No, it doesn’t have a wicker basket. But it’s not rough and raw, either. This simple Tuscan red serves well with food.

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With the economy in the doldrums, it’s a good time to think about exploring the world vicariously instead. Donald A. Dibbern, Jr. puts together a full case of international wines for a little over $100.

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Sure, top Italian wines have gone upscale, and a Super Tuscan or big-name Chianti can knock a hole in your wallet. But there’s still a place in my heart for the low-end style.

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France, you get a free pass today. The European Common Market Organization is my newest punching bag when it comes to idiotic wine regulations.

I can hardly believe it, but new wine industry reforms proposed by this body apparently will result in the elimination of Italy’s DOC and IGT designations for wine.

WHAT!?!?

If that doesn’t make your blood boil, then you’re not paying attention.

These reforms, which would go into effect in 2009 if adopted seem to suggest the equivalent action to taking all of the individual Bordeaux appellations and replacing them with just two: “Left Bank” and “Right Bank.” For instance, according to Decanter Magazine, one of the proposed new designations would merge all of the surrounding areas (currently designated Barbera and Dolcetto) with Barolo — making no distinction between those “village” wines and what is certainly one of Italy’s most historical and prestigious wine regions. In all Italy’s 316 DOCs, 38 DOCGs and 118 IGT appellations would be collapsed to a mere 182 designations.

Now, I’m not in favor of the mass proliferation of wine appellations. I think beyond a certain point there are diminishing returns to the slicing and dicing of terroir into ever finer designations and regulations.

But how could anyone in their right mind think that reducing the number of Italian wine appellations by 75% could possibly be a good thing?

Would one of my European readers explain to me how on earth this travesty of legislation even got out of committee?

Read the full story. And then if you’re an EU passport holder, please, write your parliamentarian, or whatever it is you do when you’re pissed off at the government.

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At the risk of betraying my political leanings and reinforcing recent suggestions that my home city is filled with cocktail party elitists, I have to admit that (apart from wine) by far the best $14 I spend every year is my subscription to Harper’s magazine.

One of my great pleasures in life is sitting down for an uninterrupted session with the “Readings” section of the magazine, which, for those who might be unfamiliar with the publication, is a collection of excerpts, snippits, essays, transcripts, declassified memos, poetry, and all manner of brief things that never fail to delight, inspire, and provoke me, not to mention make me laugh out loud.

I was reading the December 2007 issue this afternoon on the plane (yes, I’m drastically behind due to business demands and fatherhood) when I came across an interesting essay by W.H. Auden, taken from the 1952 French monthly publication “Preuves.” Auden covered several topics in his essay “De Droit et de Gauche” but in this segment chiefly discussed the criticism of art.

As I was reading it, I was struck not only by the clarity of his arguments on the subject but also the degree to which they seemed to address the issues of wine criticism.

So if you’ll excuse me for going a little highbrow on you, and if the estate of Auden will forgive me lifting his words for my own nefarious purposes, I give you Wine Criticism According to W.H. Auden:

Wine criticism is tradition defending itself against the three armies of the Goddess Stupidity: the army of amateurs who are ignorant of tradition; the army of conceited eccentrics who believe tradition should be suppressed by a stroke of the pen in order that the definition of what is truly great wine may begin with them; and the army of academicians who believe they maintain tradition by a servile imitation of the past.

The desire to link art to life, beauty to truth, justice to goodness almost infallibly leads critics to utter a host of stupidities; a critic who ignores or represses this concern, and contents himself with being no more than an amateur taster or an historian of wine avoids covering himself ridicule, but at what cost. No one reads him.

Judging a wine is virtually the same mental operation as judging human beings, and requires the same aptitudes: first a real love of wine, and inclination to praise rather than to blame, and regret when a complete rejection is required; second a vast experience of all manner of wines and winemaking; and last, an awareness, openly and happily accepted , of ones own prejudices. Some critics fail because they are pedants whose idea of perfection is always offended by a concrete realization. Others fail because they are insular and hostile to what is alien to them; these critics, yielding to their prejudices without knowing they have them and sincerely offering judgments they believe to be objective are more excusable than those, who aware of their prejudices, lack the courage to enter the lists to defend their personal tastes.

The best wine critic is not the one whose judgments are always right but the one whose essays compel you to taste and taste again the wine he discusses; even when he is hostile, you feel that the wine attacked is important enough to be worth the effort. There are other critics who, even when they praise a wine, cancel any desire you might have to drink it.

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Anyone who has an e-mail account and has checked it at least once in the last 10 years has probably received an e-mail that begins:

DEAR SIR,

CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL

HAVING CONSULTED WITH MY COLLEAGUES AND BASED ON THE INFORMATION GATHERED FROM THE NIGERIAN CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY, I HAVE THE PRIVILEGE TO REQUEST FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE TO TRANSFER THE SUM OF $47,500,000.00 (FORTY SEVEN MILLION, FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS) INTO YOUR ACCOUNTS.

Known as the Nigerian Scam, or more properly an Advanced Fee scam, this sort of fraud has been incredibly successful, despite what may seem to some as its completely over-the-top implausibility. Apparently a lot of compassionate (and in particular elderly) Internet users have lost a lot of money to the scammers, many of whom are actually from Nigeria.

In jest, inspired by an e-mail from my friend Jack, I created little post about a year ago entitled The Nigerian Wine Scam as a joke. Maybe not a very well executed one, but some people got a chuckle out of it.

But now, reality has again trumped my own vain efforts at humor.

There really is a Nigerian Wine Scam. Not of the e-mail variety, of course, but of the much more dangerous bottled variety.

Nigeria is home to some excellent sounding wines, with names like “Bacchus Tonic Wines,” “Eva Wines,” and “Blue Cocktail Wines.” Unfortunately while these are legitimate brands of alcoholic beverages, someone in Abuja, Nigeria has been re-using the bottles, corks, and labels of these brands to produce fakes that are not only not as tasty, they are downright dangerous.

Reportedly concocted of “caramel, vanilla flavour, red and blue colouring substance, alum grains, gum Arabic, among others” according to The Punch, a Nigerian Online Newspaper, these “wines” also contained sachet water — water from small, often hand tied, plastic sachets that have become popular sources for drinking water in Africa in recent years.

These sachets are widely regarded by the scientific and medical communities as being extremely unreliable in their manufacture (not to mention completely unregulated), and tests have shown that sachets can contain everything from extremely high levels of toxic heavy metals to all manner of water borne pathogens and microbiological contaminents (can you say faecal coliforms?).

To wit: the dangers to anyone who might opt for a glass or two of Bacchus Tonic apparently include entero-gastritis, diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid, cholera, and organ damage. Not to mention a pretty disgusting taste in your mouth.

So next time you get an e-mail offering you the chance to receive a one time shipment of Grand Cru Nigerian wine, just hit delete.

Read the full story.

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Let’s stick with the new month’s Wine Focus theme for anothre day as we examine a stylish California Chardonnay that uses - but does not abuse - a kiss of oak and malolactic fermentation.

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Well-balanced and appealing estate-bottled Chardonnay from a maker that may readjust your attitude toward California Chardonnay.

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