And that’s a crying shame. Or at least that was the conclusion of the Ladies Tasting Society after blind-sampling our way through nine delicious malbecs last week. Overall, we thought these wines were expertly crafted, surprisingly drinkable (even “silky” and “juicy” by some ladies’ estimation), and attractively priced (our average expenditure was $24 per bottle, even though we set ourselves a limit of $45). Not one struck us as clunky or flawed. All of them underlined our mental note-to-self to buy, pop, and enjoy more malbec in our lives.

For the results of our tasting, including a delish best value: click here:

The top wine of the evening won, perhaps, with a few unfair advantages. At $40, the Monteviejo “Lindaflor” was the most expensive bottle on the table. And we might have guessed, too, that French winemaker Michel Rolland was behind the Lindaflor: it showed the flashy, blockbuster, highly concentrated style that the controversial “flying winemaker” brings to many of the wines he works on, and that tends to perform really well in blind tastings. Nonetheless, we were all impressed with the Lindaflor’s inky black color, its power (”almost syrup,” commented one lady), and its complex array of aromas (cherry, barnyard, leather strap) and tastes (black and red fruit, tobacco, cedar, spices). It was the only wine that we agreed would be even better in five our ten years.

The tasting brought some surprises, though. Our least favorite, Cicchitti’s Gran Reserva Malbec, is another internationally-styled malbec that sports a 94 rating from Robert Parker. But where he got full-bodied and hedonistic, we got lighter-weight, ruby-colored, and just plain “weird.” We couldn’t warm to the Cicchitti’s tart flavors, zingy mouthfeel, and green, stemmy notes. Perhaps something woeful happened to our bottle in transit, because a few ladies detected off flavors, including ammonia, banana, and even raw hot dog.

The other surprise was a bottle of Cahors, which I snuck into the otherwise all-Argentine tasting. Cahors is a wine region in southwest France, the only one that produces wines made from the malbec grape. In fact, as wineries in Bordeaux use less and less malbec in their prestigious reds, Cahors remains one of the few areas in France that still cultivates much malbec at all. It wasn’t our favorite, but Chateau La Caminade’s Cahors “La Commandery” impressed us with its nice smoke, pencil lead, and fruit aromas, expressive cherry cranberry notes, and good structure. Although I’d decanted it for two hours, though, the Cahors’s tannins were still too prominent and drying to compete with the up-front friendliness of its Argentinean counterparts.

The most pleasant surprise of the evening was our best value wine, Pascual Toso’s Reserve. This was the wine that had all the silkiness the ladies desired, plus almost the same level of complexity and density as the Lindaflor. At $17, the Toso Rerserve will make it much easier for us to drink lots more malbec without risking a financial crisis on Main Street.

Best of Tasting
Monteviejo Malbec “Lindaflor” 2005 $40
Best Value
Pascual Toso Malbec Reserve 2006 $17
Other Favorites (on order of our preference)
Bodegas Terrazas de los Andes, Malbec Gran 1997 $30 new
Navarro Correas Malbec Gran Reserva 2002 $20
Inacayal Malbec Select 2005 $20
Bodega Catena Zapata, Catena Malbec 2006 $24
Chateau La Caminade Cahors “La Commandery” 2005 $21
Bodega Noemia de Patagonia Malbec “A Lisa” 2007 $22
Bodega Cicchitti Malbec Grand Reserve 2006 $22

For how this kit soon cured of my crabbiness, click here:

With the help of the Ladies Tasting Society, I was set straight. Last night, we didn’t just take this wine-tasting kit on a cruise. We braved the Cape of Good Hope in search of the best Argentinean malbec we could drink for under $45. The report?

Time for Wine has put together a handy, good-looking kit that is fully equipped to entertain the wine novice and the jaded palate alike. We were eight women, ranging from a wine professional who worked for a high-end spirits company, to a new member who wouldn’t know a luxury cuvée if it hit her in the wallet. But every last one of us enjoyed the festive components of the kit, the competitive structure of the tasting, and the bonus quiz (Time for Wine’s apparent disinclination toward hiring a proofer notwithstanding).

What sets this kit apart is that it includes a sheet of shiny gold stickers that, after all the wines have been sampled, each guest can adhere to the mylar cover over her favorite bottle. (The bottle with the most stickers wins.) This step caused us endless amusement, emphasis on endless, since one guest had to revisit nearly every bottle before she could decide which deserved her sticker. By the time she did, she bore some resemblance to Eddie and Patsy of Absolutely Fabulous when they visited a château in France, got so schnockered they couldn’t remember which wine they liked best, and so bought them all. After much teasing and laughter, our friend cast her vote — as it turned out, on her own malbec and the winner of the tasting, Monteviejo’s 2005 “Lindaflor.” (Time to Wine recommends that the hostess purchase a little gift for the guest who brought the group favorite.)

As dinner was served, we took the bonus quiz, and were delighted to see the nerds among us stumble over some of the more difficult questions. But like the rest of the kit, the quiz was well-targeted toward the middle of its audience, so enough of us knew some answers — and enough didn’t — to keep it interesting.

I have a couple of caveats: Time to Wine provides a “sign-up sheet” and instructs ask each guest as he arrives to write down the wine he brought, the vintage, and his name. As a result, because some guests will see on the list at least some wine names, the tasting isn’t completely blind; that is, some guests will know what the wines on the table are, even if they don’t know which they are.

This was not a major roadblock for us. In fact, as host the sign-up sheet was a handy reference for me. But any geek will gripe over the fact that the kit doesn’t present clearly either a “double blind” tasting, where the only thing tasters know is the theme (in which case the host would have to fill out the sign-up sheet after the bags came off, or do it before and not participate in the competition), or a single blind tasting, where tasters know the specific wines on the table, but not which of them is being poured at the moment.

My other minor kvetch is about the poor editing of the kit’s materials. It’s important, even for novices, that a guide like this (and that costs $25) seem authoritative. So questions should be posed clearly (does the test mean per capita when it asks which country drinks the most wine?), key words like “vintner” should be spelled correctly, and instructions should not be misleading. (I’m still wondering how I’m going to find examples for the proposed tasting theme of “red chardonnay versus white chardonnay.”)

Again, though, these are nitpicks. Overall this is a delightful wine tasting kit and I’d recommend if for anyone throwing a tasting party, whether your guests are Robert Parker Jrs. or recent converts from beer. Everyone will enjoy the trip.

Don’t worry. I’m not going over to the red side come November. And as for the rest of Bottle Shock, well, let’s just say Sideways has nothing to fear. For more on the movie, including the truly shocking historical inaccuracies, click here:

First a disclaimer: I was offended at the film’s additions and omissions not because I’m some kind of purist. I have no problem with Hollywood embellishments, of which Rachel (Transformers) Taylor, who plays love interest to Chateau Montelena’s Bo Barrett (Chris Pine of Smokin’ Aces), is the main one here. As long as they’re good. But Bottle Shock’s romantic subplot causes aesthetic indigestion, and I’m not talking just about the wet T-shirt sequence where Taylor has to wash out the oak barrels with a garden hose.

Worse are the omissions: gone from the narrative is Mike Grgich, who as Montelena’s winemaker concocted the 1973 chardonnay that won the whites category in Paris. In real life, the recent Yugoslav immigrant never got along with the Barretts and left his post to start his own winery. So I’m figuring that Montelena’s owners, who are the exclusive protagonists of Bottle Shock, sold their story to the filmmakers with the stipulation that poor Grgich be siphoned off. It was hard to hear all the film’s team-spirit rah-rah about how “if oe of our wines wins, we all do!” without reflecting on the irony.

And where is Patricia Gallagher? In 1976 she was right-hand to Steven Spurriur, the British wineseller in Paris who organized the blind tasting and the antagonist of Bottle Shock. She was the only non-Gaul among the judges and went on to have a glorious oenological career in France. It’s an insult to women in wine that she’s replaced by a male character in the movie — or perhaps we’re to be distracted by Taylor’s cinematic liebfraumilch.

Finally, speaking of Mr. Spurrier, he is horribly reduced to a caricature of European priggishness by the film and I was glad to find out that he’s suing the filmmakers over it. Truth is, Spurrier had faith in the colonials’ wine, and although he never guessed that they would perform so well against the French benchmarks — and in fact became a near-total persona non grata in his adopted country because they did — he did not put together the tasting as a publicity stunt to promote his failing wine store. Unlike the version of him in the movie, he was a young, successful retailer with a sincere love of good wine — and of a good fight.

In any case, for the sheer pro-American tale of heroism it is (”Not bad for a bunch of guys from the sticks!” says Jim Barrett, played by Bill Pullman, when he finds his chardonnay topped the field), I recommend this movie. Just don’t forget your spittoon for the nasty parts.

For two Aussie rieslings, one to quaff and one to avoid, click here:

D’Arenberg “The Stump Jump” McLaren Vale 2006 ($11): This fruity, kitchen-sink concoction (mostly riesling, with sauvignon blanc, marsanne, viognier, and chardonnay) is a widely available, all-time favorite value. It’s got all the apple, peach, and lime flavors you’d expect from a good riesling, all propped on a decent structure provided by the sauvignon blanc. Rich, but completely dry. I love the Stump Jump with take-out sesame chicken, pad thai, or any grilled fish or pork. And how many wines have you tasted named after a plough?

Pikes “The Merle” Riesling Reserve, Clare Valley ($29): We were talked into this wine by the sommelier at Waterbar, a splashy new seafood restaurant in downtown San Francisco. She explained she’d already priced the Merle on her list thinking she was getting a case, but when the distributor delivered she realized she’d ordered a mere six pack. Her goof may have been our gain financially, but gastronomically we felt like we were stuck with a close out. What really threw us was an odd, smoky taste, a flavor we’d associate more with a red wine aged in oak. Lots of pro tasters have been making a big deal out of the “minerality” of the new Aussie rieslings, and sure enough there were plenty of earth and stone notes in this wine, but it was as if they had been exaggerated to comic levels. Clipped finish, not fruity, and just plain weird.

“That sounds like the great cork debate,” I said. To follow my logic, click here:

And it’s true: many quality wineries have been switching to plastic stoppers and screw caps for better storage. In the case of wine, it’s to avoid cork taint, the musty-tasting degradation caused by corks that affects a lot – some say as much as 10 percent – of bottles in the market.

I’d been thinking fondly about screw tops recently, because for some reason I’ve opened a streak of corked bottles over the past few months, the latest being a 2004 Frank Family cabernet sauvignon that I paid $70 for at a fancy steak house the night before I had this conversation with the film archivist. Actually, this was the second tainted bottle of this same wine I’d tasted since February. Twice bitten, I’m beginning to think the poor Frank folks ended up with a whole shipment of bad corks. When will they finally go through them all? It leaves me with a sad feeling: how could all those beautiful grapes, and all that good will and careful winemaking, go into a bottle, only to be sealed with the kiss of death?

It seems as if synthetic stoppers would be the way to go; who would deliberately risk messing up 10 percent of her winery’s production? But the problem with plastic corks and screw-tops—along with the fact that they’re about as aesthetically appealing as a toilet bowl flapper — is that they’ve not been time tested. Like new film and video storage technology, simply because it’s innovative, nobody’s been able to test a 50 year old Chateau Lafitte stopped with a screw top versus one with a cork.

Then my new friend added another cause for thought: all plastics, she said, degrade. She’d be surprised if a plastic cork didn’t throw off by-products as it (and the wine it’s touching) aged. Even a metal screw top would probably be lined with plastic, she added, so you’d face the same problem with that option.

Since I’m not a snob or a traditionalist about wine, and since I drink most of my wine before I’d have to worry about an alternative closure failing, I’ve never had an issue with these newfangled stoppers. But now I’m rethinking. The winemaker at Sokol Blosser made me rethink even more. Write if you’re a also a nerd chemist and have something to add about my new friend’s concerns.

First, my trick will only work at a certain kind of restaurant, that is, where somebody — the owner, usually, but perhaps the head chef or a partner — has put more than a thought or two into the wine. Fortunately, this sort of spot has become ubiquitous, even at levels below “special occasion” restaurants. You can tell you’re in the right place if the wine list has more than two pages, more than three wines by the glass, and lots of wine names you don’t recognize.

Second, if you’re on a date, and you’re stressed to impress, I recommend you conceal your strategy from your companion. You’ll see why in a moment.

Finally, you will need to decide first whether you want to drink a white or a red. If you can’t do this, I can’t help you. Otherwise, for my proposal click here:

So here it is, ladies and gentlemen: My modest proposal is that you go your Whites or Reds section, briefly scan the offerings, and choose the cheapest. That’s right, the cheapest bottle. If you have zero recognition of this wine’s name and no clue how to pronounce it, that’s actually a major bonus. Don’t panic; just say to the server, “We’ll have this bottle,” point, and listen carefully as he enunciates for you. (That way you can repeat it to your date if he says, “Wow, what is that you ordered?”)

Why on earth would you do this? Because if the person behind that wine list is really passionate about wine (and remember we have determined that she is), she will have put a lot of thought into that bargain bottle. She will want each option on her list to be delicious, but not all of it can be super expensive, so she will have been inspired by the challenge presented by her meanest selection. In the end, that Chateau LaCheapeau will be in its lowly position not just because of its great price, but because of its great “price-quality ratio,” that is, the steep inverse proportion between amount it costs and the amount of pleasure it will deliver.

Note that you should not choose the second-least expensive wine, a symptomatic move made by many panicked diners, so much so that (according to “The Smart Woman’s Guide to Reading a Wine List“) some scheming wine directors will put in that position a yucky wine they have lots of and want to unload.

Above all you should not be afraid of the unknown. In fact, if you follow my advice and are assiduous in your bottom feeding (bottom drinking?), I guarantee that you will encounter lots of wine that is new and exciting to you. That’s also thanks to our smarty pants behind the wine list. He knows that many great wines are hiding behind obscure labels, often at sleeper prices. (In fact, another nasty tendency among less-than-righteous wine directors is, knowing that novices will choose within their comfort zone, to mark up very recognizable wines even more than the usual 100 percent). Just don’t share your strategy with your date, or at least not yet. If you’re lucky she’ll turn out to be another Chateau LaCheapeau aficionado.

For our special favorites from Cedarville’s current line up, click here:

2006 Viognier ($20): Full of apricot and melon flavors and flashing a pretty, flowery aroma, this viognier has good fruit but also a fresh mouthfeel. I was really impressed with its structure; so much viognier from California turns out flabby, but Cedarville’s is sinuous and silky. Jonathan Lachs says he’s aiming at Condrieu, the gorgeous French white made from viognier, and it shows.

2005 Syrah ($25): This syrah is programmed for pleasure. It’s loaded with sweet black fruit flavors and tinged by chocolate and black pepper notes. It just tastes so well done, like all its parts are put together in perfect harmony, but with an emphasis on enjoyment. Soft mouthfeel, viscous texture, everlasting finish. We regret giving one of our purchases to our neighbors who babysat our dog.

If you visit Cedarville, be sure to make an appointment. The owners, practically bursting with pride, will take you on a loving tour of their four-room winery, every ingenious detail of which they planned out themselves. I’ve never seen cement culverts put to such noble use.

Unfortunately, the term can also refer to an area that is, on the whole, still struggling to get around some of the climate and soil issues that prevented it from being a prestige wine region in the first place. Such is the case, I’d argue after a recent visit, to the Sierra Foothills in California.

Also known as Gold Country because of the famous gold strike near Sutter’s Mill in 1848, the region lies mostly in Amador and Calaveras counties, about halfway between Sacramento and Yosemite. Many wild-wild-West remnants of the great rush remain, but these days in the Sierra Foothills it’s safe to say that red, white, and rosé is the new gold.

Not in the 14-karat sense, though. For my terrifying encounter with a junk-yard dog of a chard, click here:

The low note of our wine explorations was sounded, unfortunately, at a tasting bar near our bed and breakfast in Sutter Creek. When I walked in, a handful of visitors were involved in a heated argument over their favorite sample: was it the peach, raspberry, or pineapple sparkler they liked best? No, wait, it was the almond! Alarmed, I steered right over the sweet bubblies and landed on a 2003 chardonnay from Le Mulet Rouge ($18/bottle), which sports a mule on the label. (The winery’s take on the cute animal trend? Perhaps. In any case, it was my first taste of the area’s tendency toward homey humor.) “Junk heap,” my notes begin. “Smells like garbage, tastes like soap and rotten nuts.”

I should have run from this dog right then. But I got distracted by a decent 2006 viognier from Crystal Basin Cellars ($20), which had loads of pear and apricot on the nose, followed by some tropical fruits and a nice tangerine zing. But before long I was assaulted again, this time by Gold Hill’s Red Wine 2005 ($29/bottle!), which despite its cab-merlot pedigree came off as “a little thin, some good aromas of berries, but boring on the palate.” Off flavors, including one zinfandel’s “tinny” aftertaste, came up again and again. Overall, the wines from Crystal Basin fared best, with the exception of their 2006 malbec ($25), which the list described as having a “Houdini finish.” Thinking this must mean the wine had a complicated or surprising aftertaste, I asked for a sip. “No,” the bartender corrected me. “It means ‘disappearing.’” And he was right. But I’m still stumped as to why anyone would think this would be a positive attribute to a wine, worthy of advertising.

Later, at a fun dinner at the Imperial Hotel (a former whorehouse that’s now a legitimate hotel with an ambitious restaurant), we had a 2004 merlot from Stevenot. Its thin profile and short finish convinced us that wineries in the Sierra Foothills are still struggling with a shortish growing season, high temperatures, and soils that may not lend themselves to the most familiar and marketable varieties, like merlot.

Thankfully, we did taste some wine that I found recommendable. Stay tuned for a redeeming trip to Cedarville Vineyard and my first, long-awaited taste of a zin made from centenarian vines.

No, it wasn’t in cyberspace or science fiction. It was at Fine’s Cellar, a smart restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona I visited not long after it opened last winter. Partly because the paint was just dry, but mostly because the owner Michael Fine is himself a wine retailer, at that point the bistro-esque spot had a printed list only of wines by the glass. If you wanted a bottle, you got to wander – really, on foot – through a small but very well edited store in the front of the building, pick one out, and drink it at retail cost.

We enjoyed a relatively hard-to-find, over-the-top rich, 2004 Two Hands’ Shiraz “Bella’s Garden” for a mere $47. We were severely tempted, too, by a 2003 Carruades de Lafitte, the prêt-à-porter version of Lafitte Rothchild, for about the same price. At any other restaurant, we’d have had to slap down a hundie at least for each.

For the secret to Mr. Fine’s fine idea, click here:

I revisited the place in June and the proprietor – whom I found sitting at his wine tasting bar making orders – specifies that although he now has a regular wine list, he still allows, even encourages, diners to hand pick a bottle from his shelves. He adds that he’s now marked up his bottles by 33 percent, but that’s still an outrageous bargain considering that the usual restaurant mark up is three times that.

Wine Spectator’s current cover story is on how dissatisfied diners are at restaurants’ wine service. The loudest complaint was – surprise – heinous mark ups. Well, Mr. Fine has a solution: restaurateurs should treat their wine like they do their food. Carefully choose it as close to the source as possible, pay wholesale, and mark it up reasonably, just once.

You see, the reason wine is so expensive in restaurants is because it’s pegged at 100 percent over retail, that is, 100 percent over an price that’s already considerably more than wholesale. It’s as if wine gets marked up twice. And that’s just not fair.

Suddenly I get another meaning to Fine Cellar’s tagline, “Where Wine is Food.”

For my list, starting at the bottom with a rich red with roasted coffee notes, click here:

#3: This Barbera Was Almost Too Big!
Montevina, Barbera “Terra d’Oro” 2005 ($18/bottle)
I was about to give up on all the wines coming from California’s Gold Country when I stumbled upon this nugget. But after many thin merlots, tannic zinfandels, and the vegetal cabernets, I found myself in the presence of a soft, pure 24 karat red! I enjoyed a glass of the Terra d’Oro at V, a very satisfying bistro-style restaurant in the otherwise painfully-cute town of Murphys, California. Montevina’s barbera successfully handled the notorious heat of the Sierra Foothills; it was big, rich, even hedonistic, but held up by a decent backbone of tannins and gentle acids. It had some complexity, too: I got roasted coffee along with loads of cassis, blackberry, and plum fruit flavors. Good finish. Inky-colored. This creative winery experiments wildly, er, widely with Italian varieties, hence the barbera, which is native to Piedmont.

#2: This Barbera Was Almost too Small!
C.G. di Arie Barbera Amador County 2006 ($22/bottle)
Although di Arie’s barbera wasn’t as luscious as Montevina’s it held my attention because its style harked back, I thought, more to its cousins from Italy, like Barbera d’Alba or d’Asti. It was lighter in structure, though still carmine in color. It was a less overpowering with food — I enjoyed it with a hearty duck breast at the friendly dining room at the Imperial Hotel in Amador City — and most of all showed a distinctive earthy note that made it seem more European.

The Best: This Barbera Was Just Right!
Vigneti Massa “Terra” Piedmont, Italy 2001 ($20/bottle)
Sure, this wine had an unfair advantage in that it hails from barbera’s native land, in this case from the eastern corner of Piedmont near Lombardy. But for a real Italian barbera at this price, I thought it was great! Perfect balance, utterly dry, but with a mouth-watering acidity that kept all its fruit flavors alive and vivid on the palate. An extra long finish. But most noteworthy was the distinctive note of tapenade, which made it just delicious to drink along with Absinthe’s grilled redfish on a bed of greens, chickpeas, and cerignola olives.