I’m picking out wines for my tasting, which has been a pretty fun enterprise. The latest contender is this Mouressipe Cuvée Càcous ($22), from the Languedoc, a huge wine-producing region in southern France.

During a 50-hour whirlwind trip to Northern California, I squeezed in a quick trip to Spring Mountain, home to some of my favorite reds.

Even though I’m all about making wine accessible, I have to admit to some inside baseball, wine geek tendencies. One of the geekiest is my love — obsession, really — with Madeira.

Even in a place as beautiful as Bandol, winemaking is really hard work. Our visit to Castell-Reynoard, a small, family-owned, property, was a great reminder of what a tough job this can be.

I think this bottle would do a good job of convincing the skeptic that New York can make the kind of well-made, easy-drinking wines that California, Australia, and Chile churn out in vast quantities…now if only they could fix the packaging.

All summer I was in search of the perfect rosé. Sadly, this isn’t it.

When many people hear “Beaujolais,” chances are they think of Beaujolais Nouveau, an inexpensive, often mediocre wine that is shoved down their throats every November. The problem with Nouveau, in addition to the fact that it usually doesn’t taste very good, is that it overshadows the really good wine that comes from Beaujolais.

My white wine reunion was thwarted! I arrived at the airport two-and-a-half hours in advance — ah, LaGuardia on summer Friday afternoons — only to learn that our flight to Richmond was cancelled due to Hurricane Bill.

My contribution to our beach weekend, aside from some very competent food styling work for this tomato tart, was a selection of Bandol. Whenever I have a vineyard vacation planned, like next month’s trip to Provence, I like to test-drive some wines beforehand.

I made a tactical error with my vacation planning this year: because of work and other obligations, we decided to forego an August getaway in favor of a late September trip. Right now I’m seriously regretting that choice. My office is a ghost town, New York is sticky as all get-out, and Paul and I feel like the only suckers left in the city. However, there is one big silver lining here: end of September is right around harvest time in Bandol, a town in Provence where we’ll be spending part of vacation.