Again Kendall-Jackson's Vintner's Reserve tops the chart here, mainly since the winery reduced production of the wine and improved quality with its 2001 vintage.

Always shows excellent fruit components, has a touch of oak flavors, and the balance is impeccable. At less than $15, this wine always satisfies.

Made entirely from a single block on the Santa Maria Bench, K-J's Chardonnay is big and rich on the nose with peach, mango, honey, creamy spicy lees fruit. Wow.

Succulent cherry fruit packed into a gentle, earthen tannin gives a sleek, integrated feel to this fat Napa cabernet. It's round and satisfying in middle, bracketed on either side by the smokiness of oak.

Intense and sturdy, with chewy tannins wrapped around a dense, concentrated core of earth and blackberry fruit that's well-centered. Drink now through 2009.

2004 ARROWOOD CHARDONNAY ALARY RANCH The Burgundian-styled 2004 Chardonnay Alary Vineyards (100% barrel fermented, put through malolactic fermentation, and aged for 10 months in French wood) exhibits aromas and flavors of pineapple, hazelnut, brioche, and orange skins. This complex white possesses great fruit and acidity as well as a full-bodied power with the oak kept well in the background.

An elegant wine with a velvety texture. Aromas and flavors of black cherry, plum, strawberry, cola, nutmeg and orange peel. Firm tannins. Balanced. Long finish.

concentrated, spicy

Yangarra is becoming synonymous with excellent wines at fair prices. Nose is a little hot at first, but later reveals pastry flour and black pepper aromas. Ripe red plums and vanilla accents unfold in the mouth. Not a huge, rich wine, but certainly a class one.

Edmeades' Zins are not noted for modest alcohol, and this one, at 15.6% is hot, but oh so good. You can taste the sun in every sip of black currant and sweetened espresso. It's balanced, though, with good acidity and is totally dry.

Berry, chocolate, and Porty flavors and firm tannins.

Edmeades is a natural for a dessert wine.

From old vines inland in the Redwood Valley, a wine that smells rich in peppery cherry.

This clean, balanced, moderately extracted offering comes through in the mouth with plenty of ripe red-cherry flavors laced with a good dose of vanillin oak. It has a fine sense of substance and has enough spine to stand up to the rich sauces and savory flavors we enjoy so much.

Light and delicately flavored with subtle cherry, tobacco and spice flavors, this pleasant wine is suitable for everyday dinners. Has some real length through the finish.

very clean and decently balanced wine

Long on sweet oak and colored by an atypical element of mint as well as the usual themes of pepper and spice, this robust and big-bodied youngster trades heavily on ripeness but comes up a winner by dint of its richness and depth. It is tough enough to dissuade early drinking even by fans of the style, but it will easily take four or five years of age.

Aromas, flavors of cherry, currant, cedar, fennel. Toasty oak. Medium-bodied. Integrated tannins. Good structure.

Best of the Year Issue Dec. 6, 2004

Pleasant, solid, ripe apple flavors. Pronounced oak, with a note of coffee bean. Medium-bodied, with a silky texture.