My upcoming February Tasting Room column will be on Argentina's red wines—a grab-bag of tasty, affordable bottles that isn't quite online yet now it is! In the meantime, though, along with the reds I tasted a number of whites, and was particularly impressed with the quality/price combination offered by Torrontés, Argentina's most distinctive local white grape.

To me, Torrontés recalls the aromatic flamboyance of Muscat combined with the light crispness of Pinot Grigio. In the past, too many examples I tasted were also insipid (also like a lot of Pinot Grigio), but that seems to be changing. The following four all struck me as remarkably tasty wines given what they cost; the first three are from Salta, in the north of Argentina, the next two from subregions of Mendoza, Tupungato and Lujan de Cuyo. Very generally speaking, Torrontés from Mendoza is going to be bigger-boned and riper than that from Salta...

2008 Yellow & Blue Torrontés ($12/1 liter tetra-pak, find this wine). Yellow & Blue uses only organically-grown grapes for its wines. This white balances crisp acidity and a succulent texture, and has an aroma recalling mango blossoms, or what the blossoms of mango trees ought to smell like, as far as I'm concerned.

2007 Terrazes de los Andes Unoaked Torrontes ($18, find this wine). Vineyards at 5,900 feet in Salta provide flinty, almost smoky Torrontés, if this wine is any indication. It doesn't have the extravagantly floral nose of some warmer climate versions, but it trades that for an elegant, intriguing mineral edge.

2007 Sagta Torrontés ($11, find this wine). Again this has a slight smoky note in the aroma, together with bright lime and tangerine; its creamy in texture, with lots of fresh-cut white peach flavor, before narrowing down—in a good way—to a brisk, citrus-zesty end. Has some staying power, too. 

2007 Andeluna Winemaker Selection Torrontés ($13, find this wine). From the Tupungato region, this white smells of mandarin oranges and flowers, and carries those characteristics through in its flavor, adding a pink grapefruit note. That makes it sound quite sweet, but it isn't.

2007 Astica Torrontés ($8, find this wine). In many ways my favorite of this bunch, especially given the price. The Astica has a lovely Meyer lemon/lemon blossom scent, tart citrusy flavors and an edge of citrus zest in the finish. It would be a great seafood wine, or just chill the stuff down and sip it and imagine that it's June, not January....

I'll be on the Today show tomorrow (that'd be Tuesday, the 6th), talking about and making some warming cocktails with the fourth-hour hosts, Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotbe. Hot Buttered Rum, Apple Brandy Hot Toddies, Hot Spiced Wine...and a couple of non-alcoholic options, too. Should be fun. If you're at all interested in the subject, tune in or check out our slideshow here.

I know that I definitely haven't finished my shopping, so I'm figuring I must have company out there in the rest of the world, too. Here are some terrific wines and other items (books, chocolates, etc.) that caught my eye recently:

I tasted a plethora of New Zealand Pinots on my recent trip there, but many of them are upcoming releases. I'll blog about those later; in the meantime, the 2006 Peregrine Pinot Noir (about $40, find this wine) is classic Central Otago Pinot, with a sort of blue floral scent (oh, you know what I mean...right?), juicy raspberry fruit, and a brambly, smoky finish. It's big enough to pour with some nice New Zealand grass-fed lamb.

For the crazy funkmeister wine fanatics in your acquaintance, a bottle of the 2000 Chateau Musar Red (about $40, too; find this wine) is just the ticket. It's got that classic Musar aroma of bicycle tire and sweet red cherry, with the same sweet red cherry fruit continuing in the flavor, along with wild strawberries and lightly twiggy tannins (by which I mean not-unpleasantly prickly in a dry twig sort of way). It's a big, dark Musar, representative of the vintage, which Serge Hochar says "was a year of Cabernet." Hochar also says, "If my wines had no V.A., I would stop making Chateau Musar. End of story." So be warned!

Since toasts are inevitable this time of year, Champagne is inevitable as well, and given its inevitability, you might as well pour something really good. Lately I'm liking the Ruinart Brut Rose NV ($75, find this wine). Not cheap, but it's a terrific rosé, dense with flavor even as its graceful structure gives it a kind of Grace Kelly beauty, in a wine way. 

In a non-wine vein, chocolate-genius Drew Shotts of Garrison Chocolates has a nifty and very tasty six-piece box of chocolates ($10) with fillings infused with Pama Pomegranate Liqueur. Too late, most likely, for Christmas, but not too late to order a box for yourself. You deserve one, since you're probably exhausted with all this present-buying craziness.

Lastly, I left one book off of my post about wine-book gifts, which is Ben Wallace's compelling page-turner dissection of one of the bigger wine scandals to happen in, oh, the past century or so. The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine rolls scads of money, super-valuable (or not so!) counterfeit wines, some very high-profile collectors, shady business dealings, and a few read-it-to-believe-it debaucheries involving bottle after bottle of ultra-rare wine together into one big juicy narrative. I've never read a wine book that was as much of a page-turner; it's also smart and well written, which doesn't hurt.

And that's it. I'm out of here until after New Year's. 

In a classic illustration of the bizarre brainlessness of some of the liquor laws around the country, it seems that a wine shop in upstate New York recently got fined $10,000 for selling a wine gift bag to a customer. Yes, that's right, a gift bag. See, here in New York, wine shops can't sell gift bags—apparently it's considered "running a second business," though they can sells corkscrews, wine stoppers and various other accessories. You can, however, give the gift bags away.

On the other hand, if you sell alcohol to a minor in New York, that gets you a mere $1,000 fine. Of course, they can also throw you in jail for a year, so that's something, but still—ten drunk minors equals one gift bag?

That ol' holiday entertaining season is upon us (perhaps you noticed?) which means that the season of morning shows running segments about holiday entertaining is, too. Which is why I'm hopping in a cab when it's still dark outside tomorrow morning and heading over to the Saturday Early Show on CBS to do a 7:45 segment on holiday punches. On the docket are Fish House Punch—a Philadelphia classic that my charming wife's grandfather used to debilitate people with—and a brandy-red wine punch; I'll probably have a few other tasty-looking punches sitting around on the set as well, like this Limoncello Collins, and a Citrus-Cinnamon non-alcoholic punch that's ideal for kids, teetotalers, hamsters, and other non-likker-drinkin' folk.

Here's the video of the segment, too. 

Yes, once again, a news article revealing yet another mysterious health benefit derived from the moderate drinking of everyone's fave beverage, wine. This time it seems the stuff pumps up your Omega-3 fatty acid levels, which, as we all know, help keep your ticker from sticking. Those clever Italian scientists! What will they unearth next?

This year saw a veritable flood of wine-related books. As always, some were good, some were great, and some were dreary. We'll skip the drear—it's already a worrisome enough holiday season without nattering on and on about bad books. And in fact, if cheering up is what you're after, one solution (at least for people who like wine) is to dash out and buy The Wine Snob's Dictionary, by David Kamp and David Lynch. Kamp, who writes and edits at Vanity Fair, is the satiric impresario behind the Snob's Dictionary series of books; Lynch, who I'm assuming supplied the insider-wine-info—and, knowing him, no small percentage of the wit as well—has written all over the place, including for F&W. (He's also co-author with Joe Bastianich of Vino Italiano, one of the best books out there on Italian wine.)

The Wine Snob's Dictionary operates nicely in its dual role of snarkily taking apart wine-geek pretensions while actually imparting useful information at the same time, e.g., "Volatile Acidity: Common wine defect caused by excessive production of acetic acid, resulting in a vinegary smell. Traditionally abbreviated to V.A. by Snobs, who like to use the term to intimidate pourers and sommeliers." 

Heading entirely in the other direction is Clive Coates magisterial (really) The Wines of Burgundy. Nigh on 900 pages of Burgundy-detail, with lucid tasting notes going back to vintages in the 1960s, a section of precisely detailed maps, and substantial profiles of vintages, producers and appellations, this is not a book for the casual wine fan. But people who are into Burgundy rarely fall into that category anyway. 

Since there are, of course, a lot of casual wine fans out there, it's probably more appropriate to throw a copy of Tyler Colman's A Year of Wine their way. Colman, alias Dr. Vino, takes a seasonal conceit as the organizing principle of his lively, approachable, basic guide to wine. It's a loose structure—I'm not sure why one should travel to Oregon in July rather than August, say, or June, though I'm happy to agree that Grüner Veltliner does have a green, nifty, springtime feel to it—but it's a functional one, and Colman's advice throughout is presented in pleasantly non-technical, casual language.

For friends who like a little conflict with their Cabernet, buy them a copy of Alice Feiring's part-vino-autobiography/part-impassioned-screed The Battle for Wine & Love. Feiring is as fervently in favor of funk, wildness, tradition, organic viticulture, natural yeasts and so on as she is fervently against new oak, large corporations that make wine, cold maceration, and the influence of wine critic (and F&W contributing editor) Robert Parker, among other things. The result is a bit like touring the world's vineyards with a slightly crazed and often funny Bohemian Luddite who REALLY loves wine—or at least loves the wines that she doesn't really hate. This makes for a fairly entertaining romp. The Parker-bashing gets tedious, to say the least, but it's made up for by passages like Feiring's account of working the harvest at Clos Roche Blanche, which is both lyrical and deeply real, and makes most of her philosophical and esthetic points more effectively than the portions of the book that are more overtly tendentious. 

If you're the kind of person who likes food with their wine—which I suppose means if you're breathing and ambulatory, and your jaws still work—then it's worth checking out Cathy and Tony Mantuano's Wine Bar Food. This isn't technically a wine book; instead, it's a cookbook that happens to focus on fairly simple (and mighty delicious) recipes inspired by the wine bars of several Mediterranean cities: Venice, Rome, Barcelona, Athens, etc. Tony Mantuano is the longtime chef (and partner) at Chicago's Spiaggia; we ran a few of these recipes in our April issue last year, so feel free to test-drive one or two before shelling out for the book. Or just throw caution to the winds—my guess is you won't regret it.

Lastly, in a more broadly alcoholic way, there's Kingsley Amis. Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis is a reissue of three books on wine, liquor and beer that he wrote between 1971 and 1984. Some of the terms are dated, but Amis's gracefully lethal wit is as fresh now as it was then. Regarding serving Champagne: "...see that the wine is properly chilled; not less than two hours in the refrigerator is my advice. This should be common knowledge, but the world is full of idiots who buy a bottle at the supermarket, let it kick around half the morning in the boot of the car, open it on arriving home and are amazed when the stuff goes all over the kitchen ceiling." Not one to mince words, Mr. Amis, but then he never was.