Reviews of wines that don’t need their own post, but are worth noting for one reason or another. Look for it on the final Friday of each month:

• Antinori Pèppoli 2008 ($27, sample): Modern style of Chianti, with more red fruit in the middle. But still a fine wine -- balanced and fresh. The price is problematic, though.

• Marqués de Cáceres Rioja Blanco 2009 ($8, purchased): Traditional style, so not much fruit a little more rustic than California. Offers more than than $8 worth of wine, and more than suitable for a weeknight dinner.

• Souverain Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 ($22, sample): Grocery store quality -- thin, flat and uninteresting, with little terroir. Seem to remember this producer being much better than this.

• Parlay The Bookmaker 2005 ($20, sample): Lots of sweet black fruit in the middle of this red blend, but very well made with a long chalky finish and sturdy tannins. Not my style of wine, but well done nonetheless.

Yes, she's drinking white wine, but why not try a red?

This is an especial problem for beginning wine drinkers, whose lack of experience is compounded by the intimidation factor -- wine can be a scary place for newcomers, who are overwhelmed with labels, names, terms, and the like.

Hence this post, part of my New Year's resolution to write more items for people just getting started with wine. And a big tip of the Wine Curmudgeon's fedora to Dave McIntyre, who has written about some of this and jarred me into action.

After the jump, four easy things anyone can do to boost their wine savvy:

• Shop in a different store. It's amazing, as Dave notes, how this will change your wine-buying perspective. For one thing, there will almost certainly be wines that you haven't seen before. For another, a store employee could recommend something you've never thought about. This is very important for people who only buy wine in grocery stores, where there are a lot of wines but mostly from the same old places made by the same companies and tasting exactly the same.

• Write down the names of the wine you enjoy. And even those you don't. No one, including the so-called experts, remembers the name of every wine they drink. So we write it down (CellarTracker, the unofficial wine inventory software of the blog!). There is nothing wrong or snooty with this; it's common sense. You don't even need a computer or smart phone or iPad -- pencil and paper work just as well. Record the name, price and what you thought about the wine (and, believe it or not, phrases like good and bad are perfectly acceptable). If you have that information, you can go into a store and ask an employee to recommend something similar to the wine you liked -- or to steer you away from one you didn't.

• Try a wine you don't like. You don't have to do it often. But every once in a while, if you don't like sweet wine or red wine or whatever, taste one. Yes, there's a good chance that you still won't like it. But, given that your palate will change over time as you gain more experience, there's also a chance you'll find a new appreciation for a wine you didn't like.

The photo is from luisrock62 of Argentina, via stock.xchng, using a Creative Commons license

The Wine Curmudgeon has always been ambivalent about the Layer Cake wines, which have always seemed to focus more on the chocolate cake label than what was in the bottle. It's not that some of them weren't eminently drinkable, and I have reviewed them favorably (and those that weren't elicited a reply from the producer). Rather, they always made me wonder if they would have been better with a more ordinary label and if had they cost a couple of bucks less.

Not this time, though. This version of the Layer Cake shiraz ($13, sample) is less expensive and isn't as over the top as some of the other vintages. There's less sweet fruit, the tannins are much more integrated, the 14.9 percent alcohol isn't overbearing, and the wine shows some unexpected polish, especially on the finish. Having said that, it's still a very Australian-style wine, with lots of cherry cola-ish fruit that practically explodes on your nose and in your mouth.

It's a big wine that even those of us who aren't all that fond of big wines can enjoy. Drink this with barbecue (beef, pork or chicken) or burgers and enjoy the label. Which is quite clever, especially when it doesn't get in the way of the wine.

• Cheaper wine and traffic accidents: States with higher wine consumption have fewer traffic deaths, so why not make wine more easily available? A new study suggests that wine is more socially responsible than beer or spirits, so why not push consumption toward it and away from the others through legal supermarket sales? Said one researcher: "Wine is more likely to be consumed with food. That has an impact. We also suspect that there are different demographic groups that consume this alcohol. Maybe the audience that consumes wine is less likely to drink and drive and be in a traffic accident." A fascinating thought, though the Wine Curmudgeon notes that the study was conducted by researchers in New York state, where there is a huge fight going on over wine sales in grocery stores.

• Because we can never get enough about wine scores: David Duman in the Huffington Post takes on wine scores, calling out two leading members of the Winestream Media, Jon Bonne of the San Francisco Chronicle and Steve Heimoff of the Wine Enthusiast: "... it was discouraging to see their defenses of the system utilizing those same tired arguments used by lesser critics." That's about as harsh as it gets in this business, but Duman didn't stop there. He sounds almost Wine Curmudgeonly: "If you want to be a wine critic who remains relevant for the next thirty years you might want to ditch the rating system now, lest you be stuck wearing the wine writing equivalent of acid-washed jeans and feathered hair a decade too late."

• Consumers and state stores: Here's a shocker: Wine drinkers will break the law to buy cheaper wine if all that means is shopping out of state. Regular visitors here will remember that the Pennsylvania state store system, in which the state runs the liquor stores, has been under attack for being inefficient, bloated and poorly run. This on-line survey says that 81 percent of respondents would rather break the law and bootleg their wine and liquor across the borders than suffer state-mandated price hikes. Bootlegging? Does this mean shoppers will start wearing Wine Curmudgeon-like fedoras?

One of the difficulties with trying to figure out where regional wine is in relation to the rest of the wine world is the Wine Curmudgeon's natural curmudgeonliness. Yes, the National Restaurant Association can say, for the second consecutive year, that local wine is a top priorty for restaurants. But I'm the kind of guy who looks at that and tries to decide if the survey was rigged. In other words, I'm not only waiting for the other shoe to drop, but expect it to hit me on the head.

So what happens when I'm in Denver last week doing some groundwork for DrinkLocalWine's fourth annual conference, set for the Colorado capital at the end of April? Almost complete and total enthusiasm, not only for what we're doing but for local wine. More, after the jump:

More importantly, everyone I talked to, and I talked to everyone, said they were excited about Colorado wine, the conference, and DLW's mission: To let the world know wine is made in 47 other states. I had to tell the story about how Dave McIntyre and I started this thing so many times that even I got tired of it. And I can usually talk about DLW until the other person's eyes glaze over.

The assorted print, Internet and electronic meda on hand, almost to a person, wanted to know what Colorado wine was like, where it was headed, and why we were coming to Denver to do the conference. (The answers: Much improved, and we had some excellent wines at the event from Bookcliff, Boulder Creek and Grande River; only going to get better; and because what's going on in with Colorado wine is something that other states need to know about.)

The media were especially interested in the relationship between local wine and local food, which is something we've been hitting hard over the past couple of years. The local food people sometimes have a difficult time seeing that local wine can be just as local as that piece of bacon or tomato.

The best part of the evening came when one craft beer drinker, who wasn't much of a wine guy and didn't really see the local angle, said to me, "You know, I'm going to have to start drinking more Colorado wine. This is really good."

How un-curmudgeonly do you think that made me?

Regular visitors here know how the Wine Curmudgeon feels about wine companies that sue other wine companies over similar labels and similar names. Curmudgeonly, of course.

The most infamous lawsuit of recent years was the faceoff between the company that owns Cristal, the mega-pricey Champagne, and the $7 Spanish cava, Cristalino. But there have been a fair number of others, including Anheuser-Busch vs. an Argentine wine producer called Budini, and YellowTail vs. the Wine Group, who were fighting whether a kangaroo looked like a wallaby.

As much fun as these were, they pale in comparison to what could be the next big trademark and tradedress lawsuit in the wine business -- if E&J Gallo and the Wine Group square off over two fabulously successful brands, Gallo's Barefoot and Wine Group's flipflop. More, after the jump:

But if Cristal can force Cristalino to change its name and label, and the Budweiser beer people can force Budini to change its name, then it sure looks like Barefoot and flipflop have reason to retain attoneys. And that each company has a history of suing and being sued doesn't hurt, either.

Consider these "coincidences:"

• The names are very similar. Maybe not Cristal-Cristalino similar, but ordinary-consumer-shopping-for-wine-similar. I can hear the shopper now: "I want to buy that wine with the foot on the label. You, know the beach wine." Sounds confusing enough to me to meet the standard in the Cristalino case, where the judge ruled that it didn't matter if sales were affected -- it was enough if consumers were confused.

• The logos are very similar. Click here to see what I mean.

• The wines are more or less the same price, sold in the same places (practically next to each other on the shelf), appeal to the same demographic, and use the same marketing approach. Barefoot sponsors beach rescue; flipflop donates money for shoes. All of that is certainly more confusing than a wine with a name that is sort of like the name of a beer.

Most importantly, each brand makes piles of money -- and isn't that what lawsuits are usually about? Barefoot recorded a 23 percent sales increase last year, and is among the best-selling brands in the wine business. flipflop, meanwhile, sold an estimated 600,000 cases in its first year on the market, and an industry analysis called it one of the hottest brands in wine (slipping it into the same sentence with Barefoot, so I'm not the only one who notices these things).

Now I understand why my mom wanted me to be a lawyer.

The cartoon is from dh003i, via OpenClipArt, using a Creative Commons license

Beaulieu Vineyard is one of the most important wine producers in California history, and Georges de Latour is one of the most important figures in that history. Without the winery and the work de Latour did there before World War II, the wine business in the U.S. would not be what it is.

Hence, any wine from Beaulieu that carres de Latour's name should be special. Sadly, the winery suffered through a series of problems in the late 1990s and early part of this century -- ordinary wines, scathing reviews, and even wines infected with cork taint. It was as sad as it was surprising.

The good news is that Beaulieu's corporate parent saw that something needed to be done, and invested millions of dollars to do so. The efforts have worked, and Beaulieu's wines are once again, as wine geeks say, showing well. The de Latour ($125, sample) is a well-made and surprisingly traditional style of Napa cabernet sauvignon, which made the Wine Curmudgeon quite happy.

It's a long, long wine from first sniff to finish, with aromas of cedar and dark fruit, more dark fruit in front, a solid middle, some rich oak on the finish and much welcome tannins to balance all. It's not hot despite being 14.8 percent alcohol, though it does need food -- lots of red meat -- to show its best. I had it with prime rib and Yorkshire pudding, a classic pairing.

Decant this wine for an hour or so to get the most out of it. And be glad that someone went to the trouble to save a historic brand. A price note: When I got the sample two years, it was listed at $80; the increase, even during the recession, shows how much Beaulieu has improved.