We drank the Rosemount GSM 2010, from Australia’s McLaren Vale region, with a variety of pizzas I made Saturday — grand-kids were visiting – though it would be great with braised short ribs or grilled leg of lamb or even a burger. G-S-M stands for grenache-syrah-mourvèdre, occurring here in a combination of 59 percent, 32 percent and 9 percent respectively. I love the oak regimen that this wine undergoes for 10 months’ aging; 34 percent in stainless steel, 34 percent in French oak barrels (17 percent new) and 32 percent in American oak (16 percent new), the result being lovely inborn balance with no blatant taint of toasty new oak about it. Winemaker was Matt Koch. You could sell this wine on the basis of its color alone, a rich, radiant dark ruby that shades to violet-magenta at the rim. Or on the basis of its seductive aromas of ripe and fleshy black raspberry and cherry with touches of plum and mulberry and intriguing hints of lavender, licorice and bittersweet chocolate; a few minutes in the glass bring up notes of graphite, leather, briers and brambles. The wine is notably smooth and supple, with bright flavors of black and red fruit cossetted by firm, moderately plush tannins and lightly spiced wood, all wrapped by vibrant acidity and a stealth influx of dusty granitic minerality through the finish. 14.5 percent alcohol. A shapely and tasty wine with some seriousness in the undertow. Drink now through 2016 to ’18. Excellent. About $25.

Imported by Treasury Wine Estates, Napa, Ca. A sample for review.

Stop. Drop everything. Run out and buy a case of Piccini Chianti 2011, from, of course, Tuscany. You’ll pay less than $100 for those 12 bottles, with the standard 10 percent case discount. The estate was founded in 1882 by Angiolo Piccini and is now operated by the family’s fourth generation. Antonella Conti has been winemaker since 2006. The Piccini Chianti 2011, which the company calls “Chianti Orange” — let’s hope this device stirs no memories in the USA of the notorious Agent Orange — because of the label, is a blend of 95 percent sangiovese grapes and 5 percent ciliegiolo. Conti ( pictured here) employs the traditional but now little used governo technique of inducing a second fermentation by adding to the wine pressed dried grapes from the same harvest. The result is a slight tempering of the acidity of the sangiovese grape and a slight increase in carbon dioxide, making for an agreeable and quaffable wine. The Piccini Chianti 2011, however, is better than agreeable and quaffable. The color is deep ruby; aromas of fresh and dried black currants and cherries are permeated by notes of woody spices like cloves and sandalwood with a background of violets, leather and black tea. The wine offers tasty, spicy and macerated black and red fruit flavors — there’s an undertow of pomegranate — nestled in a firm supple structure of finely meshed but not self-important tannins. There’s satisfying balance between richness, the natural spareness of the sangiovese grape and a touch of graphite-like minerality. 12.5 percent alcohol. This was a great pizza wine for us and would serve well with hearty pasta dishes, burgers and braised short ribs. Drink through 2013. Very Good+, and a Raving Bargain at about $9.

Imported by Aveníu Brands, Baltimore. A sample for review.

Sorry that I did not produce a Weekend Wine Sips this week. You know how it is, the world is too much with us, late and soon, getting and spending we lay waste our powers blah blah blah.

Mount Eden Vineyards traces its origin to the early 1940s, when Martin Ray left his job at Paul Masson in Santa Clara and launched a winery under his own name in the Santa Cruz Mountains, south of San Francisco Bay. Ray was destined to become one of California’s most out-spoken and controversial winemakers, and his often superb though equally as often erratic wines reflected his individuality and irascibility. In 1972, after a series of conflicts, Ray’s investors ousted him from control, and his family was left with a small, lower vineyard while up in the hills the former Martin Ray winery was renamed Mount Eden. Jeffrey Patterson was hired as assistant winemaker at Mount Eden in 1981 and within 18 months he was named head winemaker and general manager. In 1986, Patterson and his wife Ellie, a horticulturalist and textile artist, acquired significant shares in Mount Eden, and finally, in 2008, Jeffrey and Ellie Patterson and their children Sophie and Reid, took on the majority ownership. What a long time they worked and waited!

This succinct history of one of California’s archetypal vineyards and wineries serves as prelude to today’s Wine of the Week, the Domaine Eden Pinot Noir 2010, Santa Cruz Mountains. The “Domaine” wines, distinct from the “Mount Eden” wines, derive from a 1700-foot elevation 55-acre site that the Pattersons purchased in 2007, the former home of Cinnabar Winery in the Saratoga foothills. The Domaine Eden wines sell for about $20 less than the Mount Eden wines.

Domaine Eden Pinot Noir 2010, Santa Cruz Mountains, aged for 12 months in French oak barrels, 50 percent new. Nothing opulent or obvious here; this pinot noir continues in the venerable Mount Eden tradition of Burgundian-style pinots that emphasize structure over ripeness but sacrifice nothing in the way of freshness, purity or intensity. The wine at first feels muscular, lithe and sinewy, but gradually the texture of cool satin unfolds, and flavors of brambly black currants, plums and mulberries (with hints of rhubarb and pomegranate) broaden across the spectrum; in the nose, the black and red fruit scents become generously laden with cloves and sassafras, violets and potpourri. Tannins are fine-grained and slightly dusty, borne by supple oak and vibrant acidity, and they frame the wine firmly and indelibly but without blatant proclamation. In the end, the wine is a potent marriage of elegance and power. 13.5 percent alcohol. Now through 2015 to ’17. Excellent. About $35 is the suggested retail price; it’s $33 in my neck o’ the woods and can be found around the country as low as $28.

Tasted at a distributor’s trade event.

Jumilla is a wine region in southeastern Spain in the province of Murcia, its arid hills providing a transition between the coast and the vast plateau of Castilla-La Mancha that occupies the country’s center. With its vineyards situated at heights between 2,000 and 3,500 feet elevation, Bodegas Carchelo produces some of Jumilla’s finest wines, of which the “C” 2010, a blend of 40 percent monastrell (the French mourvèdre), 40 percent syrah and 20 percent cabernet sauvignon, is a terrific example, being both rustic and stylish; the package is pretty stylish, too. That combination indicates a modern vision for the wine, since it’s a melange of grapes, not necessarily in the same proportion, that could be found in the South of France, in parts of Italy, in California or Washington, in Argentina or Australia. “C” receives less oak than Carchelo’s other wines, resting only two or three months in French barrels. The color is deep dark ruby-purple; aromas of ripe, smoky and spicy black currents, blackberries and blueberries are seductively woven with graphite, lavender and violets, cloves and sandalwood and just an edge of black olive and bell pepper. The wine is robust to the point of being broad-shouldered and burly; lip-smacking acidity and dusty tannins support and temper a black and blue fruit basket of sweet ripeness. The finish is long, mineral-lashed and slightly astringent. This could wait a year or two, unless you’re drinking it with a medium rare rib-eye steak or leg of lamb studded with garlic and rosemary, hot and crusty from the grill. 14 percent alcohol. Excellent. About $16, an Incredible Bargain, and discounted around the country as low as $14.

Imported by Classical Wines of Spain, Seattle. A sample from a local wholesale house.

The holiday Champagne and sparkling wine season will be upon us soon, so I’ll give you a head-start on the proceedings with a very attractive bottle of bubbles from France’s Loire Valley. Crémant de Loire was approved as an appellation in 1975. It’s not merely a type of wine but implies a geographical area, being restricted to the regions of Anjou-Saumur and Touraine, in the central Loire. According to the regulations, grapes for Crémant de Loire must be hand-harvested, and the wine must be aged in the bottle for at least a year. The process must be the Champagne method of second fermentation in the bottle or as it is called in the Loire (and other places in France outside of Champagne) methode traditionelle. Many grape varieties are allowed, but the dominate grates are chenin blanc and cabernet franc.

The non-vintage Gaudrelle Crémant de Loire Brut is made from equal parts chenin blanc and chardonnay grapes. The color is pale gold enlivened by a constant upward stream of tiny glinting bubbles. This lovely sparkler is clean and fresh and effervescent, prolific with scents of lightly spiced apples and pears with back-notes of ginger and quince and a hint of chenin blanc’s slightly earthy straw-like character. The wine is quite dry, almost delicate, deeply imbued with limestone and flint qualities married to juicy citrus and stone-fruit flavors and devolving to a stones-’n'-bones finish that exhibits taut acidity and high-toned mineral-laced austerity. 12.5 percent alcohol. Really charming. Very Good+. About $19 or $20, but prices around the country range from $17 to $25.

Imported by Kysela Pere et Fils, Winchester, Va. Tasted at a trade event.

Words like nervous, nervy and nervosity derive from the Latin nervosus, which means “sinewy.” “Nervous,” in English, once meant “vigorous” or “spirited,” but those denotations are considered archaic, and our sense of the terms now centers on excitability, unease and apprehension. I would vote for reviving the original or archaic meanings of nervy and nervosity — sinewy, vigorous, spirited — because they acutely summarize the qualities in some wines, particularly white wines, that feel unusually lively, immediately appealing and crystalline in their litheness and crisp vibrancy. Such a wine is the Domaine Mittnacht Freres Les Petits Grains Pinot Gris 2011, from Alsace. Man, this has nervosity in spades, as well as reservoirs 0f scintillating and resonant limestone and flint qualities and that irresistible tension between the tautness of bright acid and the lushness of ripe and spicy pear, yellow plum and peach skin flavors. The note of peach skin brings in a hint of spareness and slight bitterness, and there’s a touch of almond skin here that contributes a similar attribute. The bouquet offers notes of jasmine and honeysuckle and lemongrass, but mainly this is cool, elegant and — did I mention sinewy nervosity? 14 percent alcohol. We drank this with seared swordfish dressed with nothing but olive oil, lemon juice and Urfa pepper. Now through 2015 or (well-stored) ’16. Excellent. About $22.

I mentioned the Mittnacht Terre d’Etoiles Pinot Blanc 2011 Here.

A Daniel Johnnes Selection for Michael Skurnik Wines, Syosset, N.Y. A sample for review.

Often white wines that aren’t chardonnay or sauvignon blanc nonetheless come across as quite sauvignon blanc-like, as if there were no alternative to those two deeply inculcated tastes, so why bother being something with which people are not familiar and everybody loves sauvignon blanc, right? Today, however, I offer a white wine that’s an individual as all get-out and bears no resemblance to anything else. It’s the Prelius Vermentino 2011, Maremma Toscano, from down near the coast in southwestern Tuscany. The owners of Castello di Volpaia, well-known producers of Chianti Classico and other red wines, launched this organic venture in 2008. Prelius Vermentino 2011 was made completely from vermentino grapes and came all from stainless steel tanks, where the wine aged on the lees — the residue of dead yeast cells — to gain a little character. So, the wine begins in fresh, clean, breezy fashion, presenting whiffs of thyme and roasted lemon, almond and almond blossom, but a few minutes in the glass bring out notes that are distinctly spicy, savory and saline, with the fleshiness and pungency of macerated pears, some earthy-limestone-loamy quality and high-notes of tarragon and lilac. Brisk acidity keeps the balance between a lean texture and moderately rich, ripe citrus and stone-fruit flavors, leading to a finish that’s packed with cloves and bracing elements of salt-marsh and sea-shell. A white wine — not chardonnay or sauvignon blanc — appropriate for the risotto and pasta dishes of Autumn or grilled fish and seafood. 13.5 percent alcohol. Very Good+. About $16.

Imported by Wilson Daniels, Napa, Ca. A sample for review.

The mantra seems to be: “Wines of the Mosel are delicate and nuanced; wines of Rheinhessen and Rheingau are more earthbound.” As is the case with much accepted wisdom, there’s more than a little truth to this assumption, and yet here we have the Weingut Max Fred. Richter Mülheimer Sonnenlay Riesling Kabinett-feinherb 2011, from Germany’s Mosel region, that practically revels in the earthy, gravelly grounding that bolsters its more typical ethereal effects. There’s a fairly new term on the label. We used to see halbtrocken, meaning “half-dry,” indicating a wine that’s slightly sweet, primarily on entry, though usually segueing to a dry finish because of the crisp acidity and limestone-like minerality. We will increasingly see the word feinherb as a replacement for halbtrocken; though feinherb literally means “delicately bitter” — go figure — in the context of German wine labels it denotes a half-dry wine, which somehow is predicated as drier than “semi-sweet.”

What else is on this label? (Attention! Education Alert!)

At the top, the name of the producer, Weingut Max Ferd. Richter and just below that the name of the village where the estate is located, Mülheim. Since we’re reading top to bottom, next is a picture of the old building and below that the indication that the estate has been owned by the same family since 1680. Now we get to the heart of the information. The vintage is 2011, prominently displayed, but even more typographical emphasis is placed upon the village, the vineyard, the grape variety and the style of wine. Mulheimer Sonnenlay means that the grapes were grown in the Sonnenlay vineyard that stands in the village of Mulheim, or, rather, it occupies an area of a hillside just to the southeast of the town. This is not one of the vineyards that photographs so beautifully because its steep terraces hover over the river; that picturesque aspect was precluded some 250,000 years ago when the Mosel changed course slightly and left the hill high and dry. The name of the vineyard means something like “sunshine/slate,” and if there are two more important factors in the nurture of the riesling grape, that is to say sun and soil, I don’t know what they are.

Kabinett is an indication that this wine falls into the category of the theoretically driest of the German wines of superior lineage; see the term Deutscher Prädikatswein just below. Remember that the categories of these wines — Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese and so on — don’t refer to the sweetness or dryness of the wine in the bottle but to the level of ripeness at which the grapes were harvested, the factor being that the longer the grapes hang on the vine, the more concentrated and filled with sugar they will be. “A.P.Nr 2 593 049 03 12″ is the official approval number of this wine and gives the testing boards a code to track the wine in case issues of authenticity arise. Finally, in large letters, “MOSEL,” the name of the region.

And that’s your lesson today in reading a German wine label. Did I cover all the intricate points? Oh, no, that would require a complete post, and this is, after all, the Wine of the Week.

So, to get on with it, the Max Fred. Richter Mülheimer Sonnenlay Riesling Kabinett-feinherb 2011 offers a very pale gold color that almost shimmers with radiance. Aromas of lightly spiced peaches and pears with an overlay of lychee and petrol/rubber eraser are wrapped in a sheen of jasmine and an element of clean earthy/flint-like minerality. That earthiness, a seeming combination of light loam and limestone, provides the bass notes for the wine as it laves the palate with the certainly present but delicately modulated ripeness of those peaches and pears, a ripeness that the tongue perceives as initial sweetness that flows into a sense of increasing dryness as the bright and keen acidity and the vibrant limestone and slate mineral qualities dominate from mid-palate back through the airy, ethereal finish. 11 percent alcohol. A lovely riesling, charming and engaging, with a touch of seriousness, for drinking through 2015 or ’16. Excellent. About $21, representing Great Value.

Imported by Langdon Shiverich, Los Angeles. A sample for review.

We drink quite a few rieslings because the wines can be versatile, matching well with a variety of dishes. Primarily, we try rieslings with fish preparations but also with certain pasta dishes and risottos and with light meats like pork and (when LL is traveling and I’m cooking on my own) veal. The combination of crisp acidity, floral and stone-fruit scents and flavors, sometimes intense spiciness and an underlying earthiness that rieslings often embody — as well as a touch of initial sweetness — also bode well for drinking with moderately hot Indian and Southeast Asian fare.

Lately, we’ve had the Domäne Wachau Federspiel Terassen Riesling 2011, Wachau, Austria, at home with salmon and swordfish and a vegetarian pasta. (I was sent two bottles.) Made all in stainless steel — winemaker is Heinz Frischengruber — this sprightly riesling offers the palest of pale gold colors and a delicate bouquet woven of apples, peaches and pears, touches of jasmine and honeysuckle, hints of lychee and petrol (or rubber eraser) and a background of damp limestone. Sounds pretty irresistible, huh? By sprightly I don’t mean that the wine is effervescent but that it’s brisk, lively and vibrant and that these buoyant qualities animate the tasty and moderately rich flavors of pears and yellow plums — there’s a wisp of baked apple — but before you think that this all feels sort of exuberant, I’ll say that the wine is a tissue of nuances and that from mid-palate back it’s modulated by crystalline acidity and limestone minerality. A nicely balanced 12 percent alcohol. Very Good+. About $13, a Terrific Bargain.

The intensely picturesque Wachau, a UNESCO Heritage Site, lies along the Danube between the towns of Melk and Krems. The “Terrassen” designation on the label of this wine refers to the steep terraced slopes that line the river. Wachau is the smallest of Austria’s vineyard and wine-producing regions and the most inland; the country’s wine areas are all in the easternmost part of Austria, primarily adjacent to the borders with the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia.

Imported by Vin Divino, Chicago. A sample for review.

Morgan Winery was not on the agenda for the small group that I traveled around Monterey County with in the middle of September, but keeping with the spirit of that trip and with the day we spent in the Santa Lucia Highlands appellation, I’ll make the Wine of the Week the Morgan Twelve Clones Pinot Noir 2010, the grapes for which were drawn from the winery’s own Double L Vineyard — 56 percent — and from several other vineyards in Santa Lucia, including Tondre Grapefield and Gary’s. The winery was founded by Dan Morgan Lee and Donna Lee in 1982; winemaker since 2005 has been Gianni Abate. The wine is named for the 12 original pinot noir clones in the Double L Vineyard, though now there are 14.

The Morgan Twelve Clones Pinot Noir 2010 offers a seductive color of medium ruby-cerise with a touch of magenta at the rim; the bouquet is a welter of cloves and sassafras, spiced and macerated red and black currants and cherries with a back-note of plum and deeper hints of briers and brambles The wine aged 10 months in French oak, 36 percent new barrels, the rest one- and two-years-old, and you feel that wood slightly in the wine’s subtle and supple nature, because this is, above all, beautifully balanced and integrated, though clean acidity cuts a swath and keeps this pinot noir bright and lively, while a satiny texture wraps all elements. Black and red fruit flavors are buoyed by a hint of graphite minerality and potpourri; the finish is long and packed with spice and foresty touches and just a hint of oak’s austerity. 13.9 percent alcohol. The winery made 10,000 cases, so there’s plenty to go around. Now through 2014 or ’15, with roasted chicken or grilled salmon, or, what the hell, a grilled cheese sandwich. Excellent. About $32.

A sample for review.