In this season when the countryside shows off its colors, the New York wine trade flaunts its winter wares with myriad tastings for distributors, retailers, restaurateurs, and journalists. Nothing sells wine like high ratings from Robert Parker Jr.’s Wine Advocate, and everyone bends a knee to the all-powerful Mr. Parker.

Well, almost everyone. Table 10 at last Tuesday’s portfolio tasting of Louis/Dressner Selections, quite possibly America’s most offbeat wine importer, was dedicated to “Wines that Received 96+ points in the Wine Advocate.” The large table was bare except for two dishes piled with foil-wrapped wedges of “Vache Qui Rit” processed cheese.

That display summed up how Denyse Louis, her husband, Joe Dressner, and Kevin McKenna, partners in the 18-year-old, New York-based Louis/Dressner, representing about 60 mainly French winegrowers, feel about the scoring scramble. It also conveyed their opinions about those mega-wines that, in the competition for the highest Parker points, seem like the perfectly primped bouffants that win the Westminster Dog Show. (We like watching them prance for the judges, but do we really want to take the winning specimens home?) Louis/Dressner’s corporate mascot, it should be noted, is a mutt named Buster, rescued from a pound. The firm, whose selections are sold in 20 states, has even been known to import a French wine labeled Cuvee Buster.

“I taste those top-scored wines,” said 53-year-old Mr. Dressner, “and I think that they don’t taste like anything that grows on the vine. They are pumped up and sculpted in terms of aromatics and taste.” It should come as no surprise that Louis/Dressner, distancing itself from most of the wine world, sends no samples to the Wine Advocate. “We’re on hostile terms with Robert Parker,” the irascible Mr. Dressner said. “It would be hypocritical to send wines for his approval.”

So what kind of wine does meet with Louis/Dressner’s approval? Those with “no gobs, no exaggerations, no over-this and over-that,” and no “fruit bombs,” according to the company’s Web site. All 15,000 cases imported by the firm issue from wine makers who ferment using only the slow-acting, natural yeasts present in the vine yard rather than cultured yeasts selected to rush fermentation or to add “enhancing” aromas and flavors. These wine makers filter their wines minimally or not at all so as not to strip away flavor. Chapitalization, the process of adding sugar to the fermenting juice to boost alcohol, is also kept to a minimum. Most striking is the firm’s policy of selling only wines made from hand-harvested grapes, even as labor costs grow and machine harvesters improve.

I made the mistake, upon first meeting Mr. Dressner, of mentioning that I’d recently opened a bottle of Menetou-Salon, a white wine from the Loire, which I was pretty sure that his firm, a specialist in Loire wines, had imported.

“Not a chance,” Mr. Dressner replied.

“But I haven’t told you who made the wine.”

“We don’t import any Menetou-Salon,” Mr. Dressner said, “because everything there is machine-harvested.”

With hand picking, Ms. Louis explained, “you pick only grapes – not twigs, snails, and insects, along with unripe or rotten grapes. A human picker can discriminate between good and bad grapes. Also, the machine shakes the vines and eats them up, which results in grapes being crushed prematurely.”

Mr. McKenna, who was a manager at Astor Wine & Spirits before starting to work with Louis/Dressner in 1995, said that the firm didn’t always insist on hand harvesting. “As human labor in French vineyards was getting more expensive,” Mr. McKenna said, “experiments were done showing that hand-harvested wines tasted better. Customers tasting our wines also consistently say that there is a precision of fruit flavor in them. We are convinced it comes from hand harvesting.”

Mr. Dressner and Ms. Louis met in 1982 as graduate students in journalism at New York University. They were married in 1984 and spent the summer in the Maconnais, the French wine region where the family of Ms. Louis’s grandmother had lived for centuries. “We starting tasting around,” says Ms. Louis. “By 1986, we’d decided that it would be great to represent a handful of traditional winemakers in America.” Goodbye, journalism.

It wasn’t so easy to find those independent winemakers. Big cooperatives controlled the Maconnais. “They ripped out old vines to make way for the machines to come through,” Mr. Dressner said. “Then they planted high-yielding clones and used herbicides in huge quantities. And peasants stopped doing things in the vineyards that they had been doing forever.”

But there are holdouts that make wine traditionally, and Louis/Dressner seeks them out. Hubert Laferrere, for example, is the “one and only” remaining independent winemaker in the village of Lugny, home to cooperative-made Macon-Lugny “Les Charmes,” America’s largest selling white burgundy at about $10 a bottle. Laferrere’s rich, vivid Macon-Lugny, Domaine Saint-Denis, 2002 ($16), a Louis/Dressner exclusive, comes from a mere two-acre plot of 60-year-old vines.

Since its first importation of French wines from the Macconais in 1988, the firm has expanded to the Cote d’Or, Beaujolais, the Loire, Bugey, Languedoc-Roussillon, the Rhone Valley, Provence, and Alsace. Louis/Dressner also imports superb ports from Quinta do Infantado and, for the first time this fall, traditional wines from Italy. The Italian connection came through French wine makers who recommended Louis/Dressner to their like-minded colleagues in Italy. “These growers want to keep to the old ways,” said Mr. McKenna, a fluent Italian speaker. “But it’s as hard to do in Italy as in France.”

Several of the 127 wines that were featured at last week’s Louis/Dressner tasting, several of which were already sold out due to what Mr. Dressner called “anecdotal quantities,” are not likely to show up elsewhere. Just try to find, for example, the rich, even honeyed Peillot Altesse 2003 from Bugey in eastern France. Or half-bottles of Frick Pinot Noir Rot Murle 2002 “Sans Soufre” ($24) from white wine-dominated Alsace. Commenting on this wine in the tasting catalog, Mr. Dressner wrote, “Half bottles of Alsatian pinot noir without sulfur. Hmmm. Why do I worry about sending my children through college?”

Leaving the Louis/Dressner tasting, I noticed a poster for Yellow Tail wines on the wall of the East 4th Street building housing the firm’s office. That Australian phenomenon, with American sales reaching 7 million cases this year, represents the muscle of the wine world. Louis/Dressner represents its soul.

Where To Buy Louis/Dressner Selections

Good stocks of Louis/Dressner Selections can be found at Garnet Wines & Liquors (929 Lexington Ave., 212-772-3211), Astor Wines & Spirits (12 Astor Place, 212-674-7500), Chambers Street Wines (160 Chambers St., 212-227-1434), and Whole Foods Wine Store (10 Columbus Circle, 212-823-9600). The following Louis/Dressner wines are in good supply:

MUSCADET, DOMAINE DE LA PEPIERE, OLLIVIER 2003 ($10): Intense and stony, this is the ultimate wine with flounder and other delicate-flavored seafood. Look for “Clos des Briords,” Pepiere’s single-vineyard bottling from old vines. It’s that rare muscadet that can age for many years.

“LES HERETIQUES,” CHATEAU D’OUPIA, MINERVOIS, 2003 ($7): Red wine made from 100% Carignan – not an aristocratic grape but an exceedingly flavorful one. Raspberry-inflected and full-bodied, it’s a great value.

BOURGOGNE, CUVEE GRAVEL 2002, Claude & Catherine Marechal ($28): Deep, violet-scented nose. Comes on gently but firmly on the palate with a billow of pinot noir flavor. It’s expensive for a basic Burgundy, but it tastes expensive, too.

BERA MOSCATO D’ASTI 2003 ($15): Some sparkling wines from this grape merely taste candied. This one is intensely floral. I’ll go out on a limb and suggest this wine would easily navigate the Thanksgiving table. Unlike dry wines, it won’t turn nasty with the cranberry sauce.