Can you ever have too much of Italy? I didn’t think so.

Although it was only last month that we featured three Italian wines in this space, I had a hard time ignoring the email advertising the Boynton Beach Total Wine’s recent wine tasting class on Italy’s Piedmont region. And I’m glad I found it irresistible, too.

You can never go wrong with a wine tasting class. You’ll always learn something new (even if you participated in the same class the previous year), you’re sure to meet new wine-loving friends, and you just never know what gem of a wine will tantalize your tongue.

Piedmont, in Italy’s northwest corner, is surrounded by the Alps and the Apennines, which explains its name meaning "foot of the mountain." Piedmont has the most Denominazione di Origine Controllata and Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita regulated zones in Italy within its borders, with 45 DOCs and 12 DOCGs, yet has no Indicazione Geografica Tipica ones (which is a more humble designation).

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We continue to taste-test wines from all over the world, and today bring you some from France, Italy and different regions of California. Some were great buys for both taste and price; some were fairly pricey. Most can be found locally.

BOLD: I’ll buy Crimson & Clover again

2009 Concannon Conservancy, Crimson & Clover, Livermore Valley, Calif. (Total Wine, $11.99)

The label says "red table wine," but this is mostly petite sirah, and I was happy about that. In fact, I was really happy about the entire experience with this Crimson & Clover blend. It has some cabernet sauvignon and zinfandel there, so the entire Bold family of preferred tastes came together beautifully. It’s a pretty purple wine, not opaque, but close to it. The nose is deep cherry and very fragrant.

On taste, it’s a big, chewy wine with a fruity blast. It’s got a smooth mouthfeel and was yummy from the first sip with cola, blackberries, a bit of leather and more dark fruit (cherries, currants). Quite a good wine, especially for the price. It’s on my "buy again" list.

2009 Redmond Ranch Syrah, Amala Springs, Sonoma, Calif. ($10 online)

This was a pretty garnet wine that promised light cherry on the nose. Unfortunately, the palate was a bit harsh; there was some light raspberry there, but the finish was extremely tannic and not pleasant. I corked it, stored it and tried it again the next night, hoping that it would have lightened somewhat, but I wasn’t rewarded.

2008 Chateau Montelena Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley, Calif. ($39.99, Total Wine; $42.99, ABC Fine Wine; $49.95, Crown)

The nose on this dark purple wine has dark fruits mixed with some leather undertones. It’s a pleasant, deep wine, and also tastes of dark fruits (blackberries), bing cherries and a little brambly. It’s a bit tart on the medium finish, but in a tasty way. I aerated this wine, and it needed it.

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Ah, Meursault. Just say the name and it rolls off the tongue like silk. Made from chardonnay in the Burgundy region of France, these elegant and full-bodied wines are considered to be among the best whites in the world.

And though I’ve never been much of a fan of some New World chards, I have always had a soft spot for Meursault.

So you can imagine my excitement when the Swirl Girls received a bottle of the 2007 Louis Jadot Meursault ($50 online) to review. What a treat!

Maison Louis Jadot is a négociant house that owns vineyards in many regions of Burgundy. Their appellation Meursault wine is a blend of grapes from multiple vineyards around the village of Meursault.

This wine is a lemon and gold color in the glass with a nose of bright apple, pear, pineapple and banana with hints of vanilla and hazelnut.

On the palate, the wine has fresh fruit flavors blended with warm vanilla and caramel, a medium/full body and long finish. Read the full story

We’ve been busy sipping the first quarter of 2012. Here are our thoughts on some recent wines we’ve tried. All of these wines were sent to Swirl Girls for review:

From Dry:

2008 Benziger Cabernet Sauvignon – Sonoma County, California ($17 Total Wine, $20 Crown, $21 ABC)
What a delicious wine and what a great value! This wine has a complex nose of red and black cherry, blackberry, vanilla and cinnamon with hints of red roses. On the palate, the wine is medium-bodied and smooth with ripe, sweet fruit and a nice, dry finish. A very good wine for the price.

2009 Tenuta Luce della Vite Lucente – Toscana ($24 Total Wine)
This wine has a deep garnet color in the glass and a nose of red and black cherry, cranberry, dried earth, dried leaves, toasted oak and cinnamon. On the palate, the wine has sour cherry and cranberry fruit flavors, a medium body and tight tannins that mellowed as the wine opened. The wine is balanced and complex, with high acidity and long finish. This is one that can age.

2010 McManis Family Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon – California ($9 Total Wine, $10 Crown)
A deep ruby in the glass with a fruit-filled nose of black cherry, blackcurrant and vanilla. On the palate, the wine is fruity and smooth, with juicy dark cherry and vanilla flavors, a medium-body, fairly soft tannins and a short finish. A somewhat one-dimensional wine, but pleasant. Read the full story

Earthy and her mom tasted the 2009 Estancia Pinot Grigio, California; 2011 Two Oceans Pinot Grigio, Western Cape, South Africa; 2010 Ca' Montini Pinot Grigio, Trentino, Italy. (Jennifer Podis/The Palm Beach Post)

There could be no better way to welcome spring than with crisp, light-on-the-palate, white wine. (Maybe there are better ways, but this is a pretty darn good one.) And an evening with Mom seemed to be an ideal time to compare three pinot grigios, each from a different country. The wines were sent to the Swirl Girls for review.

We had South Africa, Italy and the United States on the table and an artichoke and leek tart in the oven. The 2011 Two Oceans Pinot Grigio, from the Western Cape in South Africa ($8.99 online), had the lightest body color, so we started there.

It also had a very light aroma of citrus and grass, and a palate that was predominantly grapefruit with a bright, dancing acidity. It’s simple and breezy, and quite pleasant to quaff. Especially at that price!

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We’ve been busy swirlers and so have plenty of tasting notes to share… in fact, we’ll be presenting some reds to you later in the week. (All wines were sent to the Swirl Girls for review.)

From Bold:

2008 Blondie Gone Wild Chardonnay, Red Hen Vineyards, Napa ($29.99 Total Wine)
The grapes for this wine are whole-clustered pressed and are in sur lie fermented with wild yeast for 14 months in mostly new French oak. The big nose on this wine smelled honey-rich, and the taste backed it up with an oaky, butter/honey, honeysuckle palate that had light citrus with a tartness of lemon-lime. This is my kind of chardonnay. It was a perfect accompaniment to stone crabs in mustard sauce, and had a nice finish.

2010 Benziger Sauvignon Blanc, Sonoma ($12.99, ABC; $13.49 Total Wine; $14.95 Crown)
I like Benziger’s reds almost uniformly, and quite liked a chardonnay I had when I visited the winery a few years ago. Because sauvignon blanc is one of my favorite white wines, I was eager to try this. The wine is a nice light green-yellow color, the nose a pretty one of pineapple and other tropical fruits. So far, OK. On palate, though, I found it quite acidic with a lot of tart apple to it. It’s not my favorite sauv blanc.
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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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I have plenty of wine resolutions for 2012. It’s always fun to explore the new and alternative. But it’s also fun to discover greatness in a place or varietal you’d previously snubbed. Which leads me to one of the most popular, most guzzled and sometimes most infuriating varietals for the wine lover: chardonnay.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never turned my nose up at a good white Burgundy. But Cali chard? Puh-lease! To say that it’s not my style is an understatement.

In the past few years, through wine samples and online tastings, I’ve noticed a swing away from the typical California trend – winemakers experimenting with cool climate regions and steel fermentation, preventing malolactic fermentation, and a more subtle use of oak. Perhaps my previous snub to the stereotype was keeping me from appreciating some quality juice. I realized it was time to re-evaluate.

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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.