Ok, I know I’m a little event happy right now, but ’tis the season, eh? The weather’s brisk yet the sun is shining, so we need to take advantage before it starts raining buckets next month.

You already know about Lost Canyon Winery’s Holiday Open House this weekend. Also good to know: Harrington, another maker of fine, single-vineyardPinot Noir, is having its annual holiday sale this Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 1 and 2, from noon to 5 p.m. at the winery, 805 Camelia St., Berkeley.

Harrington will be pouring all five Pinot Noirs from the 2006 vintage. They’ll also be pouring wines from Eno and Edmund St. John. Wow your friends with local, small production wines of exceptional quality.  The press release from Bryan Harrington says to bring friends. So I’m bringing all ya’ll. See ya then.

Winemakers’ dinners can get expensive. I’ve done enough of them to know this, and understand the hesitation. But they can be revelatory, too, since the chef and winemaker work so closely to unite the flavors of their respective arts.

If there’s one not to miss, this is it.

On Tuesday, December 4, Napa’s Opus One Winery teams up with Seasons Steak & Seafood for a five-course extravaganza at the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco. There’s a 6:30 p.m. reception followed by the dinner at 7 p.m.

This is the third in a series of quarterly wine pairing dinners at the hotel. Guests will enjoy a special selection of various prized vintages from Opus One Winery and wines from Mondavi paired with dishes by Executive Chef Jeremy Emmerson.

Highlights: Sea Scallop Crudo with Osetra Caviar and Tangerine Oil; Crisp Potato Gnocchi with Melted Raclette Cheese, Pearl Onions, and Bacon-Apple Salad; and Grilled Veal T-Bone with Pan Roasted Turnips and Carrots, Violet Mustard, and Parmesan Potatoes.

They haven’t released which wines will be poured. If they do, I’ll let you know. For now, know this: If they pour the 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon with the veal, you’re golden. I shared a magnum with friends last year, and it goes down as some of the silkiest, most sophisticated California wine I have ever had.

I’ve also eaten at Seasons, and swear by the Surf & Turf. It’s among the City’s best.

Price of the dinner including wine pairings is $150 per person, including tax and gratuity. This is a steal, seriously. Winemakers dinners designed around average or lesser wines usually cost the same, and often don’t include tax and gratuity.

For more information or to make a reservation, visit the Four Season San Francisco web site or call (415) 633-3838. See you there.

So I’m planning a column specifically around gifts for wine enthusiasts. I want to provide ideas for varying degrees of wine geekdom, from the budding enthusiast in your life to the connoisseur.

So far I have what I consider the year’s three best wine books, an ice-less chiller, the Rabbit and a gift certificate to a local merchant’s wine club. Do you have a favorite wine gadget or other item that should make the list?

Let me know. Post them here or email me at jyadegaran@bayareanewsgroup.com. Make sure to include the price and where you think the item can be purchased. Thanks!

I checked out South Food + Wine Bar last week. It’s a darling little space across the street from the Caltrain station near the ball park in San Francisco. They specialize in all things Down Under — food, wine and a bold lifestyle specific to the regions of Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania and South Africa.

If you’re lucky, you’ll even get a host or waitress with a fabulous accent to boot.

The menu is short but unique and creative, offering seasonal, local dishes like butternut squash with goat cheese and Australian staples like barramundi, a sea bass-like freshwater white fish from the northern part of the country. It was delicious.

I was pleased with the butternut squash and oil-drizzled salmon sashimi but the piece de resistance that night was the glass of South Africa’s Man Chenin Blanc I ordered for $8. The bush-vine grapes are grown in the old shale soils of Paarl in the Perdeberg region, which produces low yields of great complexity and minerality.

They call it extreme terroir, a term I find totally fitting for the tangy yet sophisticated 2007 vintage. Cold fermented and left on its lees until bottling, it’s got a mouth feel akin to Viognier but with much more zeal and acidity. Check it out.

You probably haven’t thought about New Year’s yet, but that’s why you have me. I’ve spotted one of the best deals you’re going to find, and I suggest you jump on it before it sells out.

The Culinary Institute of America is offering a lavish, four-course dinner and dancing package for $195 plus 20 percent gratuity per person. If you haven’t been, it’s an absolute must.

Everyone talks about Cyrus and The French Laundry, but for me, CIA has come to define the Napa Valley. It’s the soul of the region.

A bastion of food and wine education for more than 60 years, it juts out of Highway 29 like the castle that it is, churning out nationally renown talent and providing a center for wine professionals and novices alike to come together.

The St. Helena location, smack in the middle of Valley, is also perfect for wine tasting the day before or after.

Here’s what they’re offering: A “Fire and Ice” themed-party begins with an elegant four-course dinner in the Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant. Two seatings are available at 6:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.

Then, the evening continues in the historic Barrel Room savoring an elaborate dessert buffet and dancing to the live music of Five Point O.

I attended the annual L’Chaim dinner in this room, and I can only say it rivals the ballrooms of the Four Seasons and the Beverly Hills Hotel.

At midnight, you get a Champagne toast and a bistro buffet. It’s an amazing deal for the culinary mastery, not to mention the ambiance. If you don’t want to drive back home, check this out:

They’re offering an overnight package for couples which includes the Fire and Ice Celebration, a one-night stay at the El Bonita Hotel down the street, transportation to and from Greystone and breakfast at the hotel on New Year’s Day.

Cost for the package is $550 per couple plus 20 percent gratuity. For reservations, call Andrea Zanow at 707-967-2337. Hurry!

An email from my friend Shirley, a reporter here at the Times and a member of my Wine Groupies, recommending a dark, fruity sparkling wine for Turkey Day. Just wanted to pass it along:

“Wouter and I tried a really fun, interesting sparkling Shiraz that would be perfect for Thanksgiving and wanted to share the joy.

We had the Fox Creek “Vixen” Sparkling Shiraz from Australia during a dinner at Lolo, a new Mexican Turkish restaurant in the Mission. (Tasty fun place! You should try it.) Anyhow, this Shiraz is a lovely cranberry color and tastes like carbonated cran-pomegranate juice in the best way possible.

It’s bone dry: you get a lick of fruit and then it just drops off a cliff of sheer bubbles. Goes great with duck confit — the fruit complements the meat, and the effervescence cuts through the fat.

I think we hunted around online and found the bottle for $20 a pop at K&L.”

Note that below the brief on the opening of Lolo there’s news of South’s opening, the all things Down Under food and wine bar on Townsend in San Francisco. I’ll keep you posted when I check it out.

I tasted some lovely wines this weekend. Two Mile Wines, the newest member of the East Bay Vintners, had their commercial release party at T. Rex in Berkeley on Saturday, Nov. 17.

The winery is two Adams, two Justins, Tom, Bill, Matt and Joseph — eight buddies who are passionate about the craft of artisan winemaking. I love their vision: “We’re not a legacy, but a point in time.”

They don’t make more than 200 cases of any one wine and you can taste that. My roommate Gav and I sampled four of their five releases, and we each discovered some favorites.

Since I’m huge on Viognier right now, I darted to their 2006 ($23). They get the fruit from Bloomfield Vineyards, and I liked their expression better than Bloomfield’s wines: Two Miles’ had a tropical nose, lots of stone fruits and decent acidity. I don’t normally do Viognier with food, but I’d have this one with scallops for sure.

Gav and I both loved the Sangiovese ($42), and I wonder why more Pinot Noir snobs don’t go Sangio. Theirs, from a steep hillside on the Polesky-Lentz Vineyard above the Dry Creek Valley floor, had all that earth, spice and dark cherry flavor. The location promised and delivered the depth.

I also have to give a shout out to Two Mile Wines’ Syrah, which comes from Unti Vineyards, also in Dry Creek. They call it “Bio-dyno-mite!” Indeed, it is. A third of the fruit comes from Unti’s biodynamically farmed Upper Ranch. The combination of meat flavors and structure is going to make Rhone lovers very happy in a few years. At $44, it’s their priciest bottle, but I think it’s made to lay down.

Family and friends buy up most of the wine, so if you’re interested, give the boys a call soon at 510-868-8713. Tell them I said hi.

Lately, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about where I buy wine. Well, everywhere. I’m a big proponent of local merchants and depending on what I need, I go see one of my peeps.

Iberian wines? Kevin at The Spanish Table in Berkeley. Fun bottles under $20? Rod at Wine Thieves in Lafayette or Peter at Vintage Berkeley in North Berkeley. Italian? John at Prima in Walnut Creek.

But where I truly spoil myself is with Garagiste. Based out of Seattle, it’s a wine retail emporium dedicated to limited production, rare and hard-to-find wines. In fact, Garagiste is the only retailer in the United States to be a Wine Enthusiast National Retailer of the Year finalist in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

The daily e-blasts from Niki have become highlights of my week. Her new discoveries read like poems. I’ve scored Australia’s most highly-rated Shiraz and rare wines from Corsica.

Every once in a while, they offer artisan foods as well. I’m currently awaiting fresh, recently jarred pasta sauce from Tuscany, and almonds from Sicily, which are grown in 300,000 year old, volcanic rich soil.

I’m anxiously awaiting what I’ve been promised is a flavor profile that, much like wine, has a beginning, middle and end. Check out Garagiste. But don’t blame me if you get addicted.

Friends and acquaintances give me bottles once in a while, and last night I opened up a 2006 Grenache Rose Campo De Borja. It’s one of those Cameron Hughes Lot series wines (the rose is Lot 37).

My editor’s husband gave it to me several months ago and I thought it’d be just right for the turkey meatballs and garlic fries I was chowing down on. Boy was it: the spirit of watermelon Jolly Rancher without the sweetness. The wine even had a kick of white pepper and monstrous acidity that stood up to those fries without a hitch.

Cameron Hugh Wines is constantly producing $10-bottles that taste like $20 or $30 bottles. They scour the globe for premium wines that are in oversupply but they never blackblend or alter the juice to make profit. What’s more, they ship directly to their retailer (Costco) with no middle man. This allows them to cut about 66 percent off the retail price.

Read about the process and where to find the wines at the Cameron Hughes Web site.

This just in from the Chronicle. Constellation Brands has agreed to buy several more major labels, including Clos du Bois.

The New York-based company will pay $885 million for the U.S. wine business of Fortune Brands, which also includes the Geyser Peak, Wild Horse (my first Merlot!), Buena Vista Carneros and Gary Farrell labels.

As part of the deal, Constellation will get about 1,500 acres of vineyards in Sonoma and
Napa. The deal will be final by year’s end and builds on its position as the world’s biggest winemaker.

They bought Mondavi in 2004, probably the biggest and most well-known family-owned winery in the country. And the trend continues. Follow the link to read the whole story.