We respect these wine folks immensely, we love their palates for the most part and often buy wines they suggest. But now that we are also in the 100-point rating game, we find things about the rating system worth sharing.

1. When wine writers taste dozens of wines blind at a time, the ones that naturally stand out, head and shoulders above others, and get the high scores are the higher alcohol, hotter, more heavily wooded wines. That's just the way it works when you taste lots of wines in successive sip 'n spit motion. (To minimize this effect, when we're rating for ilovenapa.com, we only taste a few wines from a single winemaker at a time. We're looking for pretty wines, balanced wines, delicious wines, not high alcohol, over-oaked monsters.)

2. Do we think we are onto something? I can only relate this Truth: When I am with wine merchants or local wine writer friends, they confide that THEY DO NOT ENJOY THE OVER-OAKED, HIGH ALCOHOL WINES THAT THEY SELL, ORWRITE ABOUT! They tell me they prefer gentle wines, food-friendly wines - the kind of wines that we praise at ilovenapa.com.

When we talk in private with some of the most respected winemakers in our valley and ask why they impart so much wood to their fruited whites like Chardonnay or Chenin Blanc, they reply that "that is what we've taught the American public to drink; they expect a lot of wood in the wine."

We say, Nonsense. We believe it is time to stand up for balanced wine, food-friendly wine. In short, it is time to un-learn the American public.

If winemakers feel that they've taught the public to seek out and drink highly extracted, over-oaked wines, how about setting a new standard for the 2000's - let's show the public how to appreciate food-friendly wines that aren't so over-oaked they taste like they've passed through the kidneys of a beaver!

3. There is a component to the accepted 100-point rating system that says Price Doesn't Matter. Wines are supposed to be rated on their own merit, according to flavor, mouthfeel and length, without consideration of price. We think this is utter nonsense. Price DOES matter. When we find an exceptionally rich, pretty wine that costs significantly less than wines of lesser quality, we factor this into the wine's final score.

The 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon from Farella-Park is a perfect example. The fruit comes from a 26-acre parcel in southern Napa Valley in an area that winemakers want to have recognized one day as the Coombsville Appellation.

The grower of this fruit is Frank Farella, a respected lawyer who is on the Board of Directors of Robert Mondavi Winery. He had the foresight to buy the land in 1976, planted it in 1980, and urged his son to become, in the Italian tradition, part of the winemaking family.

Tom Farella listened. He went off to get his beverage bona fides; he started out with the fledgling Neyers in 1980, moved on to Preston in Dry Creek, Sonoma, where he worked up from assistant to head winemaker; he worked harvests in Burgundy for Domaine Jacques Prieur and in the Willamette Valley, OR, for Ponzi and Beaux Frères then came home to make wine for his family and also, now for the Elkes (whose lovely Pinot Noir we represent).

Most of the Cabernet for this wine has been, and still is, sold to Mondavi for its Reserve blend (and we understand that some may squeak into Opus One…) but Tom and his Frank decided to bottle a bit for themselves under their own label.

Their Cab has a lovely nose, largely black currant. On the palate, the black currant is so evident that it is like biting into a Rowntree black currant wine gum, (you have to go to Canada to experience this flavor reference…). This is a fabulous achievement; the wine has a generous viscosity and a suitably long finish. We were all set to give the wine a 90-point score when we were told: "It's $28 a bottle."

Twenty-eight dollars? That's all? For us, this nudged the wine into the 91-point realm. Because PRICE DOES MATTER.

If this were a $125 Cabernet, we might actually score it 89 points because, at this price, compared to similarly priced wines, it might be experienced as a less substantial wine. But as a wine that competes with the quality of everyday-drinking, everyday-priced wines - it's actually a GREAT wine and a GREAT bargain!

And we love what Tom has produced with his family's Sauvignon Blanc fruit; a lyrically light, perfectly refreshing not-wooded wine that has the hallmarks of a high altitude S.B. from Italy.

Tom is doing a great job to "unlearn the public" and is proving that you don't need a cord of wood in every bottle to make a high-impact, high-scoring wine.