Light and crisp, with floral aromas and flavors of golden apples and spice.

A seamless merlot with a great concentration of fruit. Aromas and flavors of black cherry, mocha, toast and a hint of black raspberry. Nice length.

Beautiful balance sets the stage for the cherry, black currant and spice flavors. Rich, dense and lively in structure, capped by ripe, fine-grained tannins. The aftertaste evokes dark fruit and spice. Merlot and Cabernet Franc. Drink now through 2020. 799 cases made.

Bright and lively, with mineral, violet, black currant and cedar aromas and flavors. Still firmly structured, this will require more time to find equilibrium. Long finish. Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Best from 2016 through 2025. 1,380 cases made.

Round and supple, with a juicy texture supporting the cherry, plum, cedar and loamy flavors. Ends with dusty, gumcoating tannins. Fine length. Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Sangiovese and Petit Verdot. Drink now through 2020. 6,545 cases made.

Our touts today are all brand names. There's not an off-the-beaten-path find in the bunch. It's important for us to keep our old reliables in mind when we go bottle shopping. Sometimes, it's a good thing not to be surprised when the cork gets popped. The hand-picked fruit is sourced from various Monterey County vineyards and cold-soaked for five to eight days after the stems have been removed. Aging takes place in mostly French oak with minimal fining and filtration prior to bottling. Surprisingly elegant for the price, the wine is plummy on the nose and tastes of blackberries with hints of chocolate.

A creamy chardonnay with notes of pear, apple and spice. Its crisp acidity makes it light on its feet. Balanced. Nice length.

Love the butterscotch bite on entry with this Californian Chardonnay. Cool climate gotcha at its best. Green apple and toffee. Silk and spikes. Roast chicken.

We like the mineral notes of this easy, medium-body chardonnay from Santa Barbara. Soft and generous mouth feel with notes of citrus, vanilla and spice.

2011 Murphy-Goode “Liar’s Dice” Zinfandel, Sonoma County: hearty, with black raspberry flavors, big, smooth tannins and a long finish; $21. Winery co-founder Tim Murphy conceived the wine over 20 years of breakfasts and games of “liar’s dice” at a farmer’s restaurant in Geyserville. It’s a dice game for two or more players requiring the ability to deceive and to detect an opponent’s deception.

This is a very food-friendly Chianti Classico that offers good fruit, a nice expression of cherry fruit, a bit of oak and complexity.

Deep, dense, red/purple colour with a black tinge, the bouquet oaky and blackberry-scented, and the oak is smoky and charred. The wine is concentrated, deep and compact, the tannins and flavours dense and packed. The wine is powerful and searing, the finish long and satisfying. This really has a lot of stuffing. A serious cabernet, well worth cellaring. 

A classic example of Alexander Valley Cabernet, rich but supple, with compelling fruit and vanilla aromas and an overlay of oak on the palate. This is a lush and very satisfying wine. It outperforms many more expensive Napa Valley Cabs.

Deep red colour, with a tinge of purple remaining. There are herbal and blueberry essence aromas, a hint of kola and evidence of liberal oak, while the palate is full-bodied and firm, tight, tannic and authoritative, with density and length. Some talcy notes from oak, too. The palate and finish are firm and serious. The wine has depth, density and structure well outside the usual Australian merlot realm. It just needs time to build more complexity.

A seamless merlot with a great melding of flavors. Notes of black cherry fruit, herbs and spice. Bright acid. Nice length. Solid.

This single-vineyard selection from the Jackson Family’s Santa Maria Valley winery kicks off with scents ranging from red, blistered tomato to pomegranate reduction and mole sauce. On the palate, flavors vary from sweeter berry to tart cherry, with a savory, roasted pork element rounding out the wine.

Byron’s basic 2012 Santa Barbara is that rare bird: delicious, affordable California pinot noir. Sourced from three vineyards in Santa Maria Valley, two near Los Alamos and one in the Santa Rita Hills, it’s frisky and approachable, lasting on fresh red-fruit-skin flavor and fine tannins, light on its feet, with a hard-to-resist juiciness reminiscent of cru Beaujolais. Buy a case and watch it disappear.

This substantive Pinot shows definite toasted oak character along with ripe fruit, full body and firm tannins. Hints of oak smoke and caramel waft over the ripe plum aromas. The flavors go to dark cherries and coffee, the texture is attractively astringent from tannins, and the finish carries a little bite. Well done but not overdone.

Graham Weerts selects this chardonnay from a sector of the Alexander Mountain Estate where the vines, planted in 1997, grow at 1,000 feet. It’s a rich, supple wine that carries its weight without effort, developing flavor depths from barrel fermentation without added yeast, which also boosted its creamy, white fruit flavor. Tight in the finish, this benefits from air and will gain with a year or two in the bottle.

It pulls together toasty oak sweetness in the aromas and delicious ripe cherry and cranberry flavors with bass notes of black plum and clove. Full-bodied, it has firm but not tight tannins that add to the velvety texture.

Soft and supple in black cherry and currant, this mountain Cab expresses an herbal underbelly of elegance, with finely formed minerality. It’s approachable and juicy now but will gain complexity 2017–2021.

This unoaked Chardonnay represents its genera beautifully. It has fresh apple aromas with a hint of honey, just-ripe pear flavors, good acidity and a relaxed texture. Very refreshing, bright and easy to enjoy.

There are times, and this is one of them, when a winery’s large production, appellation bottling out points its vineyard-designate. Look for fairly well-defined ripe black-cherry fruit and a touch of creamy oak as the central themes here, and if on the broad and beamy side, the wine never drifts into excess and holds its central fruit into a mid-length finish. Its tag-end tannins guarantee a few years of aging potential.

This is an expansive, fuller-style of Chardonnay from windswept Carneros. Juicy in apple and Meyer lemon, it’s softly textured, with a pronounced richness in aroma, evocative of earthy oak and petrol. Mouthfilling and creamy, it finishes with a taste of crème caramel.

Fresh, lively and brimming over with fruit flavor, from lemon to lime to peach. The appearance is light gold, the aromas are very immediate and effusive, the texture tangy and the finish light with a hint of sweetness.