One of the best times of my life was the year I spent studying in Freiburg, Germany’s “sunniest” city, according to the slogan. I drank a lot of wine there, and I must say little of it was any good. But then what can you expect for $4 a bottle?

It was thus with intrigue and delight that I received the news from the sommelier at Residenz Heinz Winkler that they had a 2011 Weingut Landmann Sauvignon Blanc from Freiburg by the glass. A German Sauvignon Blanc? From my own little Freiburg?

I’ve been seeing a surprising number of Sauvignon Blanc-based wines here in Germany on this trip. They’re becoming quite the fashion, according to one winemaker I spoke with, especially after the hot vintage of 2003. It also helps that German wine law now allows Sauvignon Blanc to receive a Qualitätswein classification.

Sunny Freiburg certainly came through with this Sauvignon Blanc. It had a soft, green aroma with some stone, soft fruit, and subtle but pointy acids. It wasn’t especially big, but it was focused and it held my interest from start to finish.

So many interesting things I’ve tasted so far, and I haven’t even made it to a wine region yet!

I’m winding my way through Bavaria at the moment, and what a lovely place! Mountains, forests, charming little towns… It’s idyllic.

And of course, I’ve already found all sorts of exciting things to drink. I’ll post postcards of my favorites whenever I get the chance. Here is Postcard #1:

Munich isn’t all about beer. At the Pfalzer Residenz Weinstube, a wine bar dedicated to the renowned Pfalz region, I sampled this memorable 2008 Erpolzheimer Kieselberg Grauburgunder (Pinot Grigio/Pinot Gris) Auslese, made by the Winzergenossenschaft Kallstadt. What a mouthful, both in terms of pronunciation and flavor.

This remarkable wine from Kallstadt (just north of Bad Dürkheim) had a rich gold color and an aroma of green apples and spicy pineapple. It tasted even better than it smelled, with rich, sweet fruit and a lush, caramelly texture, balanced by incredibly lively, gingery spice. Zow.

I asked the waiter if he’d sampled the wine. He replied, with some apprehension, that he had. “Ah good — it’s really delicious,” I exclaimed.

“Do you think so? It’s not really to my taste…”

Leave it to a German waiter to rain on my parade. Yes, I do think so. The wine is wonderful. Punkt.

Me and Alessandro Bindocci

If you discover that wine from a certain nearby region is generally not to your liking, you can take a number of courses of action. A normal oenophile would probably just drink wine from another region. A more obsessive/compulsive oenophile might doggedly keep trying wines from that region until she found one that agreed with her palate. But these solutions, in the end, are for amateurs.

If you’re a professional, like Alessandro Bindocci, you go to that region, rent a vineyard, and make the wine yourself.

Traditionally, wine made from Barbera, a respected variety from Italy’s Piemonte (Piedmont) region, did not see a lot of time in oak. In fact, according to The Oxford Companion to Wine, it wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that “a small number of Barberas underwent a significant metamorphosis” as producers undertook barrel maturation. And originally, the Companion continues, the notion of aging Barbera in barriques (small casks holding approx. 59 gallons) was greeted with “local bewilderment.” But nowadays, many of the Barberas you’ll find are aged in barriques of new French oak.

According to The World Atlas of Wine, these barrique-aged Barberas “conform more closely to the modern red wine stereotype: big, bold, deep purple, and easy to appreciate in youth.” But if you like your red wine with food, acids are the most important thing. Bindocci finds many of these new Barberas over-oaked, with not enough acid to balance things out (a complaint commonly expressed about many California wines).

As a fourth-generation winemaker, Bindocci was uniquely positioned to change things. Under the Mazzoni label, he rents Piemonte vineyards and vinifies the wine himself in stainless steel. The wine is then transported to Montalcino’s Il Poggione winery, which his family has managed since the 19th century. There, it is bottled and bottle-aged in Il Poggione’s cellars.

It seems like a lot of trouble. I suspect I would have been satisfied to give up Barbera altogether and simply drink the local Brunello di Montalcino! But then Bindocci shared a glass of his 2009 Mazzoni Barbera with me, and I could understand his passion for it. It had a tightly wound, earthy aroma. I took a sip and was greeted by a burst of fruit, some controlled black-pepper spice and an almost raisiny finish. It had a velvety texture, and though it tasted rich, it was quite light on its feet (thanks to those important balancing acids). The Mazzoni tasted even bigger and fruitier paired with some roasted red peppers, capers and burrata. And sampled with some prosciutto, notes of iron came to the fore.

I wonder if Bindocci’s decision to age the wine in stainless steel instead of the now-ubiquitous oak once again caused “local bewilderment?” Cheers to him for having the courage to buck tradition.

When I think of a “Super Tuscan,” I think of Cabernet or Merlot (or, to be honest, a Superman-like winemaker clad in an Armani cape). But certainly not a white wine. The Super Tuscan phenomenon started with Sassicaia, a wine wholly outside the DOC classification system. It was made with Cabernet, not the typical Sangiovese, and the vines were planted near the coast, miles away from any DOC-recognized vineyards. Thus, Sassicaia had to be labeled as a lowly Vino da Tavola, along with the most basic Italian plonk, despite the fact that it was one of Tuscany’s best wines.

The classification system has since been rethought, and wineries working with “international” varieties such as Cabernet, Merlot and Syrah can now label their wines IGT (Indicazioni Geografiche Tipiche), which can at least indicate a region of origin, instead of simply “Italy.” Reds dominate this category of wine, but that may be changing, as I discovered over dinner earlier this week.

The engaging Alessandro Bindocci of Tenuta Il Poggione, along with the vivacious Liz Barrett of Terlato Wines, a major Chicago importer, invited me to dinner to try some of Il Poggione’s renowned Brunello di Montalcino. I was surprised and delighted when we started the evening not with a Brunello, but a Pinot Grigio.

I had never sampled, to my knowledge, a Tuscan Pinot Grigio — all the quality Italian Pinot Grigios I knew of came from the mountainous north, from Alto Adige or Friuli. According to The Oxford Companion to Wine, “Pinot Grigio is planted as far south as Emilia-Romagna,” the province on Tuscany’s northern border. A Tuscan Pinot Grigio varietal — a white Super Tuscan — is extremely unusual, and it had my Odd Bacchus antennae tingling.

The hand-harvested fruit for the 2011 Mazzoni Pinot Grigio comes from vineyards in Tuscany’s Maremma region, a formerly marshy and malarial strip along Italy’s west coast (described in more detail in this post). I wouldn’t have guessed this environment would be well-suited to Pinot Grigio, which I associate with cooler, high-altitude terroir, but that’s why I make a better blogger than winemaker. This Pinot Grigio tasted delicious.

Many of us associate Pinot Grigio with light, inoffensive and bland flavors; it’s a wine for a hot summer pool party or a beach picnic. But this golden-hued beauty had some oomph. After pressing, the juice sits for 24 hours on the skins, giving the wine additional body, followed by 25 days of cold fermentation, increasing the wine’s acidity. The craftsmanship is readily apparent in both the aroma and flavor.

The wine smelled fresh and lively, like a green whiff of spring. On the palate, it exhibited focused and controlled fruit, prickly acids, some aromatic qualities, and a surprisingly lush finish. It was light but complex, and a fine value for the price. Sampled with a white pizza topped with arugula and parmesan, the food-friendly acids kicked into high gear, and the wine became juicier and rounder. A delight.

White Super Tuscan wines may not have captured the public’s imagination just yet, but after tasting this Pinot Grigio, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of them in the near future.

SUMMARY

2011 Mazzoni Pinot Grigio: Light, lively and complex, with food-friendly acids and unusually lush fruit. A very good value for the price, especially compared to the most famous mass-market Pinot Grigios.

Grade: A-

Find It: A number of Whole Foods stores carry the wine, or you can buy it online for $17 from Uncorked.com.

Note: The wines described in this post were provided free of charge, as was the dinner that accompanied them.

Fin del Mundo Pinot Noir in the Hotel Grano de Oro

Costa Rica isn’t exactly a major wine producer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find fascinating things to drink there. Restaurant wine lists tend to focus heavily on South American wines, as you might expect, but it wasn’t an unending sea of Malbec (Argentina’s most famous variety). Menu after menu included at least one Argentinean Pinot Noir, a notoriously fickle grape I associate with the Côte d’Or much more than the Pampas.

And there’s a reason for that — Argentinean Pinots can be quite difficult to come by in the U.S. I searched for Argentinean Pinot Noir on the website of Binny’s, one of the country’s largest wine stores, and I came up with just one solitary option (a 2011 Bodega NQN Finca La Papay for $12). I seemed I had some odd Pinot Noir on my hands, a prospect I found rather exciting. It’s Pinot Noir, after all, that elicits such passion in the film Sideways, and it’s Pinot Noir that is responsible for the greatest reds of Burgundy and Oregon. I had never sampled one from Argentina, however, and I couldn’t wait to see how this “capricious and extremely variably vine” (The Oxford Companion to Wine) would perform in that terroir.

According to the sources I consulted, Argentinean Pinot Noir has yet to fully develop. The Oxford Companion to Wine was dismissive, asserting that Pinot “has yet to find a suitable home in Argentina.” The World Atlas of Wine takes a more optimistic tone, however, noting that in Patagonia and Mendoza’s high-altitude vineyards, “some promising examples are beginning to emerge.” Although it didn’t mention Pinot specifically, The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia took a dim view of Argentina as a whole, chiding most of the country’s wineries for allowing excessively high yields and doing too little to “alter Argentina’s image as a bottomless vat.” Ouch.

I didn’t taste any particularly expensive Argentinean Pinot Noirs, but the ones I did sample ranged from simple and charming to quite exciting:

2011 Saurus Patagonia Pinot Noir: Patagonia is Argentina’s coolest wine region, making it most suitable to growing Pinot Noir. This wine comes from San Patricio del Chañar, a “new winemaking area,” according to the winery’s website, along the border with Chile. It had a very aromatic nose of red fruit, a beautifully creamy texture and prickly black-pepper spice, held in check with impressive focus and control.

2010 Bodega del Fin del Mundo Reserva Pinot Noir: Also produced in Patagonia, this winery’s Pinot Noir doesn’t seem to appear on its website, though it’s in Spanish, so what do I know? In any case, I liked its aroma of black cherries, its tightly wound red fruit, subtle white-pepper spice and earthy finish. A touch medicinal, but tasty nevertheless.

2011 Luigi Bosca Pinot Noir: This wine comes from 45-year-old vineyards in Mendoza, a warmer region to the north of Patagonia. It lacked the sharp focus of the Saurus, but I very much enjoyed its fresh, easy fruit and earthy finish. It was an ideal warm-weather wine, perfect for an al fresco dinner overlooking the rainforest.

You will likely have trouble finding one of these specific labels in your local wine shop, but should you run across an Argentinean Pinot Noir, I recommend giving it a try. It may not reach the heights of Burgundy, but it will likely be a perfectly tasty wine at a perfectly reasonable price.

Sometimes it pays to drink odd, and sometimes it doesn’t. Every now and then, despite my best efforts, I buy something that is simply not to my taste. In some cases, there’s no way I could have predicted that the wine wouldn’t be to my liking, but often, as in this instance, I probably could have figured it out before I plunked down $14. As I looked more closely at the label of the wine in question, I discovered a major red flag, a red flag I ignored at my peril. If you prefer your wine on the dry side, or at least balanced, you’ll want to read on.

Germany produces great seas of white wine, but the rosy-skinned, highly perfumed Gewürztraminer variety accounts for a relative drop in that Riesling-dominated ocean. According to my 2006 edition of The Oxford Companion to Wine, Gewürztraminer vines occupy only about 2,000 acres of German vineyards, as compared to over 51,000 acres devoted to Riesling. Because of its relative rarity, and because I recently had a magnificent German Gewürztraminer by Wasenweiler, I felt a thrill of excitement when I discovered a bottle of affordable German Gewürztraminer at Binny’s.

I snapped up the $14 bottle of 2010 G & M Machmer Bechtheimer Gewürztraminer Spätlese from the Rheinhessen region. It noted a town on its label (Bechtheim) and indicated that it was estate bottled, which gave me confidence in its quality (never mind that I had no idea where the town was).

Had I paid the slightest attention to the back label, I might have noticed a warning sign. Only 10.5% of the wine was alcohol. That relatively low percentage indicates that less of the grapes’ sugars were converted into alcohol, resulting in a sweeter wine. I don’t mind sweet wines necessarily, but I do want them to be balanced. Balance, unfortunately, was not one of the Machmer Bechtheimer Gewürztraminer Spätlese’s strong points.

The wine had the pleasant tropical fruit aroma I expect from a Gewürztraminer, along with something intriguingly green. Its syrupy texture was leavened with a bit of pétillance, but its sweet, almost flabby apple flavor managed to sharpen up only at the very end, when it tightened into some tartness on the finish. The acids made more of an effort to appear when I paired the wine with some roast pork and homemade spätzle, but this wine lacked the spicy raciness I’ve come to love in well-made Gewürztraminers.

Lesson learned. A village name on a German wine label might be seductive, but from now on, I’m always going to check that alcohol content. The higher it is, the drier the wine is likelier to be. I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule, but if you find a Gewürztraminer or Riesling that is less than 11% alcohol, I’d suggest putting it back on the rack and trying something else.

SUMMARY

2010 G & M Machmer Bechtheimer Gewürztraminer Spätlese: Appealing aromas, but overly sweet and a bit flabby, tightening up only at the very end.

Grade: C

Find It: I purchased this wine for $14 at Binny’s.

L’Étage

For years, one of my very favorite wine and cocktail bars in the world, In Fine Spirits, stood just down the street from my home. Unfortunately, it transformed itself into a fine-dining restaurant, which then proceeded to fail. The neighborhood never quite forgave the popular In Fine Spirits for jilting it (thankfully, the excellent In Fine Spirits shop remains open).

I greatly missed having a wine bar within easy walking distance, and so it was with no small amount of pleasure that I discovered L’Étage, occupying a cozy space directly above where In Fine Spirits met its untimely demise. Its by-the-glass wine list isn’t nearly as ambitious, restricting itself to “French” and “Domestic” selections, but it contains a few unusual gems, including a refreshing Domaine Giachino Jacquère from Savoie, redolent of vanilla, green apples and lime.

But since I had already written about the Domaine Giachino in this post, my attention turned to another odd duck, a Château Moncontour Crémant de Loire Brut Rosé. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen a rosé Crémant de Loire — most versions of this French sparkling wine are made primarily with Chenin Blanc, but in this case, Cabernet Franc dominated. The idea of a sparkling Cabernet Franc fascinated me, and I couldn’t wait to give it a try.

Château Moncontour Crémant de Loire Brut Rosé

I didn’t realize at the time that I was taking a bit of a gamble. According to The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia, more and more sparkling Cabernet Francs from the Loire are showing well, “However, the aggressive potential of this grape can quickly turn a thrilling raspberry-flavored fizz into something hideous.” Cabernet Franc is infamous, after all, for a tendency towards herbaceousness. Fortunately, L’Étage did not attempt to foist the equivalent of a glass of bubbly green peppers on me.

A flute came filled to the brim with the watermelon-colored Château Moncontour, and it lacked any bouquet whatsoever. It wasn’t until I took a few sips, giving it some room to breathe in the glass, that I discovered how aromatic this crémant actually was (not that I’m one to complain about an overfilled glass). Once I could actually smell it, I found the notes of red fruit and yeast enticing.

The bubbles erred on the foamy side, but their tiny size made them feel elegant nevertheless. It started off quite dry, moving to tart acids and a finish of rich, red fruit. It tasted perfectly delightful on its own, but paired with some duck rillettes topped with grainy mustard, the jammy notes became even more deliciously pronounced.

The Château Moncontour Crémant de Loire Brut Rosé  would make a fine aperitif or an excellent mate with a range of food. The Sotheby’s Wine Encylopedia makes me hesitant to recommend picking up any old rosé Crémant de Loire that you find, but if you do happen to come across one that your local wine shop recommends, don’t hesitate to give it a try. It’s perfect for a party, because it will satisfy guests who require sweet wine as well as those who demand something dry.

Thanks to L’Étage for introducing me to this festive sparkler, and welcome to the neighborhood!

SUMMARY

NV Château Moncontour Crémant de Loire Brut Rosé: Festive but elegant, with a dry start and a jammy finish. Tasty on its own, but even better paired with poultry (pork, light pastas and many Asian dishes should also work well). Serve well-chilled.

Grade: B+

Find It: I paid $9 for a glass at L’Étage. Wine Searcher listed two retailers selling the wine, each charging about $15 per bottle.

The wines of contemporary Hungary have yet to achieve the fashionability of their Austrian neighbors. Although Hungary’s decadent Tokaji Aszú was all the rage in the 18th century — in fact, in 1707, the vineyards of Tokaj were part of “the first national vineyard classification anywhere,” according to The Oxford Companion to Wine — there have been a few bumps on the road since then, most notably when the communists invaded and the state monopoly took over.

Communism tends to value quantity over quality, and during this unfortunate period in Hungarian history, much of the wine industry was devoted to exporting “huge quantities of very ordinary wine to the USSR,” as the Companion explains. Fortunately, Hungary managed to maintain a somewhat mixed economy even under the communist fist, and many individual vineyards remained privately owned, easing the transition to a mostly free-market economy.

Hungary once again exports high-quality wines, both red and white, though it’s usually much easier to find the famed Tokaji Aszú than any of the fine dry table wines being produced. Part of the problem may be that, like Germany and Austria, Hungary often labels its wines according to the grape variety used to make them. This theoretically should be an advantage in the U.S., where we’re far more comfortable with varieties than geographical locations, but it starts to get dicey when the varieties have names like Kadarka and Hárslevelű. And Furmint.

Furmint, unlike Hárslevelű, we Americans at least have a shot at pronouncing. If you happen to find a dry Hungarian white wine in your local shop, it will likely be made from this exciting variety. The Companion calls Furmint “fine and fiery,” and The World Atlas of Wine notes that when Furmint is treated like Chardonnay, “the result is dry, intense, perfumed and mineral-laden.”

The delights of Furmint are unknown to most wine consumers outside of Hungary, however, which means that Furmints tend to be excellent values. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the 2011 Evolúció Furmint is the best white-wine value I’ve tasted since I started writing this blog. The Furmint in this wine came from Tokaj (just to keep things confusing, Tokaj is the region and Tokaji is the sweet wine), where volcanic soils and plenty of south-facing slopes make for ideal vine growing. Beyond that, some sort of magic must happen in Tokaj, because they managed to bottle a thoroughly memorable wine that retails for less than $10.

I knew at first sniff I would love the Evolúció — the spicy, exotic aromas of incense, apples and ginger sucked me right in. It had lush fruit, a midsection of ginger and white pepper, and a punch of tart acids on the finish. I can’t deny that it had a bit of a watery underbelly, but it tasted exotic and sexy nevertheless.

When I found this wine at Binny’s on North and Clybourn, I bought half a case. I never do that. But with flavors like that and a price tag of just $9, I dare say I found my new house white.

SUMMARY

2011 Evolúció Furmint: Aromatic and sexy, with lush fruit and exotic spices. Chill well before serving, and pair with mild to moderately spicy chicken and pork dishes. An amazing value for the money.

Grade: A-

Find It: I purchased this wine at Binny’s for $9.

Read about another fine dry Furmint I tasted here, an unusual late-harvest Furmint here, and a Slovenian Furmint here.

While browsing the wine section at Whole Foods, I noticed something surprising: a Georges Duboeuf Malbec. Georges Duboeuf is one of France’s most famous vintners, infamously producing an ocean of (usually overpriced) Beaujolais Nouveau each year, as well as a range of perfectly tasty standard wines. But I had never seen a Duboeuf Malbec, and I had never seen a wine of any kind from Comté Tolosan, the Indication Géographique Protégée listed on the back label. This Georges Duboeuf wine had become very oddly irresistable, and I snapped it up.

Almost every wine drinker these days has heard of Malbec, thanks to its Argentinean success. I used to think Malbec originated in Argentina, but it’s actually a French variety, though ever fewer French vineyards grow it. According to The Oxford Companion to Wine, Malbec is “still the backbone of Cahors,” a red made in France’s southwest, and it is from this wine that Georges Duboeuf must have drawn his inspiration for the Malbec varietal.

And that’s where the real story is. Comté Tolosan is classified as a Vin de Pays, a very loosely regulated wine region which in this case encompasses almost the whole of southwestern France. Often in France, or in any terroir-driven wine country, the more specific the geographic designation, the higher the quality of the wine. The regulations on these geographic designations, or AOCs, can be very restrictive, however, preventing innovative winemakers from experimenting with different techniques or varieties.

In contrast, the Vin de Pays regions typically have very loose rules. In fact, according to The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia, red wine grapes in Comté Tolosan “are not specified beyond ‘what is growing’!” (Exclamation point in the original.) It took the regulation-happy French a while to get to this point — it was only in 2000 that varietal wines were legalized, but even then, they had to be 100% that variety (most of the rest of the world allows winemakers to blend up to 15% of other varieties in varietal wines). Finally, in 2004, producers were authorized to adjust their varietal wines with a bit of blending, making them more palatable.

And with that, the French finally had a shot at capturing consumers who look for “Chardonnay” or “Malbec” instead of “Chinon” or “Mâcon-Villages.” Now, according to the Encyclopedia, the Vin de Pays category of wine “includes some of the most innovative and exciting wines being produced in the world today.”

I’m not sure the 2009 Georges Duboeuf Malbec Grain Noir qualifies as one of the most exciting wines in the world, but I certainly enjoyed drinking it. It had a pleasant aroma of brandied cherries, and some rustic fruit on the palate. That moved to black pepper spice and a softly tannic, more velvety finish. It kept an even keel, avoiding any surprises, making it sure to satisfy a wide range of red-wine drinkers. And after all, at about $10 a bottle, what more could you ask?

SUMMARY

2009 Georges Duboeuf Malbec Grain Noir: Moves from a rough, rustic start to a velvety finish. A fine value for the price, and sure to be tasty with pizza or pasta with red sauce. Chill in the refreigerator for 20 minutes before serving.

Grade: B

Find It: I bought this wine at the Whole Foods on Halsted and Waveland for $10, but a rather harried employee told me they don’t have it in stock at the moment. You might see it in the wine departments of other Whole Foods branches, however.

Even if they’ve never sampled it, most everyone has heard of Port. This fortified wine from Porto, Portugal, deserves its fame — a glass of fine caramelly tawny Port or deeply flavored vintage Port always makes a deliciously relaxing end to a meal. But the Portuguese don’t have a monopoly on these sorts of wines. The farthest southern corner of France can give northern Portugal some serious competition.

I once had the fortune to visit the spectacular vineyards here, around the town of Banyuls. I was about 24 years old, and really beginning to appreciate the joys of wine tasting. Around every bend it seemed, a shop or house or even just a roadside stand offered “Degustation,” and to my parents’ eventual annoyance, I wanted to stop at every one. But what could I do? After tasting some Banyuls paired with a Banyuls-poached pear covered in melted chocolate and cinnamon, I was hooked.

Clinging to the Roussillon coast, the narrow roads winding through the vertiginous vineyards of Banyuls make for hair-raising driving, and tending to the vines requires hard labor. Because the terrain makes machinery all but impossible to use, the very ripe grapes — often picked when halfway to raisinhood – must be harvested by hand. Yields are very low. Hell for winemakers perhaps, but ideal for drinkers.

Red Banyuls must contain at least 50% Grenache, and because the wine is fortified with alcohol, the result tastes remarkably like Port. Or perhaps more accurately, in the inimitable words of The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia, “[Banyuls] lacks the fire of a great Port, but it has its own immense charm.”

I happened to have an immensely charming Banyuls about a week ago in Charleston. Bin 152, a stylish wine bar run by an engaging French couple, had one on its by-the-glass menu, and goodness knows after my tireless explorations of Lowcountry cuisine, I was in need of a serious digestif.

Fanny, who hails originally from Nice, poured me a glass of 2008 Domaine la Tour Vieille Banyuls, before refilling Brooke Shields’ glass of white Burgundy (she looked great). The wine proved to be even more exciting than the celebrity sighting, however. It had the big, round, raisiny fruit I was expecting, but what surprised me was its steady, driving force. It had power, this wine, but its development from fruity to spicy to tannic was so slow and so rhythmic, I could only but marvel at its self-control.

This Banyuls demanded attention, and it made me forget all about my distended stomach. Not all of them rise to these heights, but every Banyuls I’ve sampled has been at the very least quite good. It pairs wonderfully with chocolate, berries and celebrities, and it tends to cost less than Port of similar quality, because Banyuls lacks Port’s famous name. If you see one in a wine shop or on a wine list, don’t hesitate to give it a try.