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!

I tasted these wines, which offer different sorts of charms, pleasures and virtues, last week, at home with various meals. The Bonny Doon Le Cigare Blanc 2005 and the Graff Family Vineyard Pinot Blanc 2005 were particularly good with wild Coho salmon, sauteed with nothing more than salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon, but let’s start with the wine that’s an Incredible Bargain.

That’s the Montinore Estate Gewurztraminer 2006, Willamette Valley, Oregon, a wine that I mentioned on a page of KoeppelOnWine recently as being “one of the best gerwurztraminers I have tried from the American West Coast.” It begins with a gorgeous bouquet of rose petal, jasmine and honeysuckle, litchi, peach and apricot. Flamboyant in the nose, the wine is more spare in the mouth, with bright, precise acid and sinews of limestone. Despite those factors, the texture is silky and sensuous, the flavors almost lush with roasted lemon and lime peel. The finish pulls up a bit of the grape’s natural bitterness. A wonderful wine for the price, about $13 or $14.

Next, look at the Leth Steinagrund Gruner Veltliner 2006, from Austria’s Wagram region. This displays more body and presence than the lighter, more delicate gruner veltliner wines we often see. Scents and flavors of roasted lemon and lemon curd receive emphasis from lime and pear and touches of dried baking spice. While the wine is moderately rich in flavor and texture, it’s also notably dry and crisp, the structure and foundation lying in unmistakable stony, minerally elements. Imported by Domaine Select Wine Estates, New York. Another Bargain at about $16 or $17.

The Turnbull Sauvignon Blanc 2006, Oakville, Napa Valley, strikes the themes of spareness and elegance, yet it doesn’t neglect to weave delightful strains of lemon-lime and grapefruit, dried thyme and caraway, with something a little leafy and curranty at the core. The wine is a blend of 85 percent sauvignon blanc, 10 percent viognier and five percent semillon; it’s fermented and aged 85 percent in stainless steel and 15 percent in new French oak, lending an overlay of spice and firm structure over scintillating acid. The whole package offers lovely balance and integration. Finished with a screw-cap for easy opening, though this image doesn’t show that. Terrific quality for the price, about $16 or $17.

Bonny Doon’s Le Cigare Blanc 2005, California, in homage to the white wines of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, is a blend of 54 percent roussanne grapes and 46 percent grenache blanc. The wine is carefully made, the grapes fermented separately first in stainless steel and then in barrel. After fermentation, the wine ages six months in neutral French oak (meaning used barrels); 25 percent of the wine goes through so-called malolactic fermentation (”so-called” because it has nothing to do with fermenting), a naturally-occurring process in which sharp malic (”apple-like”) acid is transformed to creamy lactic (”milk-like”) acid. I mention these winemaking methods — and they’re legitimate techniques, not tricks — to show you how a winemaker like Randall Grahm can meticulously strive to allow wine as much as possible to have a (silent) say in how it should be made, while ensuring that the wine possesses both freshness and personality, qualities Le Cigare Blanc 2005 has in spades. It’s a clean, fresh, lovely wine, offering winsome notes of pear and roasted lemon, crystallized lemon rind and ginger, jasmine and honeysuckle. In the mouth, it’s dry, crisp and spare, layering limestone, dried Provencal herbs, lime peel and grapefruit in a texture that’s appealingly soft and round but crackling with acid. Great winemaking. About $20.

The Saint-Veran 2005 from Domaine Perraud is the first serious wine from Burgundy I’ve seen closed with a screw-cap, though since Saint-Veran is as far south in the Maconnais as you can get before you hit Beaujolais, it may be a bit of a stretch to call it Burgundy, though location is, of course, everything, in marketing as well as morals. More to the point: My first note is “Whoa, what a lovely little chardonnay!” Then: “Whoa, not so little!” It’s a vibrant and resonant expression of the grape’s spare, elegant minerally side, almost crystalline in purity and intensity, delivering lemon and grapefruit scents and flavors with a touch of baked pineapple and dried spice and, in the mouth, a walloping smack of acid. The finish is incredibly dry and austere. North Berkeley Imports, Berkeley, Ca. About $20.

Typical prices for the Graff Family Vineyard Pinot Blanc 2005, Chalone, Monterey County, run from $24 to $28, but I saw sites on the Internet offering it for $18 to $22. The wine shows its pedigree in French oak (fermented and aged) but modulates the woody, spicy aspects in favor of almond and almond blossom, jasmine, lemon and lime peel. In the mouth, the wine expands to include orange rind and tangerine, smoke and a hint of caramel. It handily balances moderate richness and lushness with a firm structure and crisp acid and a long mineral-laced finish. 400 cases. Drink now through 2009.

… but that’s one of the reasons why the wines can be great, the sparseness of the stony soil forcing the ancient vines to work for their supper. The small region lies in Spain’s extreme northeastern province of Cataluña, northwest and inland from the coastal city of Tarragona. Vines have been grown and wine has been made in Priorat since the 12th Century, though a thousand years ago the vineyards were under the care of Carthusian monks. Long neglected because it was difficult to find workers to toil in the steeply-terraced vineyards, Priorat made a comeback in the 1990s, led by a producer called Scala Dei — “ladder of god” — that occupies the buildings of one of the old monasteries. Since 2001, Group Codorniu has owned 25 percent of Scala Dei. You can see how tiny the region of Priorat is on this map of Spain’s wine regions. In fact, you can see all of Spain’s wine regions. Thank you F.K., for this terrific educational feature of your blog!

Priorat is unusual in that its principle grape is grenache — garnacha in Spanish, garnatxa in Catalan — which in this arid climate and demanding topography manages to ripen and produce deeply colored and flavored wines. An irresistible example is the Scala Dei Negre 2005, a 100 percent grenache wine that features luscious, fleshy and meaty black currant, black raspberry and plum scents and flavors permeated by dried thyme, cedar and smoke, dust, tobacco and garrigue, that earthy, parched and weedy yet perfumed herbage of the south of France. This panoply is wrapped around an intense core of licorice, bitter chocolate, tar and minerals, while the whole package is framed and founded on bastions of polished oak and grainy tannins. Yet the wine is approachable, even likable and essential with grilled red meat. Excellent and Great Value for the Price, about $20.

Grenache composes 88 percent of the Scala Dei Prior Crianza 2001, with the balance made up of eight percent syrah and four percent cabernet sauvignon, a blend that serves as an example of Scala Dei’s innovative methods (along with aging in small oak barrels). Lord have mercy, what a mouthful of wine! This is like drinking liquid blueberry and blackberry jam with licorice and lavender, rose petal and plums and touches of something wild like muscadine and cranberries; it’s that exotic, but it’s never out of control. And though the wine is intense and concentrated, dense and chewy, there’s a touch of rose petal softness to the texture, that is until the tides of oak, tannin and minerals inexorably rise. It’s a tremendous achievement, meant to be consumed from now through 2011 or ‘12. Excellent. About $25.

Last in this trio is Scala Dei’s Cartoixa Reserva 2001, a blend of 55 percent grenache, 30 percent syrah and 15 percent cabernet sauvignon that saw 12 months aging in French and American oak. This is a wine in which personality and character are one, in which detail and dimension are of a piece. The color is inky purple, the bouquet an amalgam of macerated and roasted black currant, blackberry and plum infused with minerals, smoke and an edge of charcoal, chocolate-covered raspberries, cloves and sandalwood. These elements segue seamlessly to the mouth, where palate-tingling acid keeps the oak and tannin structure vibrant. The finish, not surprisingly, is long, spicy, dry and increasingly austere. Try from 2008 or ‘09 through 2014 or ‘15. A triumph. About $36.

These three wines register 14 percent alcohol, not an outlandish level nowadays. And I would say that for the superb quality, they’re underpriced, especially compared with high quality wines from, say, Tuscany or the Napa Valley or Australia’s Barossa.

The importer is Vinum International, Napa, Ca.

The map of Spain’s wine regions is from customtours.com.

We read the reports of wealthy collections slapping down hunks of change for California’s cult cabernet sauvignon-based wines: Shafer Hillside Select, Screaming Eagle, Colgin, Araujo, Bryant Family, Dalla Valle, Harlan Estate, Bond, Abreu and others. These wines cost $100 to $350 a bottle and fetch more at auction.

Add to that list Dominus, the Bordeaux-style wine overseen by Christian Moueix, owner and winemaker of legendary Chateau Petrus, in Bordeaux’s Pomerol region. Dominus was launched in 1982 as a partnership between Moueix and Robin Lail and Marcia Smith, the daughters of John Daniel, who owned Inglenook Vineyard, in the Napa Valley, during its greatest years of the 1940s through the end of the ’60s. It was a terrific pedigree, one over which Moueix, one of the world’s best winemakers, became sole proprietor in 1992. These are wines that possess infinite degrees of power and elegance and never see too much new oak. For 2004 Dominus is composed of 85 percent cabernet sauvignon, eight percent cabnernet franc and seven percent petit verdot. It spent 14 months in barrel. It retails for $113.

Moueix produces a second wine from the estate, Napanook, which for 2004 is blended from 83 percent cabernet sauvignon, nine percent cabernet franc, four percent petit verdot and one percent malbec. It also sees 14 months in barrel and costs $42.

Proceed, however, to the Carpe Diem Cabernet Sauvignon 2005, Napa Valley. The blend here is 89 percent cabernet sauvignon, seven percent merlot, two percent cabernet franc and two percent petit verdot; the wine spent 12 months in oak.

Here’s the point. The Carpe Diem Cabernet ‘05 was made under the direct supervision of Christian Moueix and his winemaking team; its grapes derive from the same estate that Moueix controls. It’s a superb Napa Valley cabernet, deep and rich, bursting with detail and broad with dimension, layered with smoke and spice and intense, concentrated yet generous cassis, black raspberry and black cherry fruit. It’s a wine of tremendous character, balance and poise that seems to change minute by minute in the glass, passing through infinitudes of seductive complexities. It is little short of a masterpiece and will drink well through 2012 to ‘15. I rate it Excellent.

And the suggested retail price is $25. I have seen it priced on the Internet as low as $21.

Let the plutocrats drop hundreds of dollars on their cult cabernets, some of which cost for one bottle what you would happily spend on a case of Carpe Diem Cabernet 2005.

Occasionally the tasting I do at home falls out this way, serendipitous, lively, instructive, fun. So here are three pairs of wines, some closely related, others a bit less so, but all fruitfully compared and contrasted.

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Kendall-Jackson is well-known and sometimes derided for its low-priced Vintner’s Reserve wines, which tend to cost from $12 to $16. A second Vintner’s Reserve line, with the designation “Jackson Estates Grown,” is priced at $18. The ubiquitous K-J Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay and Merlot are probably the best-known of these wines, though the line includes sauvignon blanc, riesling, pinot noir, zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon and syrah. All of the wines carry the broadest California appellation.

New to the roster is the K-J Vintner’s Reserve Meritage; the 2003 and ‘04 have been released. Each is a blend of cabernet sauvignon grapes, merlot and (traces of) cabernet franc. I’ll say that at the price, $12 for the ‘03 and $14 for the ‘04, they shouldn’t be missed. These are thoughtfully conceived and well-made wines and can go head-to-head with the best inexpensive wines we love from Spain, Italy, Argentina and (less so) California, especially paired with hearty red meat dishes. Winemaker is Randy Ullom.

The K-J Vintner’s Reserve Meritage 2004 is a blend of 65% cabernet sauvignon, 34 percent merlot and one percent cabernet franc. My first note is: “Amazing depth & dimension for the price.” The bouquet teems with classic Bordeaux-like notes of cedar. tobacco and black olive, with black currant and black cherry fruit that segues seamlessly into the mouth. Support is provided in the form of dusty, chewy tannins and polished oak from nine months aging in French (56 percent) and American barrels. I rate this wine Very Good. Drink through 2009 or ‘10. About $14

The Meritage 2003, one year older, is a deep purple color and offers a real mouthful of wine that balances a pretty tough structure with a lovely plush texture. The blend here is 49 percent cabernet sauvignon, 47 percent merlot and four percent cabernet franc. Is it the whisper of cabernet franc that provides the touches of walnut shell and underbrush, of blueberry and bitter chocolate? The lively spice and whiplash acid? Actually I would say that the blend works in canny harmony here, with black currant and black cherry flavors permeated by cedar and dried thyme and earthy tannins coming from every element. Very good+. Now through 2009 or ‘10. About $12, great for buying by the case.

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What’s the idiom for “poles apart” in Spanish? These two wines from the well-known Rioja region, where the red tempranillo grape reigns, could not be more different, in intent and in result.

The Castillo de Fuenmajor Gran Familia Rioja 2004, 90 percent tempranillo and 10 percent graciano, is just a sweetheart of a wine. It’s rich and ripe, soft and warm, elegant and harmonious; it flows across the palate like satin woven with slightly macerated and roasted black currant, plum and blueberry flavors infused with dried spice, cedar and tobacco and a hint of orange pekoe tea. Gosh, how lovely and untroubled by ambition, toasty oak or high alcohol. Imported by Well Oiled Wine Co., Leesburg, Va. Very Good+. Now through 2008 or ‘09. About $15.

On the other side of the spectrum is the hugely ambitious and just plain huge Bodegas Bilbainas Vicuana 2003, a blend of 75 tempranillo and 25 percent graciano. Touted as the “new expression of Rioja” by parent company Group Codorniu, Vicuana ‘03 ages 15 months in oak barrels, the result, combined with dense chewy tannins, being a structure of impregnable firmness. It’s true that the wine delivers a tremendous burst of succulent black fruit and a powerful, pungent bouquet steeped in smoke and potpourri, but with its elements of briers, brambles and underbrush and dusty minerality, Vicuana goes from robust to rustic. The finish, unsurprisingly, is long, dry and austere. Imported by Vinum International, Napa Ca. Very good+. Best from 2008 or ‘09 through 2012 to ‘15. Prices vary from a deeply discounted $18 to about $26.

I don’t know about you, but my sympathy here runs to the old-fashioned, ripe, approachable and tasty Gran Familia Rioja ‘04. If I were tackling a lamb shank tonight, that would be the wine for me.
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Mer Soleil, which produces a chardonnay from California’s Central Coast, is closely associated with the venerable Caymus Vineyards, being operated by Charlie Wagner II, grandson of Caymus founder Chuck Wagner. Mer Soleil (”sea/sun”) makes only one chardonnay, fashioned in a full-throttle, oak-tinged fashion that actually calmed down a bit starting in 2004; the winery was launched in 1992. Though grapes for the Mer Soleil Chardonnay 2005 came from a vineyard in Monterey’s Santa Lucia Highlands, the wine’s designation is still the boarder Central Coast.

Mer Soleil 2005 is bright, bold and brassy but pretty well-balanced. It’s a chardonnay that takes risks with super-ripeness and spicy oak, mingling pineapple, grapefruit and mango flavors with cinnamon toast and spice cake. Touches of lemon curd and Key lime pie come up, contrasted with chiming acid and a burgeoning mineral element. Frankly, I thought that I wouldn’t care at all for this wine, but its carefully managed sense of nuance, combined with Californian exuberance, won me over, slightly grudgingly, I’ll admit. Excellent. Now through 2009 or ‘10. About $42.

Seeing the need for a chardonnay not influenced so heavily by oak, or let’s say in which the grape is allowed to express itself more freely, Wagner brought out the aptly named Silver Unoaked Chardonnay, with a Santa Lucia Highlands designation, in the 2005 vintage. The new release, Silver Unoaked Chardonnay 2006, is sleek and clean as a whistle, very Chablis-like in its dryness and heady minerality. The wine sees no oak contact and does not go through malolactic fermentation, so it’s notable clean and crisp and very spicy, bursting with fresh apple, lemon drop and lemon curd flavors with a touch of pineapple. The texture is lovely in its satiny flow, dense and chewy, and the finish is bright, resonant and vibrant. The wine displays so much character that you don’t miss the oak a bit. A complete success. Excellent. About $42.

On the other hand, why should the unoaked chardonnay cost the same as the oaked chardonnay? I mean, one of the major costs of making fine wine is French oak barrels, which can run from $800 to $1,000 each, not to mention the time that the wine rests there in the barrels, tying up capital and doing nothing to pay for its upkeep. Silver is on the market in about six months, and no oak was involved. How about knocking a few bucks off the price for that?

Perhaps you remember the television commercials of the 1980s for Riunite and Cella Lambruscos, fizzy, grapey soda-pop wines from the western Emilia part of Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region. “Chill a Cella” and “Riunite on Ice — Very Nice” were the unforgettable slogans of those ads, which depicted the wines as mindless, fun babe-magnets. Americans drank millions of cases a year.

The Fontana dei Boschi Lambrusco 2004, produced by Vittorio Graziano in Modena, is not one of those wines, though it could be a magnet for babes who really like interesting wines. I got a bottle of this intriguing, serious effort from Gabrio Tosti’s De Vino store (de-vino) on Clinton Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. “Drink it with pork or lamb,” he said. I was skeptical, though the dignified, straightforward label certainly did not imply that it was anything like Cella or Riunite.

Last night, LL made a pasta of farfalle with cipollini onions, sun-dried tomatoes, broccoli rabe and leftover grilled chicken. (It was great.) The bottle’s back label informed us that the wine is aged six to nine months in stainless steel tanks, put into bottles for a second fermentation (as in the classic Champagne manner) and then disgorged to clean bottles. Few Lambruscos — that’s also the name of the grape — today are made in this traditional manner, more typically being produced in the bulk method. When I opened the wine, it emitted a “POP” and a spew of lavender foam, and in the glass the effervescence persisted for several minutes before it subsided. The bottle is not closed with a Champagne-style cork and wire enclosure but with a regular cork that’s fatter at the bottom.

The Fontana dei Boschi Lambrusco 2004 is a rich, deep purple color with a dark ruby rim (see the picture above). It bursts with pure black raspberry and black cherry scents and flavors with a spicy black plum undertone and a touch of wild berry. The wine displays surprising tannin and structure; this is not a sweet, simple-minded little quaffer in any sense but a forthright and individual wine intended for hearty fare. It was delicious with the grilled chicken pasta and also at lunch today with tacos made of leftover grilled pork chops (we’re big into recycling, and I’ve been grilling outdoors a lot) with white bean puree and tomatilla salsa.

Fontana dei Boschi Lambrusco 2004 is brought into the U.S. by Lambrusco Imports, Spring Valley N.Y. At about $22, it’s definitely Worth a Search.

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.

A few months ago, while doodling some blog posts here and there, I was at Terry Hughes’ mondosapore and Gabrio Tosti happened to mention in a response to something an unusual strudel from the northeast corners of Italy that he made sound like manna from heaven. “Hey,” I joked, “bring some of that back some time.”

So two weeks ago, I received an email message from Gabrio, who owns the Italian wine store De Vino on Clinton Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, that said something like, “Your strudel is on the way.”

Two days later arrived by UPS a package about the size of a shoebox, neatly and tightly wrapped. The handsome wood container, pictured below, held a strudel from Fior di Mela — “Flower of the Apple.” I am, apparently, the only person in America who has had this strudel, at least on this side of the Atlantic, because it is available only in Italy and only by mail-order. Every red-blooded man, woman and child should wish otherwise, because a strudel from Fior di Mela is a wonderful thing, chock-full of apples, sultanas and pine nuts scented with cinnamon and wrapped in a rich, buttery crust that’s almost cake-like in consistency.

Fior di Mela — the website is fiordimela.it — was founded in 2005 by Federico Corrà in the Val di Non in Trentino, a region in northeastern Italy known primarily for white wines. Though strudel may seem a foreign concept to the Italian sensibility, trained on such creamy or custardy desserts as tiramisu, zabaglione and panna cotta, don’t forget that until the end of World War I, this region of Italy was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire; the Val di Non — which the Google translator waggishly renders as “go them not” — is only 100 miles from the Austrian border.

Each strudel from Fior di Mela — there are five versions — is made to order by hand by Ettore, who has been working in the strudel tradition for 35 years, and shipped on demand; they are not available in stores or restaurants. The apples, Corrà told me in an email message, are the secret of the strudel’s goodness, though it seemed to me that everything about my strudel was filled with goodness. They’re Golden Delicious apples, the only variety in Italy according the status of Denominazione d’Origine Protetta. Curiously, the cultivars for these apples are from Virginia, so Fior di Mela has indelible roots in the United States.

Corrà would like to bring Fior di Mela this country, but supplying the consumer trough of American culture requires more than one artisan turning out handmade strudels on demand, so we’ll have to see how that goes. In the meanwhile, travelers to Italy, and especially to Trentino, should look up Fior di Mela, a small and exclusive operation with large aspirations.

The Sierra Vista Unoaked Chardonnay 2006, El Dorado, a terrific summertime wine, offers so much personality and such lovely silkiness that you don’t miss the wood influence. It’s vibrantly fresh and clean, bursting with notes of green apple, lemon and lime zest and hints of jasmine and honeysuckle. In the mouth the mineral element comes forward in impressions of limestone and wet gravel; flavors of lemon curd, lime and pineapple are couched in a seductive texture that comes close to being lush. Crisp acid keeps everything honest and forthright.
We drank this with seared swordfish served in a white bean ragu with green beans, roasted red pepper and rosemary. You can’t beat the price, about $14. I rate the wine Very Good+, though you may call it irresistible.

You know, if you haunt retail wine and liquor stores the way I do, you inevitably come across hidden treasures, wines on sale, a case or two of something over in a corner that might be worth taking a risk on, meaning shelling out some dollars in hopes that the wine will turn out swell.

Here are some successful examples, all white, three from France and one from Australia.

*Domaine Bruno Clavelier Bourgogne Aligoté 2004. Aligoté is inevitably referred to as Burgundy’s “other white grape,” counting far less on the scale of importance and acreage than chardonnay and relegated to nameless vineyards in the Burgundian uplands or lowlands Still, the grape can make crisp, racy and even sometimes stylish wines, as this model is. Spicy citrus and pear flavors are permeated by limestone and steel and ringing acid that takes the notion of crispness to empyrean reaches. Despite this austere nature, the wine is almost pretty and offers a texture that’s soft and appealing, almost talc-like. After 45 minutes or so — we were drinking this at dinner, with our standard cod, potato, leek and chorizo stew — the wine took on winsome notes of floral astringency and muscadine. Very Good+ and definitely worth tracking down at about $15. Imported by Martine’s Wines, Novato, California.

*Domaine Prieur-Brunet Bourgogne Cuvée Ste-Jehanne de Chantal 2003. This “generic” chardonnay from Burgundy, now a bit more than three years old, sports a beautiful golden-yellow color and an alluring bouquet of green apples, roasted lemons, baking spice and camellia. It’s very dry, forcefully earthy and minerally, and offers tremendous body, dense and chewy and almost powdery in texture, knit with layers of lemon-lime and grapefruit flavors. Though the wine dries out a bit on the finish, it generally delivers lovely tone and complexity for the price, about $15. Very Good+. It needs grilled trout or pike quenelles. Imported by International Gourmet Corp, Tucker, Georgia.

*Henschke Coralinga Sauvignon Blanc 2004, Lenswood, Adelaide Hills, Australia. This is beautiful. It’s fresh, lively, grassy, dry and crisp, quite Sancerre-like in its earthy limestone and chalk qualities and its scintillating lime and grapefruit scents and flavors, but it slowly ravels a skein of jasmine and lemon curd, shifting from its initial hayfield nature to wild meadowy elements wrapped around a succulent core of gooseberry, lanolin and licorice and a hint of some astringent white flower. The current release of this wine in the 2006, but don’t neglect to search out the slightly older cousin. Bottled with a screw-cap for easy opening. Excellent. About $28 to $32. Imported by Negociants USA, Napa, California.

*Clos de la Coulée de Serrant 2000, Savennières, Loire Valley. Nicolas Joly is the Lord High Honcho and out-spoken advocate of the biodynamic method of farming in the vineyard, and while I won’t go into my usual, intemperate tirade against bio-dy at this moment (except to say that it’s nonsense), I will say that Joly makes superb wines, probably the world’s greatest wines, from chenin blanc grapes. Of course he would most likely be doing the same thing without the benefit of burying “dynamized” manure in cows’ horns in his vineyards. Anyway, Clos de la Coulée de Serrant is a tiny, separate appellation within Savennières. At a bit more than six years old, this example bursts with quince, peach and pear, spice-cake, mango and orange rind that gets smokier and more roasted as the minutes pass, all nestled in a plush texture cut by vibrant acid. The wine tastes like honey, but it’s completely dry, so dry, in fact, that the finish is austere, offering the slight bitterness of grapefruit rind tempered by lanolin and a touch of jasmine. Exceptional, and under-priced at $36 to $40. Long life ahead; drink now through 2010 to ‘14 (well-stored).