Of course, that's last minute for some people. For me, I think skating close to the gift-giving edge of disaster adds spice to life. Especially when it involves fighting through mobs of other time-challenged shoppers. Hey—hands off that bottle of Viognier, pal, or I'll show you Christmas season! 

For the more demure, or else the more unwilling to leave their homes, though, you could do worse than to give a donation in your giftee's name to Changing the Present, which consolidates various worthy charities into a web-based gift-giving structure (more or less). It's pertinent here because of their affiliation of Roots of Peace, a charity that clears war-torn regions of landmines and replaces them with grapevines. Tax-deductible and honorable, I'd say.

On the other hand, there's an abundance of new wine- and/or spirits-related books out there, some of which are worth a panicked trip to your local book emporium (or to Amazon, though you'll be paying some hefty shipping charges at this point if you want it there by Dec. 24).

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It was a pleasantly sunny afternoon when the gun went off to start the annual barco rabelo regatta on the Douro this past Sunday (we're going to be bouncing around in time a bit with these Portugal entries; bear with). I'd abandoned my usual journalistic neutrality and was rooting for the Sandeman boat, largely because I was on it. 

In way of background, rabelos are the shallow-bottomed, keel-less boats once used to transport port casks down the Douro to Vila Nova de Gaia, the sister city to Oporto and home of the major port shipping companies. Back in the days that people actually used these boats—which are steered by a single long oar poking into the water from the stern, and feature a large square-rigged sail—the things were treacherous, since they were piled full of full port casks (heavy) and were sailed down the Douro before it was dammed (full of rapids) and had no stabilizing keel. Ours, on the other hand, were lightly loaded with empty casks and sailed on the Douro at the mouth of the river; entirely different proposition, which is to say that to become a fatality statistic in the annual regatta would take a lot of doing.

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Resveratrol? Old hat. Now, according to this University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine press release, it's been determined that red wine (as well as various other fruits and vegetables) contains the anthocyanidin C-3-R—that's cyanidin-3-rutinoside to you completists out there—which in turn has been determined to kill off leukemia cells while leaving healthy cells intact. At least in laboratory tests. 

Now, what I determined this weekend, at a dinner that my friend Tara Q. Thomas of Wine & Spirits had for Bert and Gertrud Salomon of Salomon Undhof, is that the 1990 Noel Verset Cornas—in addition to being a gamey, gorgeously drinking, wild-beast-dragged-from-its-lair, epitome-of-Cornas sort of wine—will actually make you younger. I drank two glasses, and felt at least two months of weariness drop away. Unfortunately, it's hard to find. But isn't that the classic problem with the Fountain of Youth? 

Out for dinner with a trio of Spanish winemakers last night at Tia Pol—a meal that started late, and then went on way too late, with all three winemakers winding up outside on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, smoking cigarettes and drinking sake from the Izakaya bar next door. Of course, this is the sort of thing that happens when you hang out with Spanish winemakers.

However, before the sake-drinking and cigarette-smoking, we did manage to taste some pretty terrific wines, among them the extremely impressive Albariños being made by Gerardo Mendez at Do Ferreiro. Mendez makes three wines: a basic Albariño; Cepas Vellas, an ancient vine bottling (importer Andre Tamers of De Maison Selections claims that they're over 200 years old, which sounds unimaginable to me, but I have no real reason to doubt him); and Rebisaca, a blend of Treixadura and Albariño. Mendez does everything I like with Albariño—aging on lees in tank, organic viticulture, indigenous yeasts—and avoids the one thing I really don't like with this grape, which is oak.

The result is wines like the 2006 Do Ferreiro Albariño ($22, but not released yet), a model of the form: citrus peel and chalky mineral aromas, then bright, vivid green apple and citrus fruit with an almost smoky undertone; the 2005 Do Ferreiro Albariño ($22) which, coming from a warmer vintage, reveals more pineapple fruit notes (though not the hideous canned pineapple fruit you sometimes get in overripe Chardonnay) and has a denser texture; and the 2005 Do Ferreiro Cepas Vellas ($35), appropriately more complex, with saturated green apple and citrus fruit notes, and a kind of mineral-briny lime-candy finish.

If you like Albariño (and you should), keep a watch out for the 2006 wines. Mendez, who looks oddly like the writer Milan Kundera, remarked of the vintage, "I don't have any comparison for this year. It's like a flower—extraordinarily delicate. A great year."

Moreover, if you like Albariño (and you will, or else—got it, pal?), put some of it away. Cellar it. It seems like a bright, direct white to be drunk soon after release, and it is; but it also ages surprisingly well. I discovered that while tasting old vintages of Pazo de Señorans in Galicia a few years ago, and rediscovered it last night while tasting the 2001 Do Ferreiro Cepas Vellas, which had an extraordinary bouquet of petrol, lime zest, pineapple and honeysuckle, profound minerality, citrus fruit that wasn't fading in the least, and a lingering honeysuckle note (from botrytis, which is present in the '05 as well, though it's imperceptible as yet). Mendel said of the wine, "When you compare the '01 and '05 you see how long a life that '05 has ahead of it. In two years the '05 will start being ready to drink."

It's worth adding that the pleasure of tasting these wines was undoubtedly heightened by the just absurdly good food at Tia Pol. For the Albariños, this particularly meant an earthy carpaccio of king oyster mushrooms in a citrus vinaigrette with chopped almonds, and sweet, tender langoustines that if I'd been eating them blindfolded would have made me swear I was in Spain (as it turns out, Alex Raij, the chef, buys them directly from a guy in Spain). They aren't like langoustines you get here—they're what langoustines you get here would be in their dreams, that is if langoustines dream. Nor are they cheap. But they're worth every peseta.

We moved on to reds after that, and to a cochinillo (roast suckling pig) whose salty, cracker-crisp skin would be envied by any self-respecting Segovian chef; the meat was tender enough, too, to pass the classic test of being able to be cut apart with the edge of a plate. Co-owner Mani Dawes tells me the cochinillo is usually a Wednesday-night special. I say that if that's the case, then I've got my Wednesday nights planned out for the next five years.

Bizarrely enough, given my recent post about the new Snake River AVA, it turns out that my colleague, Emily Kaiser, happened to have a couple of cases of Idaho wines sitting here in her office, waiting to be tasted (in anticipation of an upcoming trip to research Idaho's food culture, or somesuch). The god of wine works in mysterious ways, I say. 

We opened them up this morning and tasted through them. While I can't say that Idaho is the new Napa Valley, I will say that if someone asked me to place bets on Idaho's wine future, I'd put my money on Syrah. Most of the Bordeaux varieties we tasted were odd, and the lone Chardonnay was scary (yet more proof that there should be an international moratorium on Chardonnay planting—enough with the oceans of wretched Chardonnay, already!). But I thought that the 2004 Koenig Vineyard Cuvée Amelia Syrah ($50), though whacked with an overabundance of charry oak, had good peppery Syrah fruit—a dark, smoked blackberry character. The 2003 Hells Canyon Idaho Reserve Syrah ($50) had a harsh oaky note as well, but also really charming berry notes tucked away underneath. But fifty bucks each? For fifty bucks you can run out and buy a bottle of Clusel-Roch Côte Rôtie, which, I'm sad to say, would just plain step on either one of these wines. 

Anyway, in my opinion—and since this is a blog, there ain't nothing but my opinion going on around here—at least some of the vineyards in Idaho are growing quite good Syrah, unsurprisingly reminiscent of some of the better eastern Washington Syrahs. The winemaking isn't up to the quality of the grapes, but that's less of a problem than the reverse. Winemaking you can learn; you can't teach a vineyard how to be anything other than what it is. 

And I will give kudos to Hell's Canyon for being the only winery I can think of willing to put a black and white photo of dead deer flopped across the hood of a 1930's automobile on one of its wine labels: the appropriately named Deer Slayer Syrah. I'd like to say it's a really meaty red, but...

KRISTV, a news station in Corpus Christi, TX, has reported on a growing conflict between ranchers and grape growers near the town of Driftwood, in the Texas Hill Country. Seems the ranchers are fond of zapping their grazing land at the end of the season with the disquietingly named herbicide 2,4-D. This 2,4-D—apparently the most widely used herbicide worldwide—isn't particularly harmful...um...except that the EPA points out that it can, er, cause nervous system damage after short-term exposure above the maximum contaminant level, at least in drinking water. 

They haven't tested it in wine.

Anyway, the burgeoning wine business in the area is all hetted up because the 2,4-D might blow over on the wind and kill the vines (it's good at killing broad-leaf weeds and woody plants). They seem to be less worried about it killing the drinkers of the wines made from the vines, but hey, maybe I'm just a paranoid guy.

It occurs to me that a good, old-fashioned range war might be just the thing to get a little more publicity for Texas wines. Speaking as a native Texan myself.  

I'll add that, while I haven't been to any of the wineries right around Driftwood, both Sister Creek Vineyards and Flat Creek Estate are making a range of good wines (I'm particularly fond of Flat Creek's luscious Supertexan Sangiovese, and not just for its clever name). And if you're in the area, you'd be nuts not to stop off and have dinner at Café 909 in Marble Falls. I wrote in the magazine a while back about how absurdly delicious I thought chef Mark Schmidt's Frozen Pistachio Parfait was when I went there last year; what I didn't have room to add in that little feature was how good the rest of his food is, too.

Had dinner last night at Telepan with Bill Hunter, the owner (along with Billington Imports, in some capacity) and winemaker at Chasseur. Bill's a bluff, friendly, no-nonsense sort of guy who happens to make some pretty extraordinary Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs. The standout last night for me was his 2004 Chasseur Durrell Vineyard Chardonnay ($48). Unfined and unfiltered, the wine is slightly hazy (not a problem) and its texture is a physical incarnation of that veil-like appearance; it's the kind of white that wins you over on texture alone, before you realize how good it tastes (think white peach and other stone fruits, brioche, and a faint, appealing note of butterscotch). It achieves that supple richness partly because Bill believes in leaving the wine on its lees well into the new year, creating the conditions for the kind of autolyzed yeast notes most people are familiar with from Champagne. He poured it next to a bottle of John Kongsgaard's 2004 Napa Chardonnay that he ordered off the list at the restaurant, an act that took a substantial amount of winemaker-cojones, given the level of acclaim Kongsgaard has received for his (admittedly terrific) Chardonnays. It was close to a dead heat in terms of quality, but in the end I gave the edge to the Chasseur, which surprised me.

Also, just a side note about Telepan. Bill Telepan is a wonderful chef, and he's cooking at the top of his game right now; everything I had-down to the slightly absurd but in-your-face delicious foie gras "donuts" that appeared as an amuse bouche-was superb. Of particular note were some nearly ethereal ricotta gnocchi, served with a small forest's worth of wild mushrooms, coin-sized discs of potato and toasted pine nuts, with small shavings of ricotta salata scattered on top; the definition of the flavors here was remarkable, with no ingredient vanishing under the weight of any other. It's hard to imagine a dish more suited to the style of Chardonnay we were drinking (though a kind of deconstructed lamb cassoulet went very well with the Pinot we switched to afterward, too). Aaron von Rock's wine list is adventurous and extensive, too, full of things I wished I could have ordered, But, you know, there's only so much one can experience in a single night.

Continuing on this odd all-Pinot all-the-time run I seem to be on, I met yesterday with Tony Soter, the founder and for many years main winemaker of Etude, and Jon Priest, who's now taken over the winemaking duties at the brand.

The interesting recent aspect of Etude's Pinots, to me, is that as of the 2004 vintage they are estate wines. The brand's reputation (considerable) was founded on sourced fruit from throughout Carneros, but since purchasing an old cattle ranch in the northeast corner of Carneros, near the Petaluma Gap, and planting it to Pinot in 2000 (easier to do with the financial backing of Foster's Wine Estates, which now owns the company), Etude has been moving toward an all-estate-fruit model.

Priest said that he prefers to think of the Etude estate vineyard as "twenty little vineyards rather than one big one," a point of view born of Etude's decision to start releasing parcel-specific bottlings as well as the basic estate Pinot; the first, the '04 Deer Camp, is out now. There will be two more joining it in future vintages. Soter added that Etude's estate vineyard is on "volcanic, rocky soils-an animal of a different color than the usual Carneros clay soils," noting that in his view this results in Pinot Noir with darker fruit and firmer structure. (He avowed a marked dislike for confectionary, candied Pinot Noir and, after tasting way too much Pinot along those lines for the column, I'm in hearty agreement.)

2004 Etude Deer Camp Pinot Noir ($60) When I tasted this four months back for the column, the oak was sitting on the wine in an unappealing way; now it's much more integrated, mostly present as an aromatic spice note in the lovely aroma, which also shows violets and sweet black raspberry notes; the palate is seamless, dark-berried and focused. Deer Camp is a rocky, sloping portion of the vineyard; the vines here are on the old Martini clone—"the much-maligned Martini clone," Priest says, "but when you grow it on rocks and keep the vigor down it makes a very complete wine."

2004 Etude Heirloom Pinot Noir ($80) A light cola aroma plays off the deeper black cherry and raspberry liqueur scents here, then opens into exotic wild berry flavors and a hint of smokiness; very complete, very delicious, and structurally balanced enough to age well for at least a decade, I'd say.

Every vintage I've had of this wine has impressed me, but I've always thought the available info on this wine hedged its "heirloom" aspects a bit, so I asked Soter what the deal was. His answer, in effect, is that he feels it's a bit déclassé to go around saying something like, "oh, this is grown on La Tâche cuttings that so-and-so brought over in a suitcase"—that to do so would constitute a sort of riding-on-the-coattails of La Tâche's fame. (He also makes the entirely legitimate point that if La Tâche, or Richebourg, or what have you, happens to be a massale selection, then by taking only a few cuttings and propagating them, you haven't necessarily recreated the mix of that vineyard at all, making your claim that you've planted on La Tâche's vine material more than a little specious.)

Anyway. What it comes down to is that those are the sort of selections that go into this wine, though no names are going to be named (for all I know, Foster's may also be wary on legal grounds of proclaiming that they're growing Pinot on vines propagated from illegally imported vine material from ultra-famous French vineyards—most large corporations would be). Also, the selections used for the wine—which until now has been made with sourced fruit—also constitute the nine different clones that are planted in a specific seven-acre section of the Etude estate vineyard which will be dedicated to propagating them.

A brief meeting with Gaia Gaja today, daughter of Angelo (Her comment: "Yes, it is a democracy at our winery up to a certain point. And then it is not!" This was said with great affection, of course.) We tasted the 2001 Barbaresco and the 2001 Sperss; tasting notes below. But I particularly liked Gaia's comment on the difference between Barbaresco and Barolo—both wines made from the Nebbiolo grape: "To me Barbaresco is more ethereal. It's more about flowers and sweet spice—anise and cumin. Barolo has a perfume that is more licorice, more leaves and earth, mushrooms and undergrowth. That sweet spice is why people say Barbaresco is more feminine and Barolo more masculine."

That, to me, sums up the divide in an appealingly concise way. Maybe Gaia Gaja should become a writer. If she decides she wants to leave her role as heir-apparent to what is one of the most famous and respected wine estates in Italy, that is. Personally I'd advise against it.

2001 Gaja Barbaresco ($175) An ultra-pure note of red cherry liqueur runs through this, both in aroma and flavor; very silky, though not in the least lacking for structure; underneath and around and above all that fruit lies a cloud of darkly floral elegance that just says, "Now that is great Nebbiolo."

2001 Gaja Sperss  ($215) This single vineyard wine was once labeled as Barolo, but since 1996 has been labeled simply "Langhe," because of the small percentage of Barbera in the blend. Nevertheless, if it looks like a duck...you know the rest. Scents of wild berries, coffee, and a non-oak woody note that I always think of as dry bracken; harder and more formidable than the Barbaresco but gorgeously balanced, ending on dense, fine tannins.