Grab Bag of Wine Treats

MORE WINE TREATS: The Indy‘s wine desk gets treats sent its way occasionally, and it’s about that time to present our readers with some recent highlights.

In the portable drinking category, we’re happy to recommend the Champagne Nicolas Feuillatte One Fo(u)r mini bottles, cutely packaged renditions of the house’s rose ($16, and pretty in pink) and classic brut ($13, blazing in blue). Featuring a little rope to cinch around your wrist, these bountifully bubbly bottles are the right choice for a picnic in the park or a clandestine sip on the beach. You can pick them up at Lazy Acres, which also carries the larger bottles, as well as at Whole Foods when it opens on upper State Street next month.

For those more interested in reading while they drink, two wine books recently skidded into the office. The first is Jerome Tuccille’s apparently unauthorized though somewhat supported biography of the Gallos, the family that became synonymous with winemaking in California from the Prohibition era to the modern age. Gallo Be Thy Name: The Inside Story of How One Family Rose to Dominate the U.S. Wine Market (Phoenix Books; $22.95) is not a literary masterpiece, but proves a scandal-dripping portrait of the wine world’s most influential mass producers and suggests that murder and Al Capone were behind their rise to prominence.

Those who are seeking to make their own wine at home must pick up the highly regarded Home Winemaking: Step by Step (Stonemark Publishing; $17.95), Jon Iverson’s bible on how to do it yourself. Lauded by everyone from Wine Spectator to former winemakers the world over, Iverson brings his 30 years of experience to informing every wannabe winemaker how to do it right.