Let’s explore some wines in a higher price range, but not bottles that are totally out of your reach. The most expensive wine here is $35, which is more than I pay for a “weekday wine,” but something I’d spend on a gift for a friend. There are some good gift ideas here. We were sent these wines for review.

The Climber Chardonnay, Clif Family Winery, Calif. ($16.99 per 1.5L box) –
Yes, this is a boxed wine. And a pretty good one, too. This is unoaked chardonnay packaged in an environmentally friendly package. It’s really a white bag of white wine, with holes along the top for both fingers and thumb. It could be hooked from your belt as you ascend the nearest, um, hill in Florida (hence the name Climber), but really just plop it on your fridge’s top shelf and enjoy this wine. The nose is a light citrus, and on taste it’s also light and refreshing with some tropical tinges of grapefruit and a little lemon.

2008 Walter Clore Private Reserve, Columbia-Crest ($35 online) –
This big wine is aged for 30 months in French and American oak, and is made from merlot (57 percent), cabernet sauvignon (32 percent), cabernet franc (8 percent) and malbec (3 percent). It’s got a great big nose of cherry pie and earthy, ripe fruits. On taste it’s big, too, with blackberries and dark cherries and a whole dark-fruit cocktail going on. I paired it with linguine and a red sauce of sausages and onions and it was a terrific meal.

2009 Incognito, Michael David Winery, Lodi, Calif. ($16.99, Total Wine) –
This red wine blend has syrah, cinsault, carignan, mourvedre, petitie sirah, Grenache and tannat in it, so it’s more of a United Nations of wine. All those varietals mixed together resulted in a very pretty, very berry nose. I shared it with a fairly large group of wine drinkers and they tasted lots of berry, slight spice and earthy tones. One person commented it tasted mostly like a shiraz, and the bottle’s logo received some thumbs-up vote for “nifty.” I don’t think the taste knocked our socks off, despite it having seven different grapes inside.

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Here’s a February present – some red wines that, for the most part, are worth buying, trying and buying again. These were all sent to us for review, and you won’t break the bank with this bunch.

2010 McManis Family Vineyards Petite Sirah ($9.99, Total Wine) –
This isn’t just a Bold wine, it’s a deep wine: deep color, deep nose, deep palate. In other words, I liked it. It’s a purple-black wine, very dark, with a nose of fragrant, dark fruits. One of my sighworthy wines. On taste, it’s big cherry pop, licorice, a little smoky and some root beer (really). It’s a full-boded wine with a long finish that paired very well with high-quality burgers.

2010 Casa Silva Reserva Pinot Noir, Colchagua Valley, Chile ($12 online) –
This is a light-bodied pinot noir that smells of sour cherries (in a good way) and pretty, pink raspberries. On taste, it reminded me of cherry candies; a little too light for my taste in pinot noir. It would be a good wine for someone who is trying to learn about red wines, because it’s not too expensive, big or heavy and would probably be just right for a big white wine drinker.

2007 Hobnob Vineyards Shiraz, France ($9.99 online) –
This wine turned out to be the perfect antidote for a long day at the office. I went home, opened this, took a deep breath and found full cherries and a little earth. Then I took a sip and found cinnamon, a little spice, some more cherries and a nice-bodied wine with a medium finish. This was the first vintage for U.S. sales from this winery and it’s aimed at the young, hip crowd. It’s not too shabby after work for any age! It’s on my “buy again” list.

2009 Mandolin Syrah, Central Coast, Calif. ($11 online) –
A deep purple wine, with a deep nose of brambles and blackberries, this was just terrific with burgers. In fact, I used some of this wine when I made the burgers and it elevated those to a really yummy place. My notes say it’s a serene wine that has unity. On taste, it reflects the nose, very cherry with a smooth mouthfeel. A really, very nice wine. This is on my “you can give this to me as a gift anytime” list. Anyone listening? And you can’t beat the price.

2009 Caldora Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, Italy ($9 online) –
Here’s a food-friendly wine that’s also under $10 – what’s not to like? This Italian red blend has a light bouquet with faint cherry and a little cocoa on the nose. Sipping brings an off-dry, red fruit taste, specifically sour cherries, light currants and a little cola. It’s great with cheeses or pizza or red-sauce pasta dishes. If you get a chance, I’d recommend trying this medium-bodied wine.

2009 Tamas Estates Double Decker Red, Central Coast, Calif. ($8.99 ABC Wines) –
This blend of cabernet sauvignon, petite sirah and barbera (it was a Bold blend for sure) had a light cherry nose, so I wasn’t sure it would live up to Bold billing. On taste, it had some zippy spice, and proved to be a good, casual sipping wine. It’s comparable to a good house red in Italy or France, as it was good with food, too. It’s a medium-bodied wine that’s not pretentious and, for the price, you can’t go wrong with this one.

Earthy's girlfriends were all too pleased to help her taste through some highly rated and high-priced wines. From left, Holly Lathrop, Linda Morton and Beth Valenza. (Jennifer Podis/The Palm Beach Post)

When a windfall of highly rated and high-priced wines lands in your lap, there seems to be only one logical and charitable thing to do.

Call the girlfriends. (And they were all too pleased to answer the call.)

So I kicked off an evening of wine and women with a Sonoma pinot, an Italian brunello, a Napa cab and blend, and Beth, Holly and Linda.

While we didn’t plan any specific pairings (although I did make a mushroom risotto thinking it might be a good complement to the wines), we each made food to share and taste beside each of the wines.

First on our enviable list was the 2009 de Coelo Pinot Noir, Terra Neuma Vineyard, from Sonoma Coast ($75 benziger.com). "De coelo" in Spanish means "of heaven" and there could be no more fitting name for this wine. The nose is very fragrant, with more spice than fruit, but the fruit makes a sophisticated entrance on the palate. Linda picked up blackberry, along with the black cherry, raspberry, cinnamon and vanilla that we all swooned over. It’s so very soft and delicate, yet maintains a firm structure and complexity. Nibbling on olive toasts with Port Salut cheese brought out the earthy character of the wine and even more applause for it. And pumpkin ravioli, courtesy of Linda, proved another good partner with its savory flavors and crème fraîche.

Dry Gwen made these notes on the de Coelo in a separate tasting: "Made by Benziger winery with fruit sourced from the Demeter-certified biodynamic Terra Neuma Vineyard. A deep, ruby color, this wine has a full and aromatic aroma of sweet strawberry and red and black cherries and berries with herbal, cola and licorice notes. This is a big pinot with a soft and smooth mouthfeel and a long finish. A complex and very enjoyable wine."

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All the end-of-the-year festivities have given us ample reason to Swirl. Here are a few Italian wines we’ve received as samples.

Whites:

2009 Arnaldo Caprai Grecante Grechetto dei Colli Martani – Umbria ($16 online)
A fresh, clean and minerally nose without much fruit presence. Subtle apple notes on the palate but mostly an earthy, minerally wine with a medium body, nice acidity and very dry, clean finish.
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Final part of our three-part round-up. See part one: under $20 reds. See part two: under $20 whites.

From Earthy:

2009 Biltmore Reserve Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley ($24.99 online shop.biltmore.com/)

Now this is a pinot with sass, if there can be such a thing. Candied cherries and raspberries on the aroma, with cherry, oak and vanilla in a round and gentle body. It’s your comforting, upstanding friend with a slight tendency toward mischief. This wine’s got attitude, but it still remains a little reserved and subdued.

2010 Domaine Vacheron Sancerre, France (online from $23.99)

This French sauvignon blanc has a nose with a delicate floral scent, but also gives up lemon and freshly-mowed grass. The light-medium body has a crisp acidity and carries lemon and grapefruit, but it’s not overly tart. It actually has a delicate mouthfeel, a short finish and is so very easy to enjoy. A Sunday brunch kind of wine in my book.

From Sweet:

2009 Seghesio Old Vine Carignane ($28 at seghesio.com)

Big, dark, beautiful. Dark fruits, rich stewed plums and a touch of mint flavor this heavy wine. It was a touch alcoholic but it felt in character with the wine. It had a spicy, lingering finish. This is a brooding wine but not dangerous. Delicious with burgers, pizza, red sauces or a very hot day.

2007 Conn Creek Cabernet Sauvignon ($25 Total Wine)

This Napa Valley wine under $30 had a deep, rich raspberry smell, beautiful balance and nice, well-integrated tannins. The alcohol is a little bit high and the wine ran a bit hot. A heavy usage of oak made it a bit awkward now though that might change and smooth over with a few years in the bottle.

2009 Flora Springs Barrel Fermented Chardonnay, Napa Valley ($29.98 winelibrary.com)

If you close your eyes and imagine a well-crafted, very typical California Chardonnay, the Flora Springs Chardonnay appears. It has all the characteristics you’d expect out of a California Chardonnay – oaky, caramelly, toasty, and buttery with notes of apples and pears. This is a well-crafted wine – it doesn’t have faults of being overly-oaky or leave you feel like you’re gnawing on wood. Full, big, and creamy buy this for your inner chard lover.

From Bold:

2007 Conn Creek Cabernet Sauvignon, Collins Holystone Vineyard, Napa ($24.99 Total Wine; $23.95 Crown; $27.99 ABC)

This is a limited-production series that lives up to the expectations of something that’s ‘limited’ – it’s a big, juicy red fruit-forward wine on the nose, and a tasty, zingy, spicy mouth full of yummy (that’s what my notes say!). It’s got some nice undertones of earth and cola. I’d buy this to go with a pizza or a nice rack of lamb.

2008 Reginato Celestina Sparkling Rose of Malbec, Mendoza (online from $20.99)

This is a very pretty wine, with a cherry/strawberry color that smells faintly of cherry. It’s a soft sparkling wine with strong bubbles to tickle the nose, some sour cherry notes on taste, and it ends with a malbec-like darker fruit taste. It’s an interesting wine and would add some gumption and color to a holiday table.

2008 Antinori Guado al Tasso Il Bruciato, Bolgheri, Italy ($24.99 online)

This blend of cabernet sauvignon (50 percent), merlot (30 percent) and syrah (20 percent) is from close to the Tuscan coastline. It’s aged 8 months in oak and 4 months in the bottle. The garnet-colored wine has a nose of slight cocoa and dark fruits. It was a bit tannic with dark cherries and blackberries on taste and a nice, smooth, long finish. This is a drink-with-meals wine and won’t disappoint on the table.

We’ve been very busy swirlers over the last couple of months. So busy that our latest round-up of the wines that have been sent to us for review has to be divided into three parts. Today we present red wines under $20, and the other parts in the coming week will offer whites under $20, and reds and whites $20 and over.

Happy swirling!

From Earthy:

2009 Erath Pinot Noir, Oregon ($14.97 Total Wine; $19.99 ABC online; $17.97 Crown online)

The Erath pinot is a light shade of garnet and has a lovely sweet aroma with cherry and cinnamon. Like a cherry pie just removed from the oven.

It has a light-medium body with soft earthy notes up front and cherry and raspberry on the back end. There were sweet spices and more cinnamon… mmmmm. All of the flavors were propped up with a gentle dose of acidity. That $15 price tag is a tremendous value for such an impressive pinot. This is one I’d want multiple bottles of in the cabinet – for an unexpected guest, for a dinner party, as a gift, and best of all, for swinging in the backyard hammock.

2008 Casa Silva Los Lingues Gran Reserva Carmenere, Colchagua Valley, Chile ($17 – $24 online)

This carmenere has a deep garnet color and is virtually opaque when looking through the glass of wine. It’s a rich and powerful aroma of blackberries, currants and chocolate. The power comes through on the palate, too, with juicy blackberries, blueberries and raspberries, more chocolate, allspice and oak. But this power broker is a smooth operator. The tannins are tamed, and the body is full, balanced and satiating. This is your night at the opera: full of drama but with finesse, character and skill.
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Mitch Hawkins gets excited about water. Clean, pure, fresh spring water, which feeds his animals, his land, his family and his grapes. And don’t get him started about the air.

Located 45 minutes north of Sonoma, nestled in the county voted as having the cleanest air in the country, is a unique little pocket of land seemingly created for making great wine.

And then there’s the soil.

“It’s unlike any other – it’s very true to our terroir and very, very site-specific to us,” said Hawk and Horse Vineyard owner, Mitch Hawkins. “The Red Hill AVA is a magnificent site. It’s been voted the cleanest air in the country. We have our own spring water flowing right out of the mountain, which is just clean, pure and unbelievable. The soil profile is just magnificent. It’s the soil people get really excited about.”

Along with his wife, Tracey, and her stepfather, David Boies, the three co-owners created a single-vineyard 100 percent cabernet sauvignon. They also make a cabernet sauvignon dessert wine. Their winery has been biodynamic from the beginning.

“We knew we’d never be the biggest, but we always knew we wanted to be organic,” Hawkins said. “We have all this beautiful drinking water, which feeds all my pasture land, which feeds the horses and cows, so we knew we didn’t want to put anything into the ground that wouldn’t feed the earth. Read the full story

Time again for another round-up of wines. This time, the wines come from regions in the New World, mostly California with a few wines from Argentina and the Pacific Northwest. Most of these wines were sent as samples for the Swirl Girls to review.

Non-vintage Sokol Blossor Evolution – Oregon ($14.99 at Total Wine, $15.99 at ABC, $16.95 at Crown)
It’s sort of like throwing all the grapes you can at a wall and seeing what sticks. This blend of well, basically everything is a bright lemon color and has a sweet, candied pineapple aroma with lychee, peach, pear, and white flowers. On the palate, it’s fresh and slightly sweet with a medium body. It paired nicely with a spicy Thai red curry with duck.

2010 Michel Torino Estate Cuma Malbec – Cafayate Valley, Argentina ($11 online)
Made with organic grapes, this deep purple/magenta-colored wine has a juicy, berry-filled nose of blueberry, blackberries and spice. There was a strong whiff of alcohol in the nose as well. On the palate, the wine had a grapey, bubble-gum fruit flavor that was reminiscent of a Beaujolais. It has a medium-bodied, slightly thin feel in the mouth. There was a nice level of acidity and soft tannins. This is a simple, one-dimensional wine that would be nice for a casual party.

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There’s just something comforting about fall foods. Warm, soothing soups, fragrant apple desserts, hearty pasta dishes that make you wonder exactly why no-carb was ever popular.

Wanting to take full advantage of fall foods, I invited Dry and Mr. Dry over for an Autumnal dinner. The goal was casual and easy food and the pairings weren’t too planned out. All the wines but the Burgess were sent free for review.

We started with a roasted butternut squash soup with sage croutons and a 2009 Honah Lee Viognier, a single-vineyard 100 percent viognier from Tarara Winery in Virginia. I had tried this wine while on a trip to Virginia last week and loved it so much I bought a bottle to bring home. While Virginia might not be the first wine-producing region you think of, they’re making beautiful wines and have a rich history of winemaking. It’s a wonderful area to visit and the wines have a breathtaking acidity. It smells like a tropical oasis – bananas, lychee, pineapple and coconut. Almost as if you were sniffing banana boat but in a much more delicate, refined way. It’s a round, luscious wine that has beautiful balance. This was my personal favorite of the night that I kept sipping on, even as the rest of the company turned to red. This wine is available online from Tarara Winery for $30 a bottle.

We also tried out the 2010 White Blend Incognito from Michael David Winery. The wine is a blend of viognier, chardonnay, muscat, sauvignon blanc and roussanne from Lodi, California. This wine didn’t agree with me. I found the acidity too strong and Dry agreed that it smelled and tasted as if perfume had been dumped into the bottle, it was that floral. While the acidity didn’t bother the rest of the table so much (I’m very sensitive to acidity) it had an alcohol level of 14.5 percent, which is quite high for a white wine and that also contributed to the perfumeyness of the wine. The Incognito sells for $18 at MicahelDavidWinery.com. Read the full story

It’s a rare round-up when I have nothing bad to say about the wines I recently tried, yet here I am, in that most excellent place to be. All of these wines reviewed were samples and all were wines I’d drink and buy again.

2009 Emma Pearl Chardonnay, $18 available online at emmapearl.com
I first heard the buzz about the Emma Pearl chardonnay when I attended the Wine Bloggers Conference in Virginia last summer. I didn’t get to try it until recently though and was thrilled that the wine lived up to the hype. It has a nice smell of apples, caramels and pear and a succulent richness. There were beautiful butter and caramel notes without being too oaky. It’s lush, round and rich but very ladylike. At $18, it’s a nice chard for all sorts of white wine lovers. It’s ladylike and elegant, the sort of wine you expect decked out in pearls and long gloves.

2008 Clos de los Siete, $18 available at Crown, $16.99 at Total Wine
This lively, interesting blend is made of 56 percent malbec, 21 percent merlot, 11 percent syrah, 10 percent cabernet sauvignon and 2 percent petite verdot. It smells of raspberries, dark cherries, and juicy, ripe blackberries. It’s pretty and lively. There’s a taste of black pepper and a kick of spice at the end. It’s very nice, drinkable and pleasant and somehow manages to be both smooth and spicy. I really liked it and the price is nice, too! Read the full story