On the off chance you happen to be visiting Mt. Desert Island in Maine, which is home to a good chunk of Acadia National Park, and find yourself in need of wine, I'd suggest you make a point of visiting Sawyer's Specialties in Southwest Harbor. I walked into this place the other day and was pretty much blown away by the selection–not just a lot of wine, but a lot of really terrific wine, from the kind of interesting, artisanal producers that are hard enough to track down in NYC, much less the far northeastern reaches of Maine. Owner/buyer Scott Worcester's suggestion the day I was there, the 2006 Aia de Colombi Falanghina, is right up there in the running (with the '06 Blanco Nieva Pie Franco that I recommended a few entries back) for my favorite new white this summer. Full-bodied but with enough verve to keep it light, loaded with flavor, and under $20–good juice indeed. No website, but the place is easy enough to find if you're on the island: 353 Main Street, Southwest Harbor, ME; 207-244-3317.

Eric Asimov has an engaging piece in today’s NY Times on learning about wine, which among other things underscores how useful a good wine shop is in terms of that goal. Read it here. I’ll just throw my two cents into the mix by saying that whenever people ask me about buying wine, I always tell them that patronizing a store with an actual staff, one that knows wine, is well worth the extra buck or two you may pay per bottle over what you’d pay at the local SuperMongoMart.

Of course, I’m biased by my own experiences. I had the good fortune, while in grad school, to live half a mile away from the Redwood City outpost of K&L Wine Merchants. I was interested in wine, but, like any grad student worth his weight in unpublished manuscripts, cashless in extremis. So once every couple of weeks I’d scrape together fifteen bucks—a serious extravagance at the time—and head on over to K&L. There I’d always talk to the same guy, who (a) seemed to know the wines in the store inside and out, (b) took my interest seriously even though I was spending maybe a tenth of their average sale (or even less, as this was the height of the dot-com boom), and (c) would find out whether I’d liked whatever he’d recommended the last time I was there, and then extrapolate from there. No clue what this guy’s name was, but in my mind he’s sort of like the unknown solider of wine-store service: deserving of honor and a bronze monument or two. Or at least a bronze decanter.

Today a reader wrote in to point out that of the 27 Pinot Noirs I recommended in my March Tasting Room column (out on newsstands everywhere right now! whoo-hoo!) only one of them is available in Pennsylvania.

Part of the problem here is simply that California's (and Oregon's) best Pinot Noirs tend to be vineyard specific, and so are produced in fairly small quantities. Another part of the problem, though, is what happens when you have a monopoly on wine sales in a given market—in this case, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. Not that the PLCB's choices are necessarily bad, but part of the pleasure of being a wine lover is the ever-expanding range of interesting wines being sold in the U.S. (unless of course you're stuck in Pennsylvania). And my usual advice to readers trying to find a specific wine—ask a good wine store if they'll order it for you—is effectively useless in this case. Though I suppose you could drive up to Philly and haunt the offices of the PLCB chairperson with a sign saying "Not Leaving Till You Order Woodenhead Pinot!"

My other usual suggestion, to contact the winery directly, is only semi-useful in Pennsylvania. Direct shipping seems to be legal there, provided that the wine is not carried by the PLCB and that it's shipped by a registered shipper who's paid for the appropriate license from the PLCB (obstructionist, much?). If you're a Pennsylvania resident and you want to check out the regulations—and have an hour or so of spare time—go here.

But in the meantime here are two fine Pinot Noirs that the PLCB web store claims they currently sell, offered in the hopes that this will make up for tantalizing my fine Pennsylvania-based readers with recommendations of wines they can't get. Both are last vintage, but I think in each case the additional year will probably have helped the wine, assuming the storage conditions weren't wretched. (I have yet to taste the 2005 vintage of the Calera, but I can also add that the 2005 vintage of the Alma Rosa is also well worth buying, for anyone not in Pennsylvania who happens across it.)

2004 Calera Central Coast Pinot Noir ($25) Crisp cherry fruit and that firm structure typical of Josh Jensen's wines; this is a bottling he makes from purchased grapes rather than his estate vineyards.

2004 Alma Rosa Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir ($35) Alma Rosa is Richard Sanford's new project, now that he's left the Sanford Winery. If I recall correctly, the viticulture is entirely biodynamic. If you like your Pinots on the big, dark and spicy side, you'll enjoy this wine; good acidity keeps it from turning into a Pinot-blob, thankfully.