Wine

Dolcetto. What an unfortunate name. It sounds like "dolce," which means "sweet" in Italian, and we live in one of those rare ages when sweet is suspect - at least in the wine glass. Worse yet, it calls to mind the classic movie "La Dolce Vita," a celebration of decadence that now seems quaint and old-fashioned. So bottles of Dolcetto - the most obviously delectable wine of Italy's Piedmont - languish on the shelves, price deflated by lack of demand. While they wait for buyers, the lira is losing value and Italian goods are becoming cheaper in American stores.

The Nouveau Beaujolais arrived on Nov. 16. The date is almost an international holiday in the wine world, and I hope you celebrated properly. If you did, you may have noticed that the Nouveau doesn't really taste like other wines. There's something fresh and assertive about the flavors and the bouquet is often strongly chemical. It's hard to imagine that this wine comes from a vineyard; you almost suspect that there was a factory and a chemist or two involved. You wouldn't be surprised to hear that the same place that made the Nouveau also made Pop-Tarts and some kind of candy that glows in the dark.

The Marriott Marquis is a whale of a hotel, an entire square block of Manhattan in the middle of the theater district: 49 floors, almost 2,000 rooms and 21/2 acres of meeting space. It's exactly the right place to hold the Lauber Imports Grand Annual Tasting. Lauber is an importer - the middle man between the winemaker and your local liquor store. Once a year, Lauber puts on a shindig to show off this year's wines to restaurateurs and retailers. This year's edition had 225 wineries pouring samples of more than 500 wines in a series of rooms that covered only half a city block.

The elbows know. Long before the entree's grand entrance, the elbows have plunked themselves on the red-and-white tablecloth. In no time at all, mutiny. First, the hands - impatient with such time-wasters as a knife and fork - tear off a chunk of the crusty loaf of bread. What bread does not immediately fit in the mouth is then kept busy in the pasta dish, where, like a vacuum cleaner with a new bag, it hungrily sops up the red sauce. Some sort of magnetic force then commands the head to lower.

IOWA CITY, Iowa - An Iowa City mother arrested after her 23-month-old son was found to be legally drunk has pleaded guilty to felony child endangerment and neglect or abandonment charges. Natasha Kriener was charged in February after doctors found the toddler had a blood-alcohol level of .09 percent, above the state's legal limit of .08 percent. Police said the toddler's father had taken him to the hospital because he was crying and had poor balance. Cedar Rapids television station KCRG-TV reports that Kriener, 27, pleaded guilty last week and had been set to go to trial in September, but failed to appear for a hearing and disappeared for nearly three months.

HARRISBURG - Talks with retailers are delaying the deployment of kiosks that will allow Pennsylvanians to buy wine without going to state liquor stores. Liquor Control Board spokeswoman Stacey Witalec told WITF-FM that negotiations with supermarkets and routine safety testing were pushing back the planned rollout of the wine vending machines. The board had hoped to have more kiosks deployed by late August, including some in the Philadelphia area. Two Harrisburg-area machines were deemed a success after they were unveiled in June.

The Far East has a way with subtle flavors, and the West has a way with salads, so we combined the best of both worlds to create an Oriental chicken salad. This entree salad is made with chicken breasts presented on a bed of Chinese cabbage, romaine, oranges, sesame seeds and other ingredients bathed in a dressing of orange juice and teriyaki. The flavors are substantial enough to be the main course for a summer luncheon or light dinner but light enough to be an appetizer for a multicourse dinner.

All right, class, today's topic is which wine to order when you've already decided on your food. You'll be tested every time you sit down to dinner, but that shouldn't make you nervous. A lot of otherwise confident people get nervous about the simple business of figuring out what wine to serve or order with dinner. They may hear a lot of complicated talk about how wine X "goes with" beef and wine Y "matches" grilled fish. They could memorize all the different combinations (Which wine goes with Buffalo Wings anyway?

If you're looking for bad wine, for really overblown, weirdly flavored grape-based alcoholic beverages, go to the New World chardonnay shelf. Roses aside, there's more pukey excess here than anywhere. There are wines that taste like guava juice and vodka and others that remind you of vanilla extract and lemon juice. These bizarre tastes are disconcerting for people who've been exposed to the original chardonnay-based wines, the ones from Burgundy in France. Those wines are sometimes austere, sometimes refined and sometimes disappointing, but they always taste like wine.

Arnold A. Bayard, 84, an internationally recognized wine connoisseur who was president of a family-owned engineering firm for many years, died Monday while vacationing in Paris. He was a resident of Society Hill. An avid wine collector who had one of the largest cellars of valuable wine in the country, Mr. Bayard organized the Philadelphia chapter of the Commanderie de Bordeaux, one of the world's most prestigious wine societies. After his many years of involvement, he was in 1987 named emeritus maitre extraordinaire of the Commanderie de Bordeaux sous Philadelphie.