Looking for a gift for someone who likes wine? This is our gift to our fans: Some great suggestions in all price ranges that should glean you a few "Wow, thanks!" reactions.

From Bold:

Wine to bring to a casual party: I’ve brought the Layer Cake primitivo to a few parties and I always hear, "Hey, this is delicious! Is it expensive?" and the answer, thankfully, is no.

This primitivo from Puglia, Italy, has the same makeup as zinfandel, so it’s a big wine with some spice and depth and is good just for sipping or with food. It tastes like an expensive wine, but costs about $17.99.

Wines for the serious wine lover: The big, bold, just-amazingly-yummy Justin red wines, from Paso Robles, Calif. I love them all, but especially the Isoceles (blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc; $62) and Justification (blend of merlot and cabernet franc; $45). When I’m at a restaurant and one of these is on the menu, it’s pricey, but it’s also impressive. Great gifts for a red wine lover.

Christmas wine charms by WineAllAboutIt. (Photo: etsy.com)

Wine gadget for the wine lover who has it all: Unusual wine gift bags, wine charms or wine glasses. There are some wonderfully creative artists who excel in those areas. Try winedivashop.com, etsy.com, or even try making your own. The glasses run from $10-$20 each; the gift bags and charms are less than $10 for a few.

Stocking stuffer/holiday décor for the wine lover: It’s great to have a "go to" resource when you’re in the mood to try something new, or are trying to remember details from a particularly wonderful wine moment. A new book, 1000 Great Everyday Wines from the World’s Best Wineries, by Jim Gordon (former Wine Spectator managing editor) is just the gift.

From how to read wine labels, to varietal information, and winery and wine descriptions in all large wine countries of the world, this will help you decide what to try next. It retails for $25, but Amazon has it for $16.50. So buy one for yourself, too!

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From Food & Wine magazine come these tips on how to get the best wine deal during the holidays. The secret is 1) do a little homework, and 2) ask store employees for help with a few things.

Tip 1 – Look for sales on Champagne from Thanksgiving into the first two weeks of December. After that, the discounts disappear.

Tip 2 – Popular wines, like California chardonnays, rarely go on sale. Head to less-well-known regions instead, like Abruzzo or Alsace.

Tip 3 – If a wine from an unsung region isn’t on sale, the store might be flexible about pricing; ask if you can get a discount.

Tip 4 – The best deals right now on under-$25 cabernets are from Washington state. Plus, the 2008 vintage is extremely good.

Tip 5 – Beaujolais is enormously popular for Thanksgiving, so it will probably go on sale after the holiday has passed.

There I was, vacationing far away in the Colorado Rockies, hiking, horseback riding, and hanging out with my family. It was perfect, absolutely perfect.

But all of a sudden disaster hit.

Dinner was being served and the chardonnay that I had planned to pour was disappointingly corked. I was down to my last bottle of wine – a $15 bottle of Portugeuse red and I had neither a decanter nor time to decant. The wine was young and tight and would have made a wretched companion for my birthday dinner.

I eyed the sparsely furnished kitchen hopelessly and out of desperation, I decided to try something dangerous.

Without questioning what I was about to do, I grabbed the wine and the blender and poured it in. I took a deep breath and hit the blend button.

Oh the horror! Take away her Swirl Girl button for Sweet has gone loopy!

But it’s not as crazy as you might think. Read the full story

Every good winemaker will tell you that good wine starts in the vineyard, that making wine begins by walking the rows of grapes. But Rudy Marchesi, owner and winemaker at Montionre Estate in Oregon, goes one step further. His obsession with the soil has led to wine that is very pure and expressive (and absolutely delicious).

Marchesi comes from a family of winemakers – his father was born in Northern Italy and his grandfather made wine.

“I remember being 5 years old and getting a glass of half wine and half soda at family dinner,” Rudy said. “Wine was part of my family upbringing.”

He pursued a masters degree in psychology at Sonoma State while making wine at home. Then, he moved to New Jersey. “I got this hair-brained idea that I could grow grapes along the Delaware River in New Jersey. It was certainly the path less taken, that’s for sure,” he said. He grew cabernet franc, Riesling, chards and other obscure varietals.

His ties to Oregon appeared when his oldest daughter went off to Reed College, and quickly the lure of the exceptional pinot noir was too much. He did marketing for Oregon wineries and eventually bought Montinore Estate in 2005. Montinore is an organic and biodynamic winery. Read the full story

Three world-class winemakers, all born in France and currently making wine in California, attended a winemakers’ dinner at Paradisio Ristorante in Lake Worth last week and managed to make time for a roundtable chat. We discussed everything from differences between growing wine in California and France, California foodies and why they all stayed in the United States.

Philippe Langner, of Hesperian Wines, grew up in Africa. His interest in plants and agriculture led him to UC Davis, where he received a bachelors in agronomy and a double masters in Agronomy and Agricultural Economics. He was going to pursue working for a non-governmental organization in third-world agriculture development, but after working for a stint at Chateau Clarke in Bordeaux, he got the viticulture and winemaking bug. He returned to California in 2001 (after working crush in South Africa in 2000) and worked for Sullivan Vineyards. In 2004, he started making wine from Coombsville in Napa Valley and making Hesperian cabs. Since 2006, he produces about 1,000 cases of cabernet sauvignon. Recently, he bought land in Atlas Peak, where he looks forward to stressing his wines and creating a more intense cabernet.

“It’s great to be able to consume the product you grow,” Langner said.

Cecile Lemerle-Derbes, co-owner and winemaker of Derbes wines, was born and raised in Champagne, where she grew up helping her mother in the vineyards. She was going to be a doctor, but switched to Viticulture and Enology studies. “I wanted to be something else. But I went back to the source,” Derbes said. Read the full story

Another July, another visit to my sister and her family in upstate New York and, yes, the now-requisite jaunt into the Finger Lakes wine region for a little northerly swirling.

But instead of sharing tasting notes with such mundane phrases as “smells like cherry,” proclaiming silly superlatives from the five wineries we visited along Seneca Lake makes for a much more entertaining exercise. (Besides, we were having way too much fun to do any serious contemplation about aroma and taste.)

So, from the tasting rooms of Damiani Wine Cellars, Lamoreaux Landing Wine Cellars, Rasta Ranch Vineyards, Red Newt Cellars and Standing Stone Vineyards come Earthy’s highly unscientific, ridiculously opinionated “Superlatives of the Finger Lakes”: Read the full story

You could say that it started with a black cat. Or a deep love of French syrah. Or a 200-year-old farmhouse in the middle of Pennsylvania desperately in need of repair. Or the first bond-certified female rep in all of Texas. And all those things would be right, but heck, at the crux of it, it really just began with a woman who was so darned determined that failure never even entered her mind.

Tracey Reichow didn’t start out a farmer or a winemaker. Instead, she graduated high school from a suburb of Minnesota, then put herself through the University of Wisconsin working nights in a grocery store. She started as a physics and math major but was told she couldn’t get a job in science without more schooling so she graduated with a degree in finance and a minor in math. She became the first bond trader licensed in Texas, then retired from investment banking at the age of 32. Read the full story

The shop: A1A Fine Wine & Spirits, Mirasol Walk Plaza, 6231 PGA Blvd., Suite 106, Palm Beach Gardens

The managing partner: Vanessa Usha Patel

Her background: Wine and spirits is her family’s business. Vanessa’s brothers, Sonny and Roger Patel, own Lantana Liquors in Lantana and A1A Discount Beverage & Liquor in Boynton Beach. After working for her brothers for more than a decade, Vanessa opened A1A Wine & Spirits in Palm Beach Gardens in 2005. In the six years since, she’s really focused on wine, educating herself through constant reading, attending trade shows and developing her palate. Read the full story

Ah, pinot noir. The most finicky of all the grapes. The petulant child. The seductive, tempestuous lady.

“If I can make pinot noir, well, I feel like I can make any wine well,” said Aaron Walker, winemaker of Pali Wine Company. He just happens to be THE pinot man and the up-and-coming rising star of Pali Wine Company.

Grapes arrive in Santa Barbara County from Oregon, Sonoma, the Russian River Valley and Santa Barbara County, just waiting for his magic touch. By sourcing grapes from so many places, the emphasis remains on creating wine that reflects the individual vineyard’s terroir.

“We want them to be unique, to show the terroir. We want each vineyard to show uniqueness and the best qualities,” he said.

He didn’t mention eye-catching, but his first vintage, the 2008 Durrell Vineyard Pinot Noir from the Sonoma Coast, caught the eyes of Wine Spectator. And scored it 96 points.

“It’s big shoes to fill for myself,” he said. He picked earlier, and used less extraction and a gentler hand. “To me, it’s beautiful. It’s like having a picnic in a rose garden.”
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Fortified

A wine, such as Sherry or Port, that has had its alcohol content increased by the addition of distilled grape spirits (brandy). Most fortified wines contain 16 to 20 percent alcohol by volume.

(Wine Bible, Karen MacNeil; winespectator.com)