In Time for the Holidays -- The Naked Vine Guide to Champagne and Sparkling Wine

Champagne. Sparkling wine. Spumante. Bubbly. It’s that time of year.

Dom Perignon, the monk who popularized the concept of carbonated wine apocryphally stated, “Come quickly, I am drinking the stars!” upon opening a bottle in the wine caves of his monastery, and generations thereafter have shared that particular sensation, especially around this time of the year, when the loud pop of a cork accompanies celebrations large and small.

As party season cranks up, you might get called on by your friends to “pick up some Champagne” for your next soiree. The word “Champagne” is, for all intents and purposes for most people, a stand in term for all sparkling wine – much like “Coke” in the South translates as “any kind of soda/pop.”

“Champagne,” remember, is not a grape varietal or type of wine. It’s the region of Northern France where this style of wine originated, and where the most famous and most expensive versions of this sparkling wine -- like Veuve Cliquot, Moet & Chandon, and the aforementioned Dom Perignon -- are produced. If you go to the wine store and ask for “Champagne,” you might get steered over to this rack, where you’ll be staring at a bunch of French names and pricetags starting at forty or fifty bucks.

“Waitaminit!” you say. “I’ve seen Korbel Champagne in the store! Isn’t that Champagne?” Nope. It’s sparkling wine made in California that was labeled for years as “Champagne” as a marketing ploy. In 2006, a trade agreement outlawed labeling US wines as “Champagne” unless they’d been using that as a traditional trademark – but they were required to relabel their wines as “California Champagne.” Sparkling wine that’s not from Champagne, whether from California or elsewhere, is now generally labeled “sparkling wine.”

Getting back to the French stuff, and getting down to brass tacks – in all honesty, Champagne can be a real ripoff. Yes, Champagne is wonderful. I’ve had the opportunity to try a few high-end champagnes, and they’re delightful. They’re flavorful and sensuous…and completely overpriced for my semi-educated palate. I say this since, if you’re reading this, I’m guessing you’re likely not going to be doing vertical tastings of high enders like Krug or Pol Roger anytime soon. Still, why are these wines so damned expensive?

Simply put? Brand loyalty.

We pay a premium for these wines because of the name on the label – no different from buying clothes, cars, or headphones. In some cases, the quality of actual Champagnes might be slightly higher than other sparkling wines, but at 11:59 on December 31^st, are you really thinking about doing a Parker-esque pull-apart of the various flavors? I thought not. If you’re opening vintage Champagne at midnight on New Year’s, you’re either showin’ off, or you’re at a ritzier party than I’m ever getting invited to.

That said, there’s nothing quite like the ritual of cracking open a bottle of celebratory bubbly. Good news! Consumption of sparkling wine has increased sharply in the first half of this decade. (We must be in a collective mood to get down!) Because of this increased demand, there are many options to allow you to have a good experience while still maintaining a grip on your fiscal sanity.

A couple of quick things to consider about buying sparkling wine. Unlike most reds and whites, many sparkling wines do not have vintage dates, as they’re often made from blends of wines from different years to produce a consistent product. Vintage wines often command higher prices, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re better.

Also, remember that the wine’s sweetness level is on the label. The traditional French nomenclature for sparkling wine is more or less the standard. The ones you’re likely to see are, from sweetest to driest: Doux (sweet) → Demi-Sec (semi-dry) → Sec (Dry) → Extra Dry → Brut. Yep. Brut is “drier than dry.” There are actually another two, even drier, levels -- Extra Brut and Brut Nature, but you’re unlikely to come across those.

What you will come across, however, are plenty of alternatives to higher-end stuff. Here are a few that you’ll be able to find without too much trouble:

Crémant – We’ll start in France. Crémant (pronounced cray-mahn) has come to refer to French sparkling wine produced outside the Champagne region. Most Crémant is produced with the same methode Champenoise process that Champagne is, often with the same grapes. The big difference? These are more “everyday” French sparkling wines, and usually can be had for between ten and twenty bucks. The best known will be labeled Crémant d’Alsace, Crémant de Bourgogne, Crémant de Loire, and Crémant de Jura. All of these make excellent alternatives if you’re trying to look classy by putting a bottle of French sparkling wine on the table at your next party. Are they as high quality as high-end Champagne? No. Is that quality difference worth $50 or more? You be the judge.

Cava – Over to Spain. Cava is my go-to inexpensive sparkling wine. This sparkler, produced in the area around Barcelona. The name “Cava” stems from the caves in which these wines were originally stored and aged. These wines are also produced in the same method as Champagne. I find most Cava to be crisper and somewhat more acidic than the creamy gentle bubbles in the French versions. The extra acidity, in my opinion, is what makes Cava perfect for tapas – allowing it to go alongside almost any kind of food. Cava is also quite inexpensive. For a typical bottle of Cava, if you’re spending more than $15, you’re overpaying.

Prosecco & Moscato – The Italian sparkling entries. Prosecco is the more “traditional” version of sparkling wine – and you’ll typically find it nestled next to the Cava in your local wine store. I find it to be fruitier and slightly sweeter than other sparkling wines, which I think makes it a better option for an early evening palate cleanser or morning-after mimosas than for cracking at the end of the year, but your mileage may vary. Moscato, whose popularity boomed in the early 2000’s, is a sweet, peachy, low-alcohol sparkling wine that – as a wine-savvy friend once put it – “you could drink for breakfast.” Produced in both sparkling and still versions, Moscato is a favorite of brunch aficionados and high school shoplifters everywhere.

United States Sparkling Wine – While some more expensive versions of “California Champagne” are decent (for instance, President Obama celebrated his inauguration with a special version of Korbel Natural), in general, they’re best used for christening boats or hosing down your friends after winning the sports contest of your choice. That said, there’s no shortage of high quality bubbly within our own borders. In my experience, the highest quality stuff comes from Northern California, and can be every bit as expensive as its French counterparts. However, there are many of these California products you’ll find in the $15-20 range that are very serviceable for any occasion. Oregon, Washington, and New Mexico are producing very good sparklers at bargain prices.

Bottom line – unless you’re really wed to the idea of having “traditional” Champagne for whatever your occasion may be, you’ll have good luck finding alternatives that won’t break your bank. So snag some bottles and pop your corks. You deserve it.

The Sweetly Logical Fallacy

When I do wine tastings, a lot of people say, “I don’t like dry wines – I only like sweet wines.” There’s nothing inherently wrong with liking sweet wine. A person’s taste is…well…personal. However, the notion of a wine as either “dry” or “sweet” is little more than a logical fallacy – the same fallacy used so effectively by certain political parties: the false dichotomy.

In case you haven’t taken a philosophy class lately, a false dichotomy is presenting two alternatives as an either-or choice, even though other alternatives exist. “You’re either with us or against us” is a classic example, because rarely are things that clear cut. (Unless you’re a Teabagger …)

Yes, one can think of “dry” and “sweet” as the ends of a range, but using “dry” and “sweet” as the way to describe a wine is a false choice. Why? Because not only are there countless shades of gray in between the two, but there are also other ranges that play into wine’s flavor that get lumped into “dry” or “sweet” – so one can’t simply isolate the level of sugar and call it a description.

When most people start learning about wine, they gravitate towards the varietals they’ve heard people talk about over and over: cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, white zinfandel. For many, the first experience with red wine is with big ol’ California cabs, and the high level of tannins isn’t an easy thing to deal with initially. So, after what probably wasn’t a pleasant experience, they ask someone about the wine and get “Oh, red wines are dry wines. That’s why they taste so strong.”

There’s a similar effect with chardonnay, especially California chardonnay. A mouthful of butter-covered charcoal can be a rough start. (Yes, oaky chardonnays are tannic whites.) They hear, “Yep. Chardonnay. That’s a dry white wine.” Our poor newbie then turns to the bottle of Beringer White Zin. It tastes sweet and easy to drink (and brings back memories of high school Boone’s Farm adventures) – so they stick with pink syrup and now have a prejudice against a huge slice of the wine world.

Seriously, think about how bitter your first espresso was. Coffee’s bitterness also comes from tannins. (Mine was in a coffee shop in the Mission District of San Francisco. Took me 45 minutes to drink the damned thing…and it wasn’t exactly enjoyable.) While the bitterness of tannin can have a “drying” effect – it’s not what makes a wine “dry.” A wine’s dryness or sweetness comes from sugar, not tannin.

Think about how wine is made. As I’ve mentioned before, when yeast is added to the grape’s juice, the yeast eats the sugar, farts carbon dioxide, and pisses alcohol (until it dies of either starvation or alcohol poisoning). If the yeast consumes all of the sugar in a vat of juice, the wine is totally dry. When a winemaker stops the fermentation before all the sugar is consumed, what’s left over is the residual sugar. The more residual sugar, the greater the level of sweetness. If you’re looking at the specs on a bottle of wine, the amount of residual sugar is either presented as a percentage or in grams per liter. (Take g/l, divide by 10, and stick a % on the end if you want to convert.) Dry wines will be under 1% residual sugar, if they have any at all. Off-dry wines will be between 1-5%. Sweet wines will be 5% and up. Also, the higher the residual sugar, in general, the lower the alcohol content.

Why would a winemaker leave residual sugar in a wine? A winemaker worth his or her salt strives for balance in wine. The balance of dry and sweet is an important factor. Too much sugar and the sweetness overwhelm everything else. Not enough and other flavors can take over, rendering a wine unpleasant. The balance for sweetness is acidity. To keep a sweeter wine balanced, the acid level needs to go up. Too little acid and too much sugar makes for a white zinfandelish experience.

As for red wines, “dry” and “sweet” don’t really apply, since there are very few “sweet” reds. Most red wines contain virtually no residual sugar. If you’re describing a red, you’re going to be more interested in the level of tannin than the sweetness, so there’s not really a complement to the “dry” of tannin – other than “not tannic.”

(There’s also another reason why winemakers leave residual sugar. There’s an old saying: “A little sugar covers a lot of flaws.” These winemakers are either unlucky or lazy.)

But let’s get back to the whole dry/sweet question. Stepping outside the world of White Zinfandel, word association with “sweet wine” usually lands on Riesling. If we just want to look at the real difference between sweet and dry, white wine is the easiest place to get an illustration – Riesling especially. While the fruit and other flavor characteristics are certainly varied, let’s just focus on the sugar levels for now. I looked at three Rieslings.:

• Pierre Sparr 2008 Riesling Alsace (bone dry)
• D’Arenberg 2007 “The Dry Dam” Riesling (off-dry)
• Mönchof 2006 Estate Riesling QbA (sweet)

If you decide to try these side-by-side-by side, start with the driest and work your way to the sweetest. Pour, swirl, and sip. The differences will literally leap out of the glass at you.

First, the Pierre Sparr. A lot of folks have “tooth achingly sweet” as their mental reference for Riesling. A sip of this will throw that notion out the window. There’s almost no sweetness to this wine at all. There’s plenty of fruit and a little bit of a mineral finish, but the yeast has done its work here. This is common with Rieslings (and most other whites) from Alsace. The general wine style is very dry. Residual Sugar – basically none.

Secondly, try the D’Arenberg. This is a good example of a wine that’s “off-dry,” which means that there’s a little bit of residual sugar as a balancing agent for the other flavors. In this case, the D’Arenberg is a fairly acidic wine, so a little residual sugar tames the tart “bite” that acidic wines often have. The sugar is more of an honey undertone than sweetness right up in your face. Residual sugar – 1.1%

Finally, the Mönchof. You could certainly class this one as a sweet wine. The residual sugar level is about 5%, which also yields a lower-alcohol wine. The acid level is similar to the D’Arenberg – but the acid in this case prevents the wine from becoming syrupy. If you want a general idea of the level of sweetness and flavor, think baked apples with a little less sugar. It’s still reasonably well-balanced and quite pleasant. (And, at under 10% alcohol, you could almost have it for breakfast.)

To go back to the beginning, to help someone transition away from the world of Black Tower, Beringer, and other such syrups, I’ll usually slide something along the lines of the D’Arenberg or a friendly sauvignon blanc. I might then let them try a merlot or zinfandel if they’re willing to go red. Once they’ve made that transition, it’s a quick jump to broadening the horizons – which is the point of trying new wines, after all…

Salad Days

Summertime. Fresh vegetables and herbs. All the natural yumminess you’d ever want, there for the taking at your local farmer’s market or in your backyard if you’re lucky enough to be able to keep things a’growing.

I know that I focus a lot on what to eat with grilled food during seasons like this, but I’m just as likely to want something light when it’s blazing hot. I’m perfectly happy with a big ol’ dinner salad most nights, but that doesn’t change the need to indulge my little oenological fixation.

Salads are tough for wines, though. Greens of almost all sorts have at least a hint of bitterness in their flavors. Some, like arugula, can be absolute wine killers that make a decent bottle of chardonnay taste like turpentine. Also, as delicious as fresh vegetables can be, flavors leap off in any number of directions and throw off many flavors in wine. Roasting certain veggies can markedly change food flavors, mushrooms add earthiness, asparagus almost always sets wine on its ear, and so on.

Heck, we haven’t even started talking about different kinds of dressing. Or perhaps you want to add meat to your greens to soothe the carnivorous beast within. How can you set up a pairing for optimal dining pleasure while not either making a boring salad or ruining a perfectly good bottle of wine?

When I think about wine pairings for salads, I follow three simple rules:

1) Go with the acid. Without veering headlong into Timothy Leary Territory, I’ll simply give assurances that powerful hallucinogens and romaine generally do not mix. However, tartaric and malic acids generally work much more effectively. The acidity of tart, crisp wines tends to cut through the bitterness that most greens have, as well as working to effectively dissolve the oils in most dressings, which allows both the flavor of the wine and the other flavors in the salad to make a stronger impression. Almost any crisp wine will work with a salad. And when in doubt, as with any number of other foods, rosé works well. For instance, the Saintsbury 2006 Carneros Vin Gris -- A French-styled rosé from California. It reminded me a great deal of Tavel. The wine has a pleasant nose of strawberries. Body is slightly acidic and quite fruity. Finish has a nice fruit, followed by a crispness that would make it a wonderful pairing with almost any kind of salad you might come up with. $12-14.

2) Pair with the dominant flavor. The idea here is similar to the rule of thumb used when pairing wines with pasta. You wouldn't want to drink a pinot grigio with a heavy tomato and meat sauce, but a big ol' Montepulciano works splendidly. Think about the major flavor in the salad -- or if there's one ingredient that, even if it's just an accent flavor, would be the first thing people taste. For instance, we recently made a tomato salad with lots of Mediterranean flavors: parsley, pistachios, mint, and scallions. While light, the tomatoes and herbs certainly took center stage. After some discussion with a knowledgeable staff person at a local wine store, we came upon the Pierre Boniface Apremont 2006 Vin de Savoie -- This wine from the French Alps is made from a local grape called Jacquère. The nose is cream and apples and the flavor is somewhat acidic and grapefruity. However, much like the wines from the neighboring Loire Valley, you get a some minerality, although not as much as a Muscadet. The body is light and crisp with a slighty flinty finish. A wine like this will cut through strong herbal flavors as well as the acid of things like tomato. $11-13.

3) Spice can be nice, but always think twice. While many think of salads as simply cool and green, adding spice and heat to a salad is becoming more and more common. If you look at the ingredient list for almost any salad in a cooking magazine these days, you're going to run into ingredients in either the dressing or the salad itself that adds peppery, savory flavors to the mix. Thankfully, there are a number of wines that balance those flavors. When it comes to pairing food with spices, Riesling immediately jumps to mind, especially dry Rieslings. The better dry Rieslings are often from Alsace, and one I had recently was The Furst 2006 Riesling – a wine with an interesting twist. The nose is perfumey and appley, much as I expected from a Riesling. Most Alsace Rieslings I've tasted have been bone dry, but this one has a pleasant amount of sweetness, which works wonderfully to balance the flavors you'd find in a salad. Also, the body wasn't as heavy as some Rieslings I've had. If you're doing an Asian-flavored salad, you'd be well-advised to spend $12-14 here.

The other major varietal that pairs with almost any salad is Beaujolais, but I'll hold off on discussing those in depth since they'll be the central theme of the next entry. But if you want a red wine with a salad, that should always, always be your first thought.

So, enjoy that fresh produce straight from garden to plate -- and confidently pour something that stands up proudly alongside.

Wine School! (Class #8 -- Riesling)

Riesling -- the crowd pleaser.

In my CinWeekly interview, I mentioned Riesling as my favorite wine of the moment. I mentioned it's "the most flexible," meaning one can find a Riesling to pair with almost anything. Since I love to cook and love to eat even more -- it's a natural.

I wasn't a big fan of whites for a long time. I'd drink them, sure -- and it was nice to have something cold around the house, but I chilled them almost to freezing and basically used like light beer. Once I started learning about wine, I grew to tolerate them. I thought most were too tart or too oaky. I discovered good Riesling and my eyes opened. Riesling was my gateway white.

Among U.S. wine drinkers, "Riesling" meant "syrupy-sweet German wine" for a very long time. As I discussed in my Riesling column, that's an unfortunate stereotype. While the grape is of German origin and the most expensive Rieslings are dessert wines -- the majority of decent Riesling out there isn't going to pucker your mouth. If you'd like a primer on deciphering Riesling, refer to the "Raise Your Riesling Steins" entry and you'll get a good idea.

For our tasting, I decided I'd try to put my advice to first hand application. On my birthday, I did a wine tasting for my family. The cast of characters:

• My father and mother -- neither of whom are big drinkers. They have the occasional glass of wine, but rarely have any around the house.
• My sister and brother-in-law -- also occasional wine drinkers, but the usual drink of choice at their place is Michelob Ultra.
• The Sweet Partner in Crime.
• My 95 year old grandmother who almost never drinks -- except for an occasional glass of Manischewitz.

They were faced with:

• Pierre Sparr 2004 Riesling (France) -- $11-14
• J & H.A. Strub 2005 Riesling Kabinett (Germany) -- $13-15
• Salmon Run 2005 Riesling (New York) -- $11-14

I'd rather my party did most of the talking.

We started with the Sparr. My grandmother's initial comment was "This is sour. I like sweet wines." My mom and sister thought "bitter apple" was a good description of it. The most colorful description was from my brother in law: "It's kind of got an odor in your mouth. It tastes like…I'd say…rubbing alcohol smells. Not that I drink rubbing alcohol or anything."

Rieslings like the Sparr from in the Alsace region are traditionally very dry. Part of this is due to the terroir, but most Alsatian wines are in this style. French Rieslings also improve with a little age, so this wine would have been very different after two or three more years. These wines have some fruit to them, but they're generally much more acidic than other Rieslings. I remembered Alsatian wines generally go well with shellfish. We still had some shrimp cocktail from lunch, so away we went. The wine's acidity worked extremely well with the shrimp. Everyone liked it. I'd imagine this would be a great choice at a raw bar.

Next, the Salmon Run. My grandmother liked this one "better than the first one." My brother-in-law thought it was "pleasant" and he said it "didn't have any nasty taste." My mother said it was a wine you could easily "drink too much of on a sunny day." My dad said only, "Fuller, fruitier." My sister said it was "tangy, but sweet."

American Rieslings tend to be middle-of-the-road. While they're not quite sweet enough to handle heavy food, they are good everyday wines. Most of the U.S. Rieslings you'll see will be from California, but the Finger Lakes region of New York is now cranking out some very good versions. Finger Lakes Rieslings generally have enough acidity to handle a broad variety of foods, and they're very easy to drink. If you're going to a party and don't know what to bring, this is a safe bet. With this particular wine, you'll get a lot of pear and apple flavor and a long, smooth finish.

Finally, the Strub. A German Riesling Kabinett tends to be on the sweet side. My grandmother indicated the wine "smelled and tastes sweet." My brother in law said the body tastes "like when you eat a bunch of sweet candy…you get that thick taste in your mouth." My mother thought it would be too heavy for food. My sister said it tasted like pears. My father reclined, saying little, contemplative. Perhaps the accumulated effect of wine, cognac, and Kahlua got to him.

This wine is very German. It would go very well with traditional Rhine-style cooking. Spaetzle, beef & pork sausages, and sauerkraut would be a natural pairing. It could also accompany anything spicy. Thai, Indian, Chinese, Mexican -- any of them would work well. As the SPinC put it: "Anything that would go with beer would go with this."

So ends our tour of the big six. A friend of mine contacted me a couple of months ago -- he told me about the "century club," a group of people who pride themselves on tasting 100 different varietals. I think that's a noble goal, but let's be honest. Unless you've got a lot of time and money, probably 90% of the wines you drink on a regular basis will fall into one of these six.

I hope you've enjoyed this, picked up some good information, and you'll feel a little more comfortable when faced with a wine list. I invite you to share of your own observations in the comments.

Cheers, everyone!

Wine for rocking out -- Gewürztraminer

Tried and true recipe for 80's metal band success:

Aqua Net? Check. Leather pants? Check. At least one power ballad? Check.

And, of course, an umlaut somewhere in the band's name.

For those of you unfamiliar with German diacritics, "umlaut" is the name for the two dots above a vowel. Now, 80's bands dispensed with that convention -- randomly peppering umlauts anywhere they could, but hey…that's rock 'n' roll.

Just the same, I can never look at a bottle of Gewürztraminer without wistful remembrance of my Queensrÿche fanboy days. But I don't need to go into great detail about my mulleted, body-waved boyhood, so let's focus on the present and the grape at hand.

The Gewürztraminer grape originated in the Italian Alps, but the Alsace region of France and the mountains of Germany are best known for this aromatic grape. The German word "gewürz" translates as "spicy" or "perfumed" -- either of which easily apply to the wine. Gewürztraminer is a mutation of the traminer grape, hence the full name.

Only a few regions successfully grow this grape. In addition to the aforementioned, there are successful plantings in New Zealand, the Pacific Northwest, and a few counties in California. Austria grows some of the best, most expensive Gewürztraminers in the world.

Gewürztraminer produces a medium-to-full bodied, extremely fragrant wine. These wines are generally very fruity and at least somewhat peppery. Gewürztraminers may be some of the most food-friendly wines around -- perhaps even more so than Riesling. Gewürztraminer is one of the few whites you could pair with a steak somewhat decently. However, Gewürztraminer really comes to life when paired with fresh fruit, strong cheeses, or almost any spicy food. It's perfect with almost any Asian or Cajun cuisine.

Gewürztraminers, especially imported, tend to be a little difficult to find at Vine prices. Even so, there are a few bottles that Warrant a mention…

We start in Germany with Georg Albrecht Schneider 2004 Halbtrocken Gewürztraminer Spatlese -- Schneider Winery in Mainz, nestled among the mountains along the Rhine River, is best known for very decent Rieslings. Over the last several years, Schneider branched into Gewürztraminers. If you look back to the Riesling entry, you'll remember that "Spatlese" indicates the grapes are picked at the peak of ripeness. "Halbtrocken" is literally "half dry," an apt description of what we've got here. Schneider starts with a big scent of melon and apples. The wine is full bodied with flavors of honey and cloves. The finish is very peppery and slightly sweet. For a good food pairing, think of traditional German fare -- cheeses, spicy sausages, spaetzle. You could also pair it, as I mentioned earlier, with a spicy Asian dish and not go wrong. $12-14.

I wanted to try different plantings of American Gewürztraminer market, so I got two: one from California, and one from Washington. The Adler Fels 2005 Gewürztraminer is from Sonoma County. I was wonderfully surprised by this wine. The Adler Fels was one of the best whites I've had in a long time. It has a nice floral and apple nose, is medium bodied with a nice crisp acidity and some pear flavors -- but it's not as sweet as many other wines of this type. The finish is very long and peppery, with more of that tasty pear flavor hanging around. The Columbia Winery 2005 Gewürztraminer from Washington had a much more prounounced nose of honey and grapefruit and was quite full bodied. The taste was considerably sweeter and not as peppery on the finish. We decided to taste them side by side with different dishes. We had them with a spicy Thai vegetable curry and a version of ginger and garlic chicken. We also tried them both with sushi. With food, the Columbia actually works better as the sweetness cut through the spice more effectively. The Columbia is a simpler wine, so you don't lose as much of the complexity and flavor as you do with the Adler Fels paired with spicy foods. Overall, I think the Adler Fels was the superior wine, but consider having it with cheeses or on its own. The Adler Fels is $13-15. The Columbia is $7-11.

We can't leave the Gewürztraminers without a jaunt to Alsace. The Lucien Albrecht 2005 Reserve Gewürztraminer was my choice here. The Albrecht has a wonderful nose of ginger and apples. The flavor is sweeter than the other wines here, with some strong honey flavor. The flavors are much "deeper" and the finish was less peppery. Instead, the fruit dominates, and you're left with a finishing flavor of apples dipped in honey -- a Rosh Hashanah wine, if you will. One of the more interesting aspects of Alsace Gewürztraminers is the suggested pairing with strong cheeses -- blue cheese, Stilton, Roquefort. Give it a try. The cheese brings out the honey flavors in the wine. Of course, it's a very strong choice for a spicy curry. We made a chicken, chickpea, and potato curry with it, and it was fabulous. $13-15.

A final word about wine and umlauts. "The Umlaut Society" is the wine club of Göpfrich Winery in Sonoma County -- a favorite of mine (and yes, I am a member). They're listed on my blogroll. While their wines are a little more expensive than those I review here, they're worth the extra money. Their cabernet is the best I've tasted. Check them out.

(Thanks to Vine reader allenmurray for the column suggestion.)

Until next time…Rock!