This month I have six great wines to recommend.

The first is a beautiful light and fruity 2004 Beaujolais Villages from Louis Jadot for $10. I find most of the Jadot selections rather plain and ordinary but this Beaujolais has nice light spice and is quite interesting, particularly for the price. Enjoy it with pasta or easy sipping on the patio as spring approaches.

Also from the 2004 vintage, but this time from Lafitte Rothschild’s Chilean property, their Los Vasco Cabernet is wonderful and dense with great fruit, cherry vanilla and slight oak. It needs lots of time to breath because it is so young, but it is a powerhouse that can lay down for several years. At $17 this is another great buy for your cellar.

Also from Bordeaux, this time Lussac St. Emillion, is the 1998 Cuvee Henri IV, Chateau de Barbe Blanche. I loved this wine when I tasted it. It has classic Bordeaux barnyard on the nose and extensive earth, mushrooms, smoke, and hints of chocolate on the pallet. This is a beauty for $20.

At a similar price range is the 2003 Chateau Coronnac from the Haut Medoc in Bordeaux. The ’03 vintage is turning out to be quite a surprise with intense fruit, soft tannins and extensive character. This is a beautiful wine to drink now or cellar for ten years. It is hard to find great Bordeaux at this price point and this is one I can highly recommend.

The second ’96 is the Chateau Clos du Marquis. This has been one of my favorite wines for quite some time but I hadn’t tasted it for a while. With my first sip I remembered why I love this wine so much. The truly great Bordeaux winemakers are able to achieve a balance in their wines that make them both interesting and elegant. This is the art of great winemaking. The Clos is a work of art that achieves these goals. The nose is fantastic – filling the glass with exotic aromas – and the pallet is smooth with cassis, berry, wet hay, mushrooms, and oak. This wine is a little pricey at $40/bottle, but it is well worth it.

The 1996 vintage in Bordeaux is drinking particularly well now and I will recommend two of them this month. The first is Chateau D’Issin and it is fantastic. The wine is a classic Bordeaux with balanced wet hay, cigar box, mushrooms and smoke. It is a great wine that is ready to drink now.

This month I recommend five wines from or near Bordeaux in different price ranges and different vintages.

The first is the 2004 Chateau Belingard from Bergerac. Bergerac is a wonderful town located about two hours east of Bordeaux. The region generally produces rougher wines than it’s counterpart to the west but at much lower prices. The Belingard however is a lighter – almost thin – wine that has some nice character and complexity. I am on a constant quest to find a $10 Bordeaux I can drink every day with dinner, and this wine makes my list of top values in that category.

For just $2 more however is my bargain pick of the month. The 2003 Chateau de Terrefort-Quancard is a classic from the Bordeaux region and the vintage. I’ve been talking about the 2003’s and this is more proof that some great wines are coming out of this vintage. The Terrefort-Quancard has a nice fruit hit when you open it (typical of the vintage), but develops and changes as it breaths. It begins with mineral and cherry but changes to oak, mushroom and hints of licorice. This is a great value for the price.

Moving up a little in price is the 2003 Chateau Lilian Ladouys from Saint-Estephe. St. Estephe is one of the solid sub regions of Bordeaux and this wine reflects all the great elements of the outstanding terroir. The earth tones are immediate and soften as the dark berries balance on the pallet. This is another wine that takes time to breath (an hour minimum), but is well worth the $25 price, with much more character than many one-dimensional new world wines costing more.

Still a little more up the price ladder is the 200 Chateau Garraud from Lalande de Pomerol. Pomerol is a sub region on the right bank of Bordeaux and the wines typically have a greater percentage of Merlot than Cabernet. This wine is more elegant than the Lilian Ladouys but has a wonderful nose and big berries that carry through as it lingers on the pallet. This is a classic, beautiful Pomerol that is well worth the $28 price.

My final recommendation of the month is the 2000 Chateau Chasse-Spleen. The 2000’s are not quite ready to be opened, but sometimes I just can’t resist. This wine is a good example of why the 2000 vintage was so highly touted. It is big, smooth, balanced and near perfect. It has intense black current, cassis, earth, cigar box and licorice on the lingering pallet. It is a Wow! I bought this on futures and it is proof that for great Bordeaux vintages buying futures is the best way to go.

The holidays are always a time of enjoying great wines and this year was no exception. I’ve selected eight wines to recommend - all of which I tasted in the last month. I hope you have a chance to try some of them and enjoy them as much as I have.

As much as I love Bordeaux, I have also enjoyed some excellent Chateauneuf-Du-Papes’ and I will be headed back to France this spring to do some more research on this region.

For New Years Eve we enjoyed a wonderful bottle of 2004 Domaine Chante Cigale from the Chateauneuf-Du-Pape region of France. These wines can be enjoyed young and this was an excellent example of a great young wine that is soft, elegant and very complex. It is full of spice and current that dazzles your pallet and awakens new sensations. Everyone at our New Years Eve dinner loved this wine and I highly recommend it.

I have often said that the 1997 vintage in Bordeaux was terrible and I have only tasted one wine that was worth serving from that vintage. Well, now I’ll change that to two wines. As I’ve written here before, the ’97 Chateau Pape Clement is an amazing wine that is deep, dense and complex. It is a wonderful wine with one major drawback – and typical of the vintage –a lack of staying power. The wine is awesome on your pallet but it doesn’t last. Great wines will linger on your pallet and you will even be remembering the taste the next day. With the ‘97’s they do not do this.

The lack of staying power is also evident on the other great wine I tasted from that vintage, the ’97 Chateau Leoville Barton. This, again is a powerhouse wine that is elegant and complex. It shows black berries, current and barnyard on your pallet that you don’t want to ever end. But it does end, and quickly which is too bad for such a great wine.

1995 is a much better vintage than 1997 and I recently opened a ’95 Chateau Des Carabins from Margaux. It is balanced and smooth with good dense fruit that spreads across your pallet. I don’t think the ‘95’s have reached their peak yet so I’m holding on to the rest of my wines from that vintage for at least another year or two in hopes of even greater things to come.

1996 was also a great year in Bordeaux and the Chateau Lanessan from the Haut-Medoc is a wonderful wine that is drinking very well now. This wine was more earthy than fruit driven and has a wonderful and surprising aftertaste that lingered long after we had finished the wine. It is a beautiful Bordeaux that you can drink now or keep for several more years.

From the same ’96 vintage comes one of my most favorite wines, the Chateau Duhart-Milon. We had this for dinner last night and I was again impressed by what a wonderful wine this is. The nose had traditional barnyard, and the pallet is complex with earth, berries and black current. This is an amazingly wonderful wine that is everything great about Bordeaux.

1999 is typically regarded as a good, not great vintage, and these wines are ready to be drunk now. With that in mind I opened a 1999 La Fleur Peyrabon, which had been given to me as a gift several years ago. I was blown away. I was struck immediately by the dense, dark purple color of the wine. The aroma filled the decanter – and then the glass – and was immediately enticing. On the pallet is was rich and complex with the perfect balance of black cherry, licorice, wet hay, oak and smoke. It was an amazing wine the lingered on and on. A true “wow” of a wine, I highly recommend it.

The final wine I’ll recommend this month is the 2002 Chateau Siran.  I had this wine shipped back from France a couple of years ago and didn’t think much of it when I opened it upon arrival. The wine has matured and is simply stunning. It shows great depth and complexity and lingers on your pallet