Here are a few wines I’ve had recently, worth letting you in on …

Sextant
2007
12.8% alc.
Bourgogne
St. Aubin, France

This is an unusual pale-gold Burgundian chardonnay—something of a chameleon.  After opening it, I encountered initial aromas of moss, bark and bay leaves. There were rear-palate flavors of clove, lemon, grapefruit, cinnamon and crisp apple. The wine’s high acidity gave it a long length.  Later, however, the nose deepened, giving off whiffs of lilac. The flavors on the palate moved to the front and were less fruity, while leaving a creamier, sensual mouthfeel.  As if Gigi grew into a fetching courtesan in a matter of hours. Importer: Savio Soares Selecions. $19.00

Andreas Baron Widman
Sudtiroler
Vernatsch
2008
12.5%
Alto Adige, Italy

Schiva. In the UK, it is Black Hamburg.  The Germans call it trollinger. In Northern Italy’s South Tyrol, it is vernatsch.  The vine thrives in the Tyrol with little attention. The grape is hardy, productive.  Maybe that’s why the vine is popular in the flatter lands of the region.  It serves as the base of many tourist wines, often blended with ligroin.  But plant Schiava on the steep hillsides of the Alto Adige, prune the vine, ripen it and carefully vinify it, and a good producer can win some charm from this ordinary table grape.  The 2008 vintage has a pale ruby core accompanied by pleasant aromas of tea, cranberry, orange peel and rose petals.  The broad midpalate flavors of musk, dry leaves and cranberry (and a slight touch barnyard) were immediate with medium length. This medium-bodied, medium-concentrated wine had low firm tannins. Overall, the impression was of a lean, supple wine. You could drink it daily with most meals. In my house, it was a perfect accompaniment to sausages, polenta and stir-fried green beans with basil. Importer: Petit Pois Corp.  $23.00.

Aziendo Agricola Bruna
u Baccan
Pigato
2007
13.5% alc.
Liguria, Italy

Ten years ago, you might find a bottle or two of a pigato from Liguria in New York.  Now pigato is more prevalent here. This one is among the best.  A well-structured tonic, it has a stylized peasant allure that speaks of the steep Ligurian seaside vineyards.  (And who says you can’t have a stylish peasant?) In the glass, this wine sits pale gold with an appealing waxy floral aroma.  The wine had a crispness that gave its medium intense flavors of ginger, pear, pine, herbs and white peaches a long length with a slight pear finish. As the wine opens, more tropical notes are revealed.  Though not quite full-bodied, it had a nice rounded concentration of flavor.  This is not the quaffer pigato your parents may have had at a bus stop in San Remo. And what did I eat with it? Pesto walnut pasta with yellow squash.    Robert Chadderdon Selectons.  $31.00.

3/1/10

Domaine de la Tournelle
Ploussard de Montellier
2004
12.5% alc.
Arbois, France

Oh, Jura Jura Jura—what will it take for the world to appreciate your wines?  The Jura is a prosaic frontier region nestled in France near the southwest border of Switzerland. It is picturesque with fruit orchards and pastures for animal grazing. You’d never really know the place unless you were a devotee of wine. No other real reason to go there. But it produces some of the most interesting and stylish wines in France, and for the quality at comparatively reasonable prices.  Remarkably, even in New York, people tend to ignore these wines. I sometimes eat late at a popular downtown brasserie with a broad wine list, almost exclusively French, including two to four wines from the Jura. A  waiter told me that, aside from some French tourists and the odd local customer, I was the only one he knew who actually ordered them.

The poulsard (or ploussard) from Dom. de la Tournelle is a wonderful, inexpensive pinot noir-like wine that’s quite versatile at the table. Poulsard is a large, thin-skinned grape and a specialty of the Jura.  It’s grown on about 800 acres of clay and limestone at elevations slightly higher than those of the Côte d’Or.  It is grown nowhere else, except  Bugey, France. It produces typically an aromatic, light-colored, pale red wine.  Dom. de la Tournelle’s Pascal and Evelyn Clairet, who founded the winery in 1991, grow poulsard in an eco-friendly manner on 15 acres of land. They hand-harvest the grapes, macerate them for at least a week, subject the juice to malolactic fermentation, bottle the wine without filtration or sulphur and mature it in large oak barrels for 8 to 18 months. The 2007 poulsard has a pale-salmon color flecked with copper.  There were aromas of leaves, moss, earth, juniper and red fruits.  This is a lean, harmonious wine with bright acidity, mildly gripping tannins, medium body and alcohol. There were lightly concentrated rear-palate flavors of tea, orange and juniper. I had this with unadorned baked bluefish and white carrots roasted in duck fat with Forelle pears. 1/27/10.

Cà de Noci

“Sottobosco”

2007

12.5% alc

Reggio Emilia, Italy

I recently gave a dinner of pork loin braised in cream and sage. (Yes, it was delish.) I could have served my guest a big, bold, upfront-flavored red, her definite preference. As the host, perhaps I should have accommodated that preference. In the name of nice persondom I definitely should have. Oh, but what the hell—I wasn’t put on this good earth to let people coast along happily on assumptions about what they like to drink. You’ve heard of the imp of the perverse? Uncork a wine bottle, and it’s in there. I knew my guest equated fizzy red wines with cheap Riunite from her hostel-living youth. Could I up-end that taste—those memories shaped by both nostalgia and college-loan poverty—with this delicious Sottobosco?

Sottobosco, from Italy’s Emilia-Romagna, is a part of the natural wine movement in modern viticulture and vinification. Out of its five hectares of rocky limestone along the Crostolo River, the brothers Masini have produced a Lambrusco-styled wine from the family Cà de Noci (“Walnut Farm”) estate. This vino di tavola comes from the blending of Lambrusco Grasparossa (30%), Lambrusco di Montericco (30%), Malbo Gentile (20%) and Sgavetta (20%), all native grapes of the region. The grapes are hand-harvested and macerated for 10 days on their stems. The frizzante is produced from natural fermentation in the bottle. The sediment is caused by the wine’s lack of filtration.

I have had the 2007 Sottobosco several times and was looking forward to testing my guest’s impressions. Well, it was not smooth sledding. As I poured the wine, which fizzles with a purple froth, my guest observed, with more dubiousness than enthusiasm: “It looks like grape soda.” On the nose I detected aromas of prune, raisin, fig, fresh cherry, coffee and smoke. Her impression was that the nose was a no-go. On the palate, this wine, like many lambruscos, was exceptionally dry with firm dusky tannins and medium body and alcohol. The acidity was high, leaving the wine with layered flavors of dried strawberry, fig, star anise and tea, and a medium bitter orange peel and chalky finish. Our guest, though, didn’t find it enjoyable enough to alter her recollections of the Lambruscos she drank decades ago in Bologna, when she was a graduate student forced to put up with the dining company of two obnoxious boys from Oxford who regarded any American who didn’t share their tastes as a clod from across the pond.

The conversation never really moved beyond that. It has since occurred to me that perhaps my guest was suggesting, unconsciously or not, that I reminded her of the Oxonians, that she felt—is it possible?—vino-bullied. But that seems so unlikely!

Anyway: These unique everyday wines from Emilia Romagna make a superlative complement to fatty dishes, meats and pastas at reasonable prices. Importer: Louis/Dressner. $22.00. 12/3/09.

Before submitting my AMEX card for a final tally, I like to take a gander at those wines in boxes that my favorite wine shops have put aside in the corner by the register. They usually are nice, inexpensive, young wines for everyday drinking. Federico Tinto “Roble” is what I found the last time I bought a case for the kitchen from one of these boxes. This good-value little gem is from Spain’s Ribera del Duero DO, the land of the venerable, Medoc-styled Vega Sicilia. The grape is all tempranillo, here called “Tinto del Pais,” meaning country wine. The DO runs alongside the Rio del Duero, located north of Madrid between roughly Burgos and Valladolid, with vineyards practically in Segovia. The soil has a high level of chalk above a schist substratum. Most of the vineyards are 2,500 feet high on either side of the river, with a summer climate that spans from 100 degrees daytime to 80 degrees at night. The temperature drop benefits the vines, allowing them to “sleep” at night, while the soil retains its nutrients. There’s little rain and 2,400 hours of sunlight. This combination leads to good acidity in the grapes, which can ripen easily under these conditions. Bodegas Federico in the province of Valladolid was founded in 1986 by Federico Fernández Pérez. It has 30 hectares of tempranillo vineyards. This wine is a “joven,” or young wine. It spends just five months aging in American oak before bottling, although the bodegas has a line of more mature, more complex wines under the same label. The 2007 vintage of this modest, approachable wine has a ruby core with a slightly brickish rim. There are medium-intense Christmas-spice notes on the nose combined with earth, coffee and plum. It is dry, medium bodied, with medium, soft tannins and well-integrated alcohol. On the palate, you’ll encounter black currant, nutmeg, fig, plum, anise and toffee flavors of medium concentration and length. This wine will work with any robust, roasted food. Pleasantly understated, and a good wine to have on hand. Importers: Jose Pastor Selection. $16.00. 11/22/09.

Moussamoussettes
12% alc.
Rosé
Anjou, France

Feeling emotionally needy? On the verge of crumpling like a fading petal? Look no further. Here’s just the tonic. Moussamoussettes. This cream fruit soda of a rosé from Agnes and Rene Mosse will puncture the night clouds above and let in moonlight and starlight. It has absolutely no pretension—it comes with a bottle cap—but the delight is substantial. The grapes of this wine come from vineyards in the appellation Anjou Villages and Côteaux de Layon Villages on the left bank of the River Layon in the Loire Valley. It’s hard to say the precise encépagement of this wine: the Mosse domain produces Anjou Rouge and Anjou Blanc and a sweet wine (”Achillée”) from such grapes as chenin blanc, sauvignon, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, grolleau gris and noir and gamay, in that order. No one who sells this rosé seems to be able to tell me what’s in it, as if it were some shaggy, lovable mongrel from a shelter, although I suspect it’s a blend of cabernet franc, gamay and grolleau. Nonetheless, this domain is a meticulous producer. Their grapes come in small yields from 25- to 30-year-old vines planted on well-exposed, ventilated, southwest-facing slopes consisting of clay soil on sandstone and shale. They sell their wines mostly in restaurants and bars throughout France. The color of this rosé came with a cloudy pink hue with copper flecks. It had a delicate petillance, initially foaming in the glass like a carbonated Belgian beer. It had a clean, refreshing nose of grapefruit, lemon zest, rose petals and jonathan apple skins. The acidity was crisp and carried pronounced mid- to back-palate flavors of grapefruit, orange, pear and apple skins. After the nose, the palate was a continuation of the aromatic accents: no real surprises, just a sustained pleasure with light concentration and intensity. This makes a fun aperitif. Food and Wine magazine suggests you have with a feta-filled spinach pie. Or light desserts. Both good suggestions. I had it with grilled shrimp. Like many rosés, it can stand alone or with a variety of foods. It’s a party wine for everyone. Importer: Louis Dressner Selections. $21.00. 11/08/09.