We've visited several of the Northwest's best-known areas for wines - Walla Walla, the Yakima Valley, the Willamette Valley and the Okanagan in Canada - and would like to try out someplace new this summer. Any recommendations?

In the past few years, I've discovered a number of wineries are making Malbec as a single varietal wine instead of using it as a blending grape. What's behind this recent change?

Chenin Blanc was the wine that helped hook me on drinking something better than jug wine. Now, it seems to have almost disappeared. Where can I find some good Northwest examples?

I've recently started taking a more serious approach to wine tasting and have started taking more extensive notes when I do. Any ideas for keeping my notes organized? And any tips for not seeming too obsessively geeky when I'm in the tasting room or at a restaurant?

While wine touring recently in Southern Oregon, I encountered wines made from the Tempranillo grape for the first time and was told it originated in Spain. How did it end up in the Northwest?

Question: I know that British Columbia has been growing many of the classic wine grape varieties for a couple decades now but have never understood how they get the grapes to ripen there. Often I read that Oregon has trouble getting its Pinot Noir ripe, so how do they manage it in B.C.?

Why do winemakers use oak barrels to age wine? And why is oak the preferred wood?

In the past few years I've noticed several varieties of wines with names I'd never heard of - Siegerrebe, Kerner, Ortega and Ehrenfelser, to name a few - are being produced in our region's wineries. Why and where do they come from?

During my visits to wineries, I regularly hear or read about "gravity fed" being used during the winemaking process. What's it all about?

Should I store my Port wines differently than my other wines? I have a temperature-controlled wine cabinet but have not seen any information on whether Port should be stored differently to allow it to age properly. And at what temperature should it be stored?

Q. Some friends and I are interested in starting a wine tasting group as a way to learn more about wine. Can you give us some suggestions about how to proceed?

Q. How do wine judges manage to sample scores of wines during a major tasting and come away with their palates still functioning? Can they really taste much of anything at the end of several hours of evaluating wines?

Q. I wonder if you can advise me how I might remove a cork that appears to be firmly stuck in my bottle of Warre's 1958 Port.

Q. The movie Sideways set me to wondering. Is it really that hard to make good Pinot Noir wines? And if that's so, why is so much of Oregon known for its Pinot Noir?