Vineyards

My serious introduction to Chilean wines, about five years ago, is a pretty dim memory now, but the one thing that stuck was the impression of a complex, decade-old cabernet that was not only a world-class wine but, at about $4, also a world-class bargain. I heard and tasted little else of Chile's wines until about a year ago. In the meantime, though, the retail wine scene changed considerably. Quality European wines bounced from accessible to precious. Segments of the wine- consuming public grew more adventurous, and a more egalitarian wine press evolved to guide them in their quests.

Watch out, Napa Valley, you've got competition. Nestled in the farmlands of New Jersey and the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, this region's vineyards are creating their own wine trails and setting the scenes for delightful wine-tasting experiences. And along the way, they are setting a new dating trend. "Wine tastings have become the place to see who is checking out who, and who is watching who," said Barbara Calderone, manager at Crossing Vineyards and Winery in Bucks County, who admits to helping a few couples make the "love connection" during singles events.

The Miner Family vineyards produce wines that reflect the opulent side of California winemaking, with big plush flavors that impress from the moment you uncork the bottle. Miner's wines are on Chairman's Selection sale in Pennsylvania, which is a good thing, considering the suggested sticker price. But even with a $17 discount, I find Miner's Bordeaux-style blend, the 2003 Oracle, a bit steep at $49.99. It's more plump dark fruit than profoundly moving. And at that price, I want to be moved.

You may see elephants, though probably not pink ones, at the Six Flags Grape Adventure from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Eleven New Jersey vineyards will be there with close to 150 locally produced wines for tasting. There will be food, music and a craft village, too. The optional Wild Safari package includes a private tour with a stop to sample wines in the African Plains among the giraffes. (The theme park section is closed for the season.) Six Flags Great Adventure is on Route 537 West in Jackson, N.J. Online prices are $15 for the wine event, $30 for the event and safari; at the door, $18 and $38. Details at www.sixflags.com/ greatadventure.

Virginia wants to be the next California. So do Missouri, New York, Indiana and now Pennsylvania. Across the nation, states not known for sun-filled valleys are hoping to raise their stature in the wine industry, hiring experts of both wine and vine to boost the viticulture industry. Some states hope that vineyards will take the place of dwindling agricultural industries. For example, Kentucky hopes to fill some of its tobacco fields with vineyards. Others aim to keep the land away from developers or create jobs.

It took Gerald Forest and his family 14 years of pressing grapes to move their bottom line from red to black. The Forests planted their first grape vines in Buckingham, Bucks County, in 1966. Today, the Forest family grosses more than $400,000 annually selling 12 wine varieties - all priced at $4.75 a bottle or $42 a case. The wine is sold from their lone outlet, the Buckingham Valley Vineyard and Winery, on 42 acres near New Hope. "We've sold every bottle of (mature)

On his way home from work last week, Stephen Freeston stopped at his favorite wine shop just outside London to stock up. He tasted several varieties offered at the shop in the village of Theale, and scanned the shelves for new possibilities and old favorites. Bypassing French wines that once would have interested him, the 37-year-old information technology manager left with three cases of Australian wine, for which he paid just over $300. "I can't remember the last time I bought a bottle of French," he said.

The chardonnay and cabernet vines are beginning to bud, and the first barrels of wine are fermenting in the cellar. Everything is set for Bill Heritage, frustrated peach farmer-turned-novice vintner, to sell his inaugural bottles at the family's roadside fruit stand this fall. There's just one hitch: His family's 150-year-old farm is situated in a dry township. And so Heritage and his wife, Penni, will go to the township zoning board tonight to ask for a variance that will allow them to sell - and offer tastes - of the fruit of Gloucester County's only vineyard.

The professor has been talking non-stop for 2 1/2 hours about Burgundy wine. Only Burgundy, mind you. Not a word about port, zinfandel or Bordeaux. All told, he's talked 7 1/2 hours over three sessions . . . about Burgundy. It's 9:30 p.m, time to go home, but the professor has barely skimmed the surface of his bottomless vats of wine knowledge. Somehow he has become enmeshed in French law and regulations that control the production and sale of Burgundy - regulations that make Talmudic law seem childishly simple by comparison.

You may see elephants, though probably not pink ones, at the Six Flags Grape Adventure from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Eleven New Jersey vineyards will be there with close to 150 locally produced wines for tasting. There will be food, music and a craft village, too. The optional Wild Safari package includes a private tour with a stop to sample wines in the African Plains among the giraffes. (The theme park section is closed for the season.) Six Flags Great Adventure is on Route 537 West in Jackson, N.J. Online prices are $15 for the wine event, $30 for the event and safari; at the door, $18 and $38. Details at www.sixflags.com/ greatadventure.

In a convoy of black SUVs, followed by the long tail of the Washington press corps, the vacationing President Obama went out of his way Sunday to stop by the house of a friend on Martha's Vineyard. Obama and close aide Valerie Jarrett were hosted by Brian and Aileen Roberts at their multimillion-dollar North Shore mansion, a property situated off a rutted dirt road in an exclusive neighborhood. Billionaire Dirk Ziff, investment advisor Steven Rattner, and Donald Graham, chairman of the Washington Post, also have houses there looking out over the gorgeous Vineyard Sound.

Few wines put a quenching squirt on summer heat like a crisp sauvignon blanc. But so many, especially those increasingly popular bottles from New Zealand, go overboard with a sour citrus punch that can taste like a truckload of grapefruit in your glass. A small measure of restraint and balance, then, is exactly what drew me to this refreshing 2008 New Zealander from Martinborough Vineyard. It still has a bracing citrus edge, but it's woven into riper exotic fruits - pineapple and guava - that round the flavor, along with a touch of oak, lending this sauvignon a fuller richness to pair well with food.

I FIND IT bothersome that President Obama plans to vacation at a costly compound on Martha's Vineyard while the nation's in a deep recession and still sending its sons and daughters off to two foreign wars. I felt the same about the multiple extended Crawford, Texas, ranch treks former President George W. Bush took while in office, also during wartime. And I understand modern presidents live under 24/7 media coverage and a heavier scrutiny of lifestyle than their predecessors; and perhaps this is unfair given the responsibility and gravity of the job. Still, I'm not sure that parents, spouses or siblings of soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq find comfort in the president's vacation plans.

Frenchman Jean Bousquet, who moved to Argentina in 1997 to launch his namesake winery in the 4,000-foot high vineyards of Tapungato in Mendoza, has garnered a growing reputation for ripe and earthy malbecs at a nice value. But great Argentine malbec values are commonplace these days. That's why this chardonnay-pinot gris hybrid from Bousquet caught my eye - it's an unusual bottle from South America, a blended white that's perfect for affordable summer drinking, and with considerably more body than Argentina's popular and wifty white grape, torrontes.

"It's funny to think that this all started because I bought my husband a winemaking kit for his birthday back in 1989," says Carole Kirkpatrick, as she looks around her Kreutz Creek Vineyards tasting room in downtown West Chester. The kit led to the couple's 20-acre winery in southern Chester County, the West Chester tasting room, and another tasting room in Media. "I've created a monster!" she says with a sweeping gesture. Meanwhile, behind an inviting wooden bar running along a wall of the tasting room, sales associate Rich Minnick begins an informative oration about a bottle of "nice, buttery" chardonnay he's holding up to a small group of patrons who are cozying up on stools in front of him. "We've been waiting a long time for this.

Not only the waves are crashing on Martha's Vineyard, the upscale Massachusetts island off Cape Cod where the rich, famous and merely fortunate come to rock on wide porches and nap to the ocean's music. In the LeVay household, summer has brought together the father, two sons and their two girlfriends, plus the maid's daughter, and the family infrastructure is in free fall. Lydia R. Diamond - she wrote the fine adaptation of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye that Freedom Theatre performed recently - deftly mixes race, mobility and family matters in her new play, Stick Fly. Diamond comes up with a rich, engrossing and funny tale of an iconic Vineyard family of African Americans, in an energized season-opener at Princeton's McCarter Theatre.

What do a quartet of doctors, a former Hollywood screenwriter, and a retired airline pilot all have in common? They all own vineyards in Chester County, and that's no joke. This month, visitors will get to know the six area vineyards a bit better when the wineries band together for the Barrels on the Brandywine tour, when a $25 "passport" lets you taste samples at all of them. Most of the wineries will have a tour guide dispensing wine samples directly out of the top of an oak barrel through a pipette and dripping it directly into visitors' glasses.