M. Chapoutier — Chante-Alouette is their historic white Hermitage, old-vine Marsanne off one of the Rhône's most prestigious hills.

Jonata — the Santa Barbara sister project to Screaming Eagle. Todos means everything the estate's best parcels gave that year, in one bottle.

Les Vins de la Madone — an organic estate farmed at 600 meters in the Urfé, well outside Beaujolais proper, and a rare high-altitude Gamay because of it.

Opaque — the Riboli family's Central Coast project, and 'Darkness' earns its name. Five grapes, 18 months of oak, ink-black in the glass.

Roger Pabiot — one of only three certified-organic estates in all of Pouilly-Fumé. Same river as Sancerre, less hype, more flint.

IDDA — Piemonte's most famous name, Angelo Gaja, betting on Sicily's volcano alongside Etna local Alberto Graci.

Gaja — Angelo Gaja's coastal Tuscan project in Bolgheri. Promis is the approachable front door into it.

Gaja — Angelo Gaja pushing past Piemonte into Montalcino, holding Sangiovese to the same obsessive standard that made his Barbarescos legendary.

Gaja — DaGromis is Angelo Gaja's most accessible way into Barolo, and it still carries the family's obsessive standard.

Haynes Vineyard — planted in the '60s under Louis Martini and André Tchelistcheff, and for fifty years the fruit went to everyone else. Now it's finally theirs.

Haynes Vineyard — some of Napa's oldest Chardonnay and Pinot vines, planted in 1967. Now, finally, bottling its own Coombsville Syrah.

This is the house that beat Bordeaux. In 1979, a young Torres Cabernet from this same estate went blind against Château Latour in Paris — and won. Gran Coronas is the everyday descendant of that legend: Cab and Tempranillo, oak-aged, and still shockingly fair for the story it carries.

Named for the peacemaker in Romeo and Juliet — Benvolio is easy, well-made Friuli Pinot Grigio, sustainably grown, and priced so nobody has to think twice about a second bottle.

The northernmost, coolest edge of the Languedoc — limestone soil, Mediterranean days, mountain nights. Coste d'Aleyrac is Château Lancyre's answer: Syrah-driven, peppery, full but fresh, and a perennial 90-point value from a family that's been farming this hill since the 1800s.

Jordan Chardonnay is the wine that taught American diners restraint — French oak, real acid, no butter bomb. Same recipe since 1976, sustainably farmed in the Russian River Valley, and it never surprises you. That's the whole point.

Familia Torres's Rías Baixas project — Galician heritage. Organic Albariño, coastal Salnés fruit, high acid, saline snap. Pours easy at $22, tastes like it should cost more.

Steely, mineral-driven Chablis Premier Cru — white flowers up front, citrus and stone through a taut, acidic finish.