to be all things to all people typically results in misfortune, but here’s the “Little Case of Wine That Could.” Trying to cover all the bases, or many bases, or some bases, damnit, I can’t read your mind, the choices (drawn from this year’s reviews on KoeppelOnWine.com) include a sparkling wine and a port and a rosé, four other bottles of white wine and five of red. Princes range from about $11 to $19; total cost, if you could find all the wines, would be about $176, depending on the store (minus case discount, plus tax). Remember that prices for individual bottles of wine can vary surprisingly from one store (or website) to the next. By country, the break-down is France, four; United States, three; and one each from Argentina, Australia, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Tis the season to be eclectic and globally-aware. Your local wine merchant will be able to make substitutions when these labels aren’t available, because, remember, every wine is not carried in every store. Even In New York or Chicago or L.A.

White wines:

Domaine de la Pépière Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie 2006, Muscadet, France, $10-$12. (Imported by Louis/Dressner, New York.)

Angove’s Nine Vines Rosé 2007, Riverland, South Australia. $12. (Imported by Trinchero Vineyard, St. Helena, Ca.)

Paraiso Vineyards Riesling 2006, Santa Lucia Highlands, Monterey County. $14

Domaine du Salvard Cheverny 2006, Loire Valley, France. About $14. 100% sauvignon blanc. (Imported by Robert Kacher, Washington, D.C.)

Bonny Doon Vineyard Ca’ del Solo Albariño 2006, Monterey County. $18. From Randall Grahm’s recent change to all bio-dynamic vineyards

Sparkling wine: Scharffenberger Cellars Brut (Non-Vintage), Mendocino County, Ca. 65% pinot noir/35% chardonnay. $19

Red wines:

Don Miguel Gascón Malbec 2006, Mendoza, Argentina. $12. (Imported by Gascón Wines, Haywood, Ca.)

Bodegas Borsao Tres Picos Garnacha 2005, Campo de Borja, Spain. $13. 100% grenache. (A Jorge Ordoñez Selection.)

Michele Chiarlo Barbera d’Asti “Le Orme” 2004, Piedmont, Italy. $14. (Imported by Kobrand, Purchase, N.Y.)

Chateau Mont-Redon Côtes-du-Rhône 2004, Rhône Valley, France. $15. (Imported by Kobrand, Purchase, N.Y.)

Potel-Avion Côte de Brouilly Vieilles Vignes 2005, Beaujolais, France. $16 (Imported by Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York.)

Dow’s Trademark Reserve Porto (Non-Vintage), Portugal. $17 What was once termed “vintage character porto” must now be called “reserve porto.” (Premier Port Wines, Inc., San Francisco).

I bet you can find some use for each and every one of these wines.

Enjoy (intelligently and responsibly, please) and have a happy and safe Yuletide season.

… and the reason I make that assertion of commonplace knowledge is that while my objective on KoeppelOnWine.com was to replace some pages every week and others every two weeks, constant readers will know that I often fail to meet that criteria, so I cry “Mea culpa!” — or “Meal culpa!” as they say in the restaurant biz — in apology for having left a page up for a month. Just yesterday, I wrote and posted a “Refrigerator Door Wines” page of inexpensive products for the first time since Oct. 24. In some compensation, instead of six or eight cheap wines, as I usually do, I offer 15, but, you will notice, these are not all positive reviews. My philosophy is to warn you away from the bad as well as urge you toward the good, rather like a preacher of the fire ‘n’ brimstone school. And I wonder, as I always do, why bad or mediocre or just generic wines exist? How, for example, could a producer, Washington State’s Stonecap, in this case, offer a terrific riesling (for the price), an undrinkable chardonnay and a bland cabernet sauvignon and sell each one for $11? Why do the wines, especially reds, in the $10 to $12 range of Australia’s largest producers — Penfolds, Lindemans, Rosemount — all taste so similar? Does that case have something to do with the fact that these once independent concerns are all owned by the giant Foster’s conglomerate? What’s interesting here is that Penfolds “Koonunga Hill” line, intended to sell for $11 or $12, I find merely average to forgettable, while the Penfolds “Thomas Hyland” line, priced at $13 to $15, offers far more authenticity and integrity. Should two dollars more make that much difference?

Unanswerable questions, perhaps, but that’s always been the purpose of art; let philosophers and scientists probe for meaning.

Take a look, anyway, at the current “Refrigerator Door Wines” page — not for wines you keep in the refrigerator door but the list you post on the outside of the door to remind yourself to stop by the store and pick up a bottle of wine for dinner — and notice that my favorite wines of the bunch are the two Penfolds Thomas Hyland wines, Shiraz 2005 and Riesling 2007, and the Borgianni Chianti 2005.

No “mea culpas.” Enjoy.

As more of the largest producers in California import more labels and varieties of (too often mediocre) wines from Argentina, Chile, South Africa, Spain and Australia, sometimes I have to wonder: “How much wine do we need?”

That question didn’t cross my mind, though, when I tasted the Don Miguel Gascon Malbec 2006 from Argentina’s Mendoza region. The wine is imported by E.J. Gallo through Gascon Wines in Haywood, Ca. At $12, this is a terrific cool weather wine for hearty red meat and game dishes and a Great Bargain. There’s a complete review on this page that I put up last night at KoeppelOnWine, along with reviews for three other big-hearted, two-fisted reds in case you’re roasting large goat-like animals over an open fire on a mountainside and an unusual wine choice for Thanksgiving dinner — does the word “Niagara” mean anything to you? Ha!

… but sometimes I think the scenario in a winery must go like this:

Setting: The staff tasting room at a winery. Gathering of senior winemaker, associate winemakers and assistants and so on, tasting the young wine of the newest vintage. Sniffing, snorting, slurping, pondering and then:

Assistant to the assistant winemaker, young guy, wearing rectangular black glasses frames, a goatee and spiky hair, a black t-shirt: “Whoa, that really sucks!”

Long silence. Unobtrusive coughs, a few discreet throat-clearings.

Associate senior winemaker: “We don’t consider ‘that sucks’ to be a reasonable comment in light of the dedication and years of experience that this venerable institution of a winery AND our senior winemaker merit.”

Assistant to the assistant winemaker: “Right, dude, sorry, I guess I forgot myself.”

Associate senior winemaker to the senior winemaker: “Sorry, chief, he forgot himself.”

Senior winemaker (everyone genuflects): “No, no, I appreciate the evaluation, youthful though it may be. I was thinking myself that perhaps this sample doesn’t quite reflect the fine heritage of our historic vineyards and institution. How many cases did we make?”

Profound silence. Much meditation, regret, remorse, misplaced hope.

Assistant to the assistant winemaker: “Uh, chief, we made approximately 548,678 cases of this wine. You know, give or take.”

Senior winemaker: “Whew, that’s a shitload of bad wine. What were we gonna sell this stuff for?”

Associate senior winemaker, snapping fingers: “Price?”

First assistant winemaker: “Um. I believe that this wine was slated for the mid-upper-premium or $15 line-up.”

Senior winemaker: “Well, hell, what’s-a-matter with you boys? Create a new label, put a retail price of $8 on it and we’ll sell the bejesus out of it. Call it, er, Clos de Firefly. You” – pointing to the assistant to the assistant winemaker – “you know anything about fireflies?”

Assistant to the assistant winemaker: “Um, well, I used to collect them in a jar when I was a kid.”

Senior winemaker: “Good enough! Write a back-story for the label. Something cute. Tap into the small-town-nostalgia-chasing-fireflies-in-summer-twilight stuff, you know, the whole Booth Tarkington-Ray Bradbury crock. We can still make a million bucks from this swill. And, hey! who made this frog-gargle anyway? It wasn’t me, was it??!! Ha-ha-ha!!!”

In other words, readers, a few hours ago, on this Sunday, I posted a “Refrigerator Door Wines” page of 12 inexpensive products at KoeppelOnWine, and while some of the wines are terrific examples of their grapes, genre and price, a few left me thinking, “How the hell did these wines get out of the producer’s door?” What were they thinking? The chief culprit? The Crane Lake Sauvignon Blanc 2005, a wine that I used to recommend for people looking for a cheap reliable white to serve at parties and receptions. Not this one, which smells and tastes like a bad blend of riesling and muscat. “Jeeze, F.K.,” you might be saying, “who cares? It’s just a bottle of $6 plonk.” Yes, but the purchaser of a bottle of $6 plonk deserves a clean, well-made, varietally true wine just as much as the person who buys a $60 cabernet.

The best wine of this dozen? The Mirabile Nero d’Avola 2005 from Sicily, at $14 a super-affordable kissing-cousin to an Amarone suited for hearty red meat entrees, like, you know, if you have a haunch of venison in the freezer or a beef brisket. Also don’t miss the Jewel Collection Firma 2004, from Lodi in California, a robust and rustic blend of barbera, sangiovese, cabernet sauvignon and syrah, a real bargain at about $9.

… come into a bar, No, ha-ha, what I meant to write was, Seven inexpensive Spanish wines show up on the “Refrigerator Door Wines” page for wines priced under $15 over on my website, KoeppelOnWine. I posted 10 wines on that page a few minutes ago and encourage you — what else? — to take a look. Included are three rosé wines made in different styles, from Spain, South Australia and Washington state, and a delightful Spanish unoaked chardonnay, as well as a clutch of simple and appealing red wines that would be great with grilled meat like lamb, veal and steak.

And speaking of steak — I’m on a self-promotional roll here — the “Eating and Drinking” page I posted yesterday on KoeppelOnWine mentions three meals and the wines we drank with them. It’s called “A Little Turf, a Lot of Surf.” The steak comes into it because I seared a t-bone steak one night, and we tried five red wines with it: Cabernet sauvignon, merlot, zinfandel, petite sirah and sangiovese. The “surf” part refers to sauteed swordfish we had one night and a pick-up pasta of smoked salmon, tiny heirloom tomatoes and vodka another night.

I hope you enjoy reading about these matters as much as we did eating and drinking. Well, no, you won’t, actually, sorry, but please try to live vicariously.

So last week one of those little notices about updates for Norton Anti-Virus pops up on my office computer screen (at home) and of course I click on the box that says, “Well, hell, yeah!” The program goes through its process, downloading all these fine improvement to my computer’s security, reboots and there it is: No Internet. WTF, I’m sort of baffled, I try this and that, no Internet. I try a couple of other things — these are fairly primitive solutions, you understand — and still no Internet. Obviously, or it seems obvious to me, in downloading these Norton updates a setting has been disabled. Do I know how to fix this? Is Hannah Montana likely to be elected president? Actually, Hannah Montana is more likely to be elected president than, say, Courtney Love. Or maybe Hillary Clinton.

Anyway, as monumentally annoying as this problem was (and still is), I knew I could turn to my four-month old laptop computer and turn out copy and post it to the Internet (despite some other insanely irritating Internet problems we’ve been having since January when Comcast took over), because we have WiFi at our house, so I wrote a “Refrigerator Door” page of inexpensive wines for my website and posted it a few minutes ago. There are wines from California, Australia, Spain, Argentina and Portugal. You’ll find them at www.KoeppelOnWine.com/Refrigerator_Door_Wines.asp

You will notice, however, that there’s no label art on the page, even though I’m a fanatic about using lots of art on the website and on this blog, because I can’t stand those websites and blogs that consist of miles and miles of gray print with nothing to relieve the monotony. Anyway, the reason why there’s no art on this new page on KoeppelOnWine (or on this post) is because, even though a few days ago I paid for and downloaded to my laptop the CoffeeCup PixConverter (a simple image-sizing device that I use on my office computer all the time), it didn’t show up. It ain’t there. Nada. So there’s another computer problem with which I have to deal very soon.

Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh.

We’ve left Memorial Day behind and the Fourth of July looms ahead. Surely this month marks one of the most active grilling periods of the year. Whether its hamburgers or steaks, lamb chops (pictured here) or pork chops or the humble yet essential hot dog, red meat grilled outdoors over glowing coals requires red wine to go with it. And while it’s tempting sometimes to pull out a Big Gun of a wine — and I have succumbed to that temptation on many occasions — usually it’s best, most appropriate and most satisfying to serve a simple quaffer of a wine, something delicious and robust that we don’t have to worry our pretty little heads about.

So, here are notices about five of those wines. More complete reviews (and a couple of quaffable whites) are at koeppelonwine.com/Refrigerator_Door_Wines.asp.

1. Oak Grove Reserve Wines Petite Sirah 2005, California. Boldly-flavored with black fruit, hearty, full-bodied and spicy. About $8 or $9.

2. Red Truck Red Wine 2005, California. Syrah, petite syrah, cabernet franc with dollops of mourvedre, grenache and merlot. A smorgasbord of grapes, yes, but a fruitful combination that’s ripe, fleshy, berry-like with well-shaped details. About $10

3. Castello di Gabbiano Chianti 2005, Tuscany. 90% sangiovese with touches of canaiolo and colorino. Simple, direct, lively, tasty and an enviably pure and spicy expression of the sangiovese grape. Good with grilled meats of course but also with pizza and red sauce pastas that need an acidic wine to balance the tomatoes. About $10.

4. Robert Mondavi Private Selection Vinette 2005, California. I’ve never been a fan of Mondavi’s “Private Selection” line, but this blend of the five grapes that may go into red Bordeaux wines is an instant classic, a “little wine” with a big heart and an amazing bargain for the price, about $11. This has the tannic structure to take steak or leg of lamb.

5. Hey Mambo Sultry Red 2005, California. Another fruit-basket turn-over of red grapes, Hey Mambo seems to draw from Italian and southern French traditions for its lively and straightforward personality, its ripe dark berry flavors and plush texture and its shameless accessibility. This is from the madcaps at Don Sebastiani and Sons. About $12.

I will, by the way, be grilling pork chops tonight. What will we drink? Ah, now you’ve caught Mr. Glib in the act. I’m going to open Martini di Cigala’s San Giusto a Rentennano “La Ricolma” Merlot di Toscana 2003. Why? Because it’s there.