For a while, I’ve been feeling much too feisty for Merlot. I’ve been reaching for peppery Syrahs and even kicky, wild roses to match my sentiments. Not the Mellow M.

In the past few weeks, however, I’ve had two gorgeous Merlots and am starting to change my tune. Let’s discuss — briefly — shall we?

The first is the 2003 Markham Vineyards Merlot ($22.50), which I enjoyed last night at the new Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar in Walnut Creek.

Incidentally, I was sandwiched between the chain’s wine director, Marion Jansen op de Haar, who recently moved to Napa, and Stephen Eliot, associate editor of the Connoisseur’s Guide to California Wines and the wine instructor at the California Culinary Academy.

It was a finely-tuned Merlot, I thought, with a lot of violet and blackberry in the nose that prepared me for a rich Cabernet. But spice, coffee and vanilla on the soft finish made me remember what I was drinking and did not overburden my salmon.

But the true star in my recent Merlot awakening is the 2004 Oak Knoll District Proprietary Red Wine (about $80) by Blackbird Vineyards, which I enjoyed weeks ago at the winery and again at home last week.

Winemaker Sarah Gott is a star to me, recalling the best of Bordeaux’s Pomerol but tweaking it ever so slightly with her signature Cali style. I drink everything she makes, from her husband Joel’s wines to her stuff for Joseph Phelps. This particular Merlot is blended with a 5 percent dash of Cabernet Sauvignon. The cherries are black here, not bing, and the fruit is tinged with espresso.

It’s a seductive wine, and it’s good to be back.

I went to the grand opening of Wine Styles last night at 1532 Locust Street in Walnut Creek. The easy-to-navigate wine store has been open a month, but the bash was the first opportunity I’ve had to pop in.

It’s a great concept. The woman who started the company has a European background, and never understood why her friends on this side of the Atlantic lacked confidence when selecting wine.

So she organizes the 150-bottle inventories of the 180 franchises not by region or country or even varietal, but by flavor profile and food pairing. Wines in alcoves under the “Crisp” banner are “refreshing, clean and bright with flavors of citrus, apple and pear” and are tasty with “shellfish, spicy dishes and cheeses.”

“Mellow” promises a selection of “round, velvety and smooth” wines with flavors of cherry, berries and earth” and goes with “pasta, veal, pork or beef.” You get the idea. The other headers are Silky, Rich, Bubbly, Fruity, Bold, Nectar and my favorite, If You Insist…

The selection was promising. I walked out with a Dragon Seal Brut ($12.99), a sparkling wine from China that I’ve been curious to try. I’m impressed they carried it. I also spotted serious Trefethens and Silver Oaks and just about everything in between. The majority of bottles are under $25.

New World had a strong presence, but I spotted one bargain Bordeaux and some Italian blends as well.

Despite being a chain, I got a good local vibe from owner Dyan Cushing, who’s lived in Pleasant Hill for more than 20 years. In addition to in-store tastings and private parties, she plans to host excursions for wine club members. Thirty five bucks gets you two bottles a month worth $40, by the way.

The coolest thing about the store is this barrel that doubles as an instant bottle chiller and is worth upwards of $1,700. If you’re on your way home, simply dunk your bottle into the barrel to achieve the desired temperature drop within minutes. Just as good as salt.

Last night, I wanted to open a bottle of 2003 Clover Hill Reserve, a gorgeous Tasmanian sparkling wine crafted from the classic Champagne varieties of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier that’s spot-on French in style.

Components of selected reserve wine are aged in French oak followed by extended maturation on yeast lees in the bottle for three years.

The result is a clear, steady stream of forceful micro bubbles that is matched by a light camel color reminiscent of butter and a foamy mouth full of your most revered almond croissants.

Only problem: it was warm, and my friends were already halfway across the Bridge. So I threw the bottle in my IKEA bucket, filled it about halfway with cold water and dumped a few handfuls of ice in there. On top of that, I added a quarter cup of rock salt. Presto — the sparkling wine was down to 45 degrees minutes after they arrived.

Knowing this trick but curious to know how it works, I called upon science writer Betsy Mason, who explained that salt helps lower the freezing point of water from 32 to 27 degrees, hence the joy of making ice cream using a salt water solution.

Anyway, wow your friends the next time you pop open some bubbly. I highly recommend the Clover Hill, especially at $32. It’s serious proof of the New World. Or proof of serious New World. Either one.

What can I say, it was a a pensive weekend for me, what with the shedding of my physical body during the enlightened Yom Kippur fast and trying to come up with a name for my new column.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about what winemaker Bryan Harrington said about making Pinot Noir, and how it’s like painting:

“When you look at a painting, you are drawn into it. You move around it and find some resolve. Same with wine. You have a nose that pulls you in, and a definite attack that brings you in deeper. The mid-palate is where things begin to evolve, and then the finish leaves you hooked.”

So I decided to turn to my wine quote obsession for inspiration, and to get my mind off food. Good one, I know. There’s nothing like dreaming of Cava and 4-cheese mac (what I broke my fast with at the Grove) and reading Galileo’s thoughts on vino.

Besides love or suffering, it’s safe to say that no other subject has brought together so many great minds. There are multiple sites and dozens of archivists devoted to wine quotes, including the Wine Lover’s Page.
Spend some time on there. You might just stitch one on a pillow.

I came across two quotes that captured at least part of the essence of this new, unnamed column. The trippy part is that they were uttered a good 800 years apart. Check it out:

“A wine doesn’t have to be an important wine to move me — and drinking it doesn’t have to be an earth shattering kind of experience that shakes me to my shoes.”
– Winemaker Steve Edmunds

Then back in the 12th Century, a mystic and Sufi poet mused:

“Drink the wine that moves you as a camel moves when it’s been untied, and is just ambling about.”
– Jalaluddin Rumi

Brilliant!

Here are some others that struck me:

“Wine is light, held together by water.”
– Galileo

“God made only water, but man made wine.”
– Victor Hugo

“The wine cup is the little silver well, where truth, if truth there be, doth dwell.”
– William Shakespeare

“I resolve daily that at dusk I shall repent for a night with a cup full of wine spent.”
– Omar Khayyam

“The spirit of wine sang in my glass, and I listened with love to his odorous music, his flushed and magnificent song.”
– William Ernest Henly

If you think of a column name, email me at jyadegaran@bayareanewsgroup.com.

The local NBC-11 weekly show has been picked up for national distribution, and I’m thrilled for them.

Starting Sept. 28, your friends in 210 cities that have NBC affiliate stations can watch host Mary Babbitt (pictured above) tour wineries, meet California’s premier chefs, and get a taste of our state’s zest for gardening and decorating.

Speaking of zest, I went to a taping of “In Wine Country” last night at a private residence in Diablo, and was thoroughly impressed by producer Jeanine Michelle Olsen’s passion for getting the right shots and asking the right questions to get people pumped up about wine.

This particular episode, which will air in February, was a blind tasting of Cabernet Sauvignon ranging from $10-$50 using the Blind Wine game. I’ve blogged about the game, which was created by two Monte Vista High School graduates now living in Martinez and Pleasanton. It’s basically a snazzy kit to throw a complete blind tasting party for up to 12 guests.

However, the first episode to air nationally will be “In Wine Country’s” Golden Grape Awards. The episode, which kicks off the their seventh season, will air here at 9:30 p.m. Sunday Sept. 23. Tell your friends outside of Cali to check their local listings, or the web site for more information.

Based in San Jose, the show has been running on a five-person staff all these years, sweeping up eight Emmys and a James Beard award for best local show. Let’s hope this means NBC will beef up their staff. Publicist Meredith Smith calls it the “little show that could.” And I couldn’t agree more.

While they hope to expand their coverage to include other American wine regions, Smith says they have no immediate plans to do so. For the time being, they will focus on California. Represent!

Hey folks — just had to share the good news. I’m launching a wine column. In the newspaper! Isn’t the irony delicious? I’m gushing like an overly ripe cluster of Zinfandel grapes.

The mission and theme of the column will be similar to this blog — demystifying wine. I hope to give you accessible and informative prose with just a dash of irreverence and a slight millennial slant.

Translation: I’ll try not to go on and on about $200 Cabernet (ok, maybe just a little). But I hope to share with you what you really need to know: bargain Brunellos and neumonic devices for quick recall when ordering French wines at a restaurant.

I’m also fascinated by the people behind the bottle — chefs, sommeliers, vineyard managers, winemakers, wine educators, winery dogs. They too, will make an appearance. If you want to know what to get your wine buff for Christmas, I hope to help you. If you want to know how to identify that lychee in your glass of white wine, I’ll tell you (hint: smell a real lychee right before).

The column launches Oct. 3 in the Food & Wine section and runs bimonthly from there. If there is something specific you want me to write about, let me know by posting it here. I’ll post ya back. Until then, cheers.

I know it’s early to start thinking about Georges DuBoeuf and their Thanksgiving-geared Juicy Fruit Beaujolais, but the Vins de Pays d’Oc winery in France also puts out an interesting white wine: A light-bodied blend of Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, believe it or not.

Throw this wine against a seafood salad any day of the week. It’s only $7 and marries the best qualities of both varietals — think spiked chamomile tea.

As you get acquainted with the wineries of the East Bay Vintners in today’s Food & Wine section, be prepared to welcome two more into the mix. They’re both long-time home winemakers who decided to take the plunge. And while they’re both in the early stages of commercial development, I wanted to break what little news I have here.

Two Mile Wine is a group of five guys from different backgrounds of the industry — a business man, a wine bar manager, a PhD scientist and two Mondavi harvest groms — who make about 650 cases of Viognier, Sangiovese and biodynamic Syrah a year. Cool factor: some grapes come from a 40-45 degree slope vineyard at Unti in Healdsburg, Matt Bramwell, one of the Two Mile guys, tells me.

They’ve been at A Donkey and Goat since last year, their first commercial year, but have plans to move into their own space at San Pablo Avenue and Grayson in the near future. It’s a stone’s throw from Seasalt, and if I know that block, I’m confident the restaurant will be carrying the boys’ Viognier to pair with their fish and chips before long. The fruit comes from Tom Bloomfield’s vineyard in Brentwood. Let’s hope they churn out a delicate (read: not too hot) Viognier.

While Two Mile does mostly direct sales to friends and family, expect that to change, as they’ve scaled back on varietals, increased volume and have that fabulous future location.

Second up is Irish Monkey Cellars. Winemaker Bob Lynch along with his wife Loreta have made wine for 10 years, and recently took the commercial plunge. Their production is about double Two Miles’ (1,000 cases in 2006; 1,500 for 2007) and their portfolio is quite broad and impressive:

A Bordeaux meritage is the flagship of the line. The “knights,” as Bob calls them, of the collection are Syrah, SyrBec (a Syrah and Malbec blend), Pinot Noir, Primitivo, Merlot, Cabernet Franc Solo, Cabernet Sauvignon, and a limited port-type wine made from the floral Portuguese Touriga Nationale grape.

They make a table red from Sangiovese blended with Merlot, Malbec and a small portion of Syrah. I’m anxious to taste all of these wines, especially the Bordeaux meritage and Syrbec, and will let you know when I get my grubby hands on some. The wine is currently being tested in fine local restaurants, and the Lynches are scouting space in the East Bay to plant their winery.

Curious about the names of the labels? Irish Monkey Cellars is a combo-homage to Bob’s Irish roots and his wife’s Asian flair, as he puts it. Two Mile Wine is a shout out to the two-mile dry zone surrounding the UC Berkeley campus when it was built back in the late 1800s. All five guys live in Berzerkley.

Pardon me while I get all nerdy Jewish grrrl on ya’ll. It’s Rosh Hashana you see, and I need to do me some good deeds to get inscribed in the Book of Life before Yom Kippur, when I won’t put wine to my lips for 24 hours straight! I know, koo koo.

Anyhoo, the typical blessing of the grapes thingie that occurs during crush happens to coincide with Sukkot, the Jewish agricultural, or harvest, festival. It’s a time of great joy following the heaviness of Yom Kippur. To celebrate, two wineries in Napa are calling upon wine buff and Rabbi Oren Postrel of the Valley’s Congregation Beth Sholom to bless their grapes.

“We thought it would make sense to align the two calendars, of Mother Nature and Jewish history,” says Ernie Weir (pictured above), the founder and winemaker at Hagafen Cellars. Ernie’s a great guy. Looks like a grown up Vince Vaughn. He’s doing — been doing for a while, actually — his part to improve the quality of wine coming out of Israel too, as he consults with wineries in the Galilee and Golan Heights.

Several Napa wineries will be hosting Jewish blessing of the grapes ceremonies on Sunday, September 30. The day will begin at 11 a.m. at Judd’s Hill Winery (2332 Silverado Trail, Napa, 255-2332; drink Judd’s “Magic” while you’re there, it’s heavenly) followed by a blessing at noon at Hagafen Cellars (4160 Silverado Trail, Napa, 252-0781; ask about Ernie’s other line of easy-drinking wines, Don Ernesto).

It’s all free and open to the public with light grub, so stop by!

For other locations, check Beth Sholom’s web site.

Loved Ed Levine’s post this morning on Seriouseats.com. Seems the idea of terroir is quickly slipping into the coffee biz, where serious caffeine-o-philes are skipping the supermarket and even Starbucks to get their buzz directly from growers and their cooperatives in far flung regions like Honduras and Rwanda.

It’s not unlike my trip to Napa this weekend, where a small crew of serious oenophiles and I met with Keith Emerson of Vineyard 29 to sample not the luxurious wines he makes for that label, but his own, Emerson Brown, which is even more hard to come by. Where did he source the fruit? How did he make it? Can we score some cases from him? You betcha.

It’s simple really. Anything that grows in the ground is going to be imprinted, in a sense, with the DNA and composition of that particular plot. Add to that climate, irrigation, and treatment of that appellation plus how the bean or grape is manipulated, and you’ll inherit distinct characteristics, be they nutty or floral, grassy or steely.

Same thing happened on the way to learning about chocolate. You might recall an A-1 piece I did about two years ago about the booming high-end chocolate market, where higher cacao content bars are revered like big Napa Cabs. It coincided with “Chocolate: The Exhibition,” a Cacao 101 exhibit that had recently opened at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

I met with chocolate educator Seneca Klassen at Bittersweet Chocolate Cafe in Oakland and he led me through a sensory evaluation on par with Copia’s finest.

Yup, we started by smelling the dark hunks of a bar of 80 percent Forastero cacao from Sao Tome: very fruity, like blackberries. Then we observed its color, no waxy Hershey’s overlay, just beautiful black shine, like Cherokee hair. I was instructed to break the square and observe that before I put it in my mouth. From there, you are to let the chocolate rest on your mid palate (this is like swirling), where, if made well, it should melt (this is the finish) into oblivion with no cocoa butter shield (think wine additives like yeasts, sulphates). Then we did the same thing with the 62 percent Caribbean Criollo, and compared the two.

Go to Luka’s Taproom and Lounge in Oakland and you’ll see that beer tasting notes are quite the same; Go to La Pinata in Alameda and you’ll see the same is true of tequila tasting.

So, welcome, coffee drinkers of America. To direct trade, to snobbery, and to a future $5 cup of Joe. I’m just not sure about the B&Bs in Third World coffee country.