Summer wines, like Beaujolais, are light, flavorable and fruity. They are meant to go with light, informal meals. Winter wines are deeper in flavor, made to complement robust meals, like stews or cassoulet. Like their summer counterparts, they are neither pricey nor hard to find. As a special bonus, although prices are rising, these bottles cost a fraction of their expensive vintage counterparts from Bordeaux or Burgundy, or for that matter, in the case of Côtes du Rhône, their increasingly expensive neighbors from Châteauneuf du Pape.

We’ll take a look at three fine winter wines, Côte du Rhône, Madiran, and Cahors.

Everyone, including yours truly, says awful things about Beaujolais Nouveau (B.N.): it’s all hype, watery, dull, insipid, fruity (not in a nice way), and tastes like shoe leather, cigarettes, under-ripe grapes, bubble gum, Kool-Aid and well, goodness knows what else.

Now is the time not just for attending to everyone else’s Christmas list, but for giving some thought to preparing your own. Who knows, with an artful hint or two, you might actually receive some of your favorite wines!

The cellars of the legendary La Tour d'Argent restaurant, created in 1582 the year William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, run for miles beneath its left-bank location. Those lucky enough to be invited are met by a blue uniformed flunky and escorted, through double-locked iron gates, into the dark, damp, musty warren of alleyways where 450,000 bottles of the worlds' rarest and costliest French vintages lie.

A wonderful friend of mine from another journalistic life calls herself a contrarian or libertarian not a Republican or conservative, despite her ties to the most illustrious conservative operation in America (outside of Fox News) there is.  As I was thinking about my life and wine it occurred to me I should probably define myself this way as well.

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The holiday season from Thanksgiving through New Year’s is the perfect time to enjoy your favorite wines, and also to try some new ones. So, relax and enjoy the holidays! Do some planning now, while the seasonal wine sales are on, and you can plan to drink what you enjoy most over the holidays. After all, you’ve earned it!

During my last wine lecture a few weeks ago, there was a lively question and answer period. I realized that a number of the same questions came up frequently. Here they are, and I hope you will find them and the answers useful. Let us know your own questions!

It wasn’t so long ago that a ‘superior’ bottle of wine meant a French wine.  Recently, I was surprised to hear a small town wine shop owner tell me he no longer carries a large selection of the wines of France - “People have quit buying French.”  Immediately I thought of the troubling ‘freedom fries’ movement years ago, but as a longtime Francophile, I hoped the reason wasn’t due to political sentiment.

I was recently sent a wine column predicting that the 2009 vintage may well be the finest in Bordeaux since the heralded 2005.  Several well known Bordeaux estate owners are quoted in the article as being very optimistic. This sounds somewhat self-serving, since the last few vintages have not been very successful. And my first reaction was that you can’t predict the vintage before the September harvest, three weeks from now, any more than you can predict with reasonable certainty which baseball teams will be in the World Series, based on the standings at the All Star Game in July.