Some wines are easy to identify with a single whiff. Take gewurztraminer. It means spicy traminer, traminer being the grape variety. One sniff, and you know it’s gewurz. Dry and lively on the palate, it finishes long and somewhat sweet. And you’ll remember it.

Same for vernaccia — a grape variety used for wines since Etruscan days and which ever since has undergone near death experiences, resurrections, and even today faces an uncertain future. It can be crisp and refreshing but it always has a bitter, although pleasant finish, one you’ll remember. Perfect for the patio on hot, humid days.

It’s as famous for its town of origin as it is for being a wine. San Gimignano is a village of exceptionally numerous high towers and spires and is often referred to as the “Manhattan of Tuscany.” Not far from Siena, it is on the tourist beat from Florence to Siena, and its visitors often want to drink the local wines, almost always in this village a vernaccia.

Authoritiues granted vernaccia DOC statusin 1993, but producers have learned that Tuscan reds from the sangiovese grapes have made it big on world markets, and many of them are turning away from the white vernaccia to produce sangioveses.

Too bad. Vernaccia is a wonderful alternative to chardonnay and pinot grigio, both of which are produced in such industrialized quantities that it’s difficult to find the quality both deserve and can and do achieve.

Give it a try. It deserves a future. And make sure you get Vernaccia di San Gimignano to be assured of its pedigree. You won’t forget it.

There was a time when sweet little pink wines or tiny glasses of sweet sherry were offered to the ladies, but those Victorian customs are over. For years in this country, pink wines were associated with white zinfandel or for, well, the ladies. But thanks to the Europeans and hot muggy weather, we’ve learned more about pink wines.

At waterfront cafes in San Sebastian or at outdoor tables along the Champs Elysees, you’ll see carafes of bright pink wines in front of, yes, ladies, but also very macho truck drivers, football players, and corporate tycoons. And those wines are not sweet.

They are generally light in alcohol, seldom more than 12%, thirst-quenching, and compatible with just about any food taste. The standard for these wines has been set in Provence, right where the Rhone Valley spreads out to enter the Mediterranean Sea. Long dismissed as without pedigree, except for some prestigious producers in Tavel, pink wines — roses (rosays) — in France, were for use only in very hot weather and for picnics. That’s all changing.

The best still come from indiginous Rhone Valley grapes such as grenache, mouvedre, and cinsault; but now we are seeing them from other French regions — Bandol, Roussillon, even Bordeaux, and from Spain and Greece. Argentinians are doing roses from malbec, and brut rose in Champagne comes from the pinot noir.

U.S. roses really started with a mistake. The vintners at Beringer were trying to produce a white wine from zinfandel but couldn’t get the color out. Considered a failure at first, someone got the idea of marketing it as a “blush” wine, and sales took off. Other producers, trading on the success of white zinfandel began producing some pink wines, nearly all sweet.

Just as American wine drinkers evolved from sweet to dry consumers with white wines, so did they with roses. We are seeing more and more dry roses coming out of California, New Mexico, and the Northwest. While they seem at their best during hot summer months, we are seeing them increasingly year round as an alternative to red wines or to white wines with sea food meals.

So, gentlemen, forget the old stereotypes. Trot out a rose and enjoy a refreshing drink with your veal or trout or chicken or pork chop. 

Most of us have had the experience of leaving wine in a car or on the patio on a very hot day with the result of the wine pushing up through the foil, occasionally pushing out of the bottle altogether. The first time that happened to me was in the south of France. I had picked up a few bottles of Rhone wines in Tain to take to our beach condo on the French side of the Spanish border north of Barcelona. At the condo, I saw that every bottle had a pushed out cork; one bottle had lost its cork entirely, and the wine had spilled out, fortunately into a carrier that protected the floor of the car trunk.

I put the bottles aside, meaning to pour them out next day. In the morning, they had returned to “normal” temperature so I tasted one.  Not bad. The others also seemed ok. True, something had departed, but the overall quality was acceptable. We know that heat is an enemy of wine, but perhaps wine is more hardy than we think, especially since these bottles had been exposed to intense heat for a relatively short period of not more than four hours.  

Wine writer Robin Garr wrote recently of an experiment in which he deliberately “cooked” a wine for several hours. He recorded temperatures and exposure time to intense heat. Predictably, his cork pushed upward; but, he reported, the wine was not destroyed. Diminished, but not ruined. He also surmised that the exposure was of a limited time and therefore proved not fatal to the wine.

At the other extreme, I once left a carrier bag of white Burgundy in my car overnight during a cold wintry night in Indiana.  Five of the six bottles froze, and the corks were thrust upward through the foil by the expanding ice. Once in the house, they thawed and I put them to the taste test. Again, not bad. In fact, I wasn’t sure I would have known they had frozen if I hadn’t seen  the ice. True, the freezing was mostly at the top of the bottle, and the glass had not broken. A cracked bottle or a complete freezing may have changed the outcome.

In spite of these experiences, I still avoid exposing bottles to extreme heat or cold. I still believe too much heat will harm wine and that freezing wine can’t possibly do it any good. I’d love to hear of other views on those subjects.

How good is old wine, really? An oft-asked question and one for which there is no easy answer. Mostly, the answer is “Not very good” because most wines are made for almost immediate consumption. But, as with most things, there are exceptions. Clarets — those blended cabernet sauvignons from Bordeaux — almost demand aging before drinking. Most of them like five or six years in the bottle to harmonize their tannins with the fruit. In good vintages, more time may be needed. In recent years, we’ve learned that well made California cabernets will improve with age. Italians have known for generations tht a Barolo is never ready to drink until it’s at least ten years old. Some traditionalists in the Piemonte keep their Barolos in the barrel that long before they bottle them.

Last week I opened a 1970 Chateau Pavie, a classified great growth from St-Emilion in Bordeaux. I had bought it at the chateau in 1973, so I knew it had had excellent care these past 35 years. Even so, it had about an inch of ullage, that space between the bottom of the cork and the top of the wine, usually a sign of harmful seepage. I anticipated a crumbling cork and had cheesecloth and decanter handy to separate the cork bits from the wine. The cheesecloth was unnecessary, as the cork was intact; the decanter was needed because of sediment at the bottom of the bottle.

The wine retained good color, almost a brightness, more scarlet than deep red, a mere touch of rust around the rim. The aroma was faint but strived valiantly to announce itself. It was gentle on the tongue, elegant on the palate, lingering on the finish. No tannin, no bitterness. It’s 13% alcohol had preserved it well.

1970 was one of those vintage years the Bordelaise praised joyously at harvest time. They predicted a long life. However, the wines of that vintage never really developed the way they were expected to. They matured well but never really unfolded, never matched the promise in the way the 1947s had, the vintage with which they were most often compared. My three guests were thrilled with the experience of sipping a pleasant wine 38 years old and immediately began trying to recall what they had been doing in 1970.

When the last drop had been savored, we returned to table and poured a 2005 cabernet sauvignon from Slider Mountain, a little-known  California winery. Its youth fairly leaped out of the bottle. Its impact was immediately powerful and aggressive, its finish long and fiery. It was one of those fashionably popular fruit bombs boasting 14.5% alcohol and it dared the beef to stand up to it. At first, somewhat hesitantly, the guests intimated that they preferred the California youngster,but after a full glass, they began to hedge.

The evening’s conclusion was that both wines were well crafted with specific roles to play. The older, adult wine was almost mystical, the teenager, while well bred, was brash and in need of recognition. We couldn’t help wondering if it could live another 33 years.

Having said all the above, I would repeat my generic answer; in general, unless you know the provenance and the history of it, a wine of many years is not likely to be very good. 

I spent most of May in France and Italy. Lunch and dinner with wine every day. Lots of wine, or so it seemed. Servers never let a glass go empty. Yet I never felt sated, the food never tasted better.

I’ve become used to the reality that Europeans, especially the French and Italians, focus on the taste of food rather than on quantity, nutrition, or cost. Tiny little strawberries or radishes in the spring are delicious but not around anymore in August. Flavorful melons and tomatoes in the summer but never in November. Restaurant menus stress the four seasons and, for the most part, honor the seasons.

So the food was good, but I was aware that in spite of what seemed like a lot of wine, there was no after effect other than pleasure. It couldn’t have been just the food. Gradually, I began to realize that the little white Frascatis in Rome were only about 11% alcohol, the white Burgundies in Beaune occasionally reached 13% but hovered mostly arolund 12.5%. Red wines in Italy averaged 11 - 11.5%, in Paris about 12.5 - 13%.

I never saw a wine over 14%, except when visiting a winery where a producer would trot one out as if to show he could actually do it. Some of them admit that their most alcoholic wines are for the American market. Since coming back to Indiana, I’m noticing that some of the wines in my cellar actually overwhelm food with their power. Points, from the great raters — Robert Parker, Wine Spectator, it appears, are awarded more for strength than for food friendliness.

Medical authorites who agree that a bit of wine in our daily diet is healthful generally don’t comment on the alcohol level. When they say a glass or two, are they talking about German wines — 8 - 12%, Mediterranean table wines — 11 - 13%, or fruit bombs 13.5 - 15%? My opinion is that wine should not be a cocktail, even a sipping wine served as an aperitif before dinner.

This is an issue worth pursuing, and we shall in future postings. And we hope to hear from you on this subject. 

You have probably noticed a trend in upscale restaurants for fixed price menus to include a series of tapa-sized courses rather than the more traditional starter, main course, dessert series. Or worse — these tapas often include tastes (or sniffs) of foams, clouds, or hot gelatins. This trend doesn’t bode well for those who love to match their food with wine.

In Spain, where the idea of tapas really started, a tapa was a bite of food served in a tosca (bar) to tide one’s appetite over till dinner, served as many of you know, very late in Spain. With a tapa came a shot-size glass of wine  — blanco or tinto. It was always good fun on our trips to Spain to go “tosca hopping,” stroll along a street, enter a bar, have a tapa and a shot of wine, then move on to the next bar for more of the same.

A few years ago, the taste for tapas had become so popular that a number of celebrity chefs began creating tapas as part of their regular offerings. The craze reached its zenith when Ferand Adria, a Catalan, attained a Michelin three-star rating for such a menu. Adria took the tapa art to new extremes in a kitchen that resembled a science lab more than a kitchen. A single meal would consist of some twenty courses, all tiny, all different. No one wine could do justice to all or even the majority of them. Even his sommelier admitted that Adria doesn’t really care about wine, even though he owns a magnificent cellar of great wines.

Adria has had an impact worldwide, even in the United States. Some well known chefs, such as Chicago’s Charlie Trotter, do offer a glass of a different wine with each flight of courses, but the match does less for the food than it does for the profit on wine sales.

Even before Adria, however, chefs, even in France, did not enjoy a reputation for possessing good wine palates. Mostly they relied on their staff and their area producers, and they generally cooked regional specialties indiginous to their homeland and local wines. As their celebrity grew, however, they worked harder and harder to create dishes of more and more sophistication. Wine be damned; we’re showing off our food.

A noted exception was Emile Jung, long-time three-star chef in Strasbourg, whose wine palate was so respected that the French wine stewards’ association voted him their president for life. Jung works hard to keep up with trends without betraying the need to enjoy fine wine with good food. He is rare in today’s gastronomic world.

Thomas Keller, one of America’s most famous chefs, was quoted recently as saying “I want that initial shock (of food sensations) to be the only thing you experience.” Unsaid was his feeling about the initial impact of wine, and his French Laundry Restaurant in Napa Valley is surrounded by America’s premier vineyards.

We think this attitude is turning wine into a mere beverage like a cocktail or soft drink rather than continuing its revered role as an integral part of a fine meal. It would be useful to hear more from the dining public on this subject.

Lavinia advertises itself as the “largest store in the world dedicated to fine wine.” That’s probably true, but, maybe because it’s in Paris where everything seems more magical, we consider it also the best, certainly the most interesting and comprehensive.

The store spreads over 1,500 square meters stacked on three floors and stocks more than 6,000 wines from just about everywhere. Because we had recently heard a wine wholesaler say he couldn’t find American wines on Parisian restaurant lists, we took a look at Lavinia’s collection of American wines. It was better stocked than most of our Indiana retail stores with California and Pacific Northwest selections.

Lavinia also includes a restaurant and tasting bars where you can try out wines before or in addition to making a purchase. The book and wine accessory departments are the most comprehensive in our experience.

In a way, Lavinia is a supermarket, arranged for self-service shopping and casual browsing. One difference is that it is staffed by a well informed, multi-lingual professionals. Staff can arrange delivery of your purchases to your hotel or to your residence provided your residence allows direct importation and shipping. (Indiana does not.) The entire store is temperature controlled.

Lavinia has outlets in Barcelona, Madrid, Geneva, Odessa, and Kiev but not in any U.S. city. All of them include vintage Bordeaux and Armaganac in their inventories.

With luck, you may happen into Lavinia during an in-store promotion when free samples of several wines are available. Usually they are themed in anticipation of a holiday or for special events, one recently titled “Wines for Seduction.” On any day, you can buy into the Enomatic service using an in-store debit card to buy up to 24 samples of various wines. You can also buy a bottle at retail and consume it in the restaurant.

Lavinia is near where most readers are likely to stay when visiting Paris, so it’s fairly easy to walk from, say the Opera, to 3 Boulevard de la Madeleine. Or you can always go to www.lavinia.fr.

No cow horns needed. Not in Burgundy at any rate, or most other places where biodynamic wine production is underway. Last month, we followed a wineman and his horse and plow through vineyards near Vosne-Romanee. Later we talked about him and his horse with Jean-Pierre Cropsal, marketing director for the Domaine Drouhin in Beaune.

“The horse is best,” he said. “Tractors are so heavy they compact the dirt and make it really hard. Over the past twenty years our heavy machinery has all but paved over our vineyards. Besides, the horse drops something more beneficial to agriculture than oil.”

Biodynamic production is on the increase in France and is catching on elsewhere, especially California. Organic farming has been around for a couple of decades, but the complete faith in natural occurrences and their effect on vineyard health is relatively new.

No wine producer practicing biodynamics, whether in France or California, will admit to following the tenets of Rudolph Steiner save agreeing that there is something to be said for maintaining plant life in its natural environment and recognizing the annual cycles of of sun, moon, and seasons. They will contend that it’s simply a method of cultivation based on natural phenomena. We have never met one who actually filled cow horns with quartz to bury in the cardinal directions of the vineyard to be dug up at the next full moon.

Monsieur Cropsal predicts that the use of horses will extend the productive life of vines from 40 years to a hundred years. Others believe him, and the increased use of horses in California bear that out. Olivier Leflaive, in Burgundy, gave us two glasses of wine from the same vineyard of the same vintage. The one my wife and I preferred was the result of biodynamic farming; the other, admittedly very good, was legally classified as organic.

So, when tasting, we should start thinking that organic is good; biodynamic is better. What do you think?  

Travelers in the Palatinate of Germany have undoubtedly seen the Deutscheweinstrasse, Europe’s original signposted route to and through a series of picturesque wine producing villages. If they cross the Rhine into Alsace, they can follow the Route de Vin through what many believe to be the prettiest of all wine roads.

In Champagne, there is the Route de Champagne, in Bordeaux, the Circuit des Vins. No matter where you go in wine country, you are likely to encounter a wine road of some kind. That’s also true of Indiana. Yes, Indiana.  We have our own Wine Route — or Wine Trail to be more precise. It takes you through the Indiana Uplands from Bloomington to the Ohio River to eight different wineries, each with their own wine styles and decor.

From end to end the Indiana Uplands Wine Trail measures 128 miles. Allowing a minimum of an hour at each winery, the entire drive would take approximately eleven hours. But you don’t want to do the trail in eleven hours. You’ll want to take time to savor the wines, of course, but also to tour the winery, perhaps even the vineyards, and certainly to graze in the gift shops.

Each of the eight encourage picnics on the grounds, and most of them have cheeses, breads, crackers, and garnishes to complement any picnic you may bring along. Just after the fall harvest, the Trail Wineries will revive their tradition of offering visitors an empty basket with their purchase at their first stop. The basket is designed to hold a gift from each winery, so a visitor getting to all eight can amass an interesting souvenir.

So you don’t need to fly to Europe or California to follow a wine trail.; you can do it right here in Indiana. For complete information, visit a winery or go to www.indianauplands.com.

Since 1933, wine sales in the United States have been governed by the “three tier” system. Tier One is the producer, who sells his or her wine to Tier Two, the wholesaler, who in turn sells wine to Tier Three, the retailer or restaurant. Under certain circumstances and in some states, Tier One is allowed to sell directly to a consumer, but, in general, consumers must buy from Tier Three.

Tier Three never has enough shelf space to stock all the wines Tier Two has in its warehouse. Therefore, Tier Three must select from Tier Two’s catalog, which means that many wines consumers may like to have are either not selected by or made available to Tier Three.

The same space limitation applies to Tier Two, whose warehouses cannot contain all the wines available from all the producers.  Tier Two must also pick and choose which wines it will make available to Tier Three. Therefore, Tier Three can choose only from wines Tier Two has selected. Consequently, consumers have their choices predetermined for them by choices made first by Tier Two, then by Tier Three. Naturally, those two Tiers will stock only wines that they believe will generate a profit for them.

Now that we’ve clarified the system, you can understand why a consumer who enjoys a specific wine while on vacation in another state may not find it in his or her Tier Two retail store. It hasn’t been selected for sale by local wholesalers or retailers.

The Three Tier system was established before fax and internet communications were in use. It is possible for today’s consumers to order directly from Tier One via modern communications systems, except for one thing: it is illegal in some states, Indiana among them. Indiana law requires consumers to purchase wine only from Tier Three who must buy only from Tier Two. Simply stated, Indiana legislators provide wine wholesalers complete control over wine sales in the Hoosier state.

Thirty-six states have amended their wine shipping laws so that consumers can order wines directly from producers but Indiana is not one of them. Now that you understand the Three Tier system, you can also understand why wineries will not ship or are reluctant to ship wine directly to you.