Often I’ve thought of how much malicious fun it would be if we could pluck the greatest wine fancier of, say, 1900, from his favorite restaurant – it would surely be a man, as wine-fancying back then was exclusively a “manly” thing – and plunk him in a good American restaurant today. “Choose a wine,” we’d suggest. Then we’d sit back and watch his mustaches droop. He would no more know how to read today’s best wine lists than he would the Rosetta stone.

If you look at wine lists from even the greatest restaurants in Paris, London, or New York at the previous turn of the century, you’d be shocked at the limited selection. You’d see a smattering of Champagnes, a limited number of big-name Bordeaux, a few well-known German rieslings, some red and white Burgundies, and maybe a couple of Rhone reds such as Hermitage and Cote-Rotie. There would also be sherries, ports, Madeiras, and Sauternes, as well as a sweet Lachryma Christi (Christ’s Tears), an Italian wine grown on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius that once had an international following.

Today, of course, we see wines not just from everywhere (ho-hum), but from grape varieties almost no one had even heard of only a generation ago, let alone tasted. Then there’s the bounty of small producers.

Keep in mind that estate-bottling – where the grape grower makes, bottles, and sells his or her own wine – is a new wrinkle in the old face of wine. It dates to the 1930s at the very earliest and really only became common starting in the 1970s. In many old wine countries, such as Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and South Africa, estate-bottling really only began in 1980s and 1990s. It’s that new.

The latest trend is the revival of ancient grape varieties. Italy, inevitably, leads the way simply because it’s the world’s greatest repository of grape varieties. Even the Italians don’t really know how many different varieties they grow, but the number runs into the many hundreds.

Our Edwardian wine dandy wouldn’t have a clue about the following wines. But today’s wine lovers actively hunt them down because they offer not just value, but flavor distinction. And – let’s be honest – there’s a delicious “Gotcha!” when you serve them at a dinner party. Who knew such obscurity could taste so good?

HERE’S THE DEAL

TEROLDEGO 2000 OR 2001, FORADORI/GRANATO 2000 OR 2001, FORADORI

Forget cabernet, merlot, or even pinot noir. They’re grown everywhere. Been there, drank that. What you want to try is a tricky-to-say red wine variety grown only in a very small zone in northern Italy called teroldego (teh-RAHL-deh-go). Grown just north of the city of Trento, teroldego creates an unusually lush tasting wine with a deep, striking color. Unlike many Italian red grapes, it’s not especially acidic.

The premier producer of teroldego is Elisabetta Foradori, who has taken her small family winery and catapulted it to fame in every winelusting precinct from Tokyo to New York to Mexico City. Her two versions of teroldego – the lovely basic version sporting the varietal name and a richer, denser oakier bottling called Granato – are the benchmarks in the zone.

Which should you try? Both, actually. Start, of course, with the lower-priced bottling. It sells for about $20 a bottle, give or take a buck or two. You’ll find all the virtues of this exceptional red wine grape on display: deep ruby/garnet color; a fresh, intense, grapey scent with mineral notes and a rich, mouth filling flavor carried along by a smooth texture with only the barest hint of tannin. It’s the sort of red that cries out for pasta, pizza, a good steak, lamb chops, or a few room-temperature chunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano.

And what about Granato? Now we’re talking significantly more. Granato goes for between $40 to $50 a bottle, depending upon the vintage (2000 is more expensive, although 2001 is, if anything, better – go figure).

Granato is what stereo sorts would call “high rez.” It’s teroldego taken to another level of flavor resolution: richer, denser, more delineated, and just plain superior. It also sees some oak in the form of small French barrels, the tannins (and vanilla) of which are discreetly present but not at all intrusive. Simply put, Granato is memorable, great red wine wafting notes of black raspberry and crushed stones. Serve it with simple, soulful food such as a good roast chicken, lamb shanks, dry-aged steak or something similarly flavor-rich but unfussy.

VERMENTINO DI SARDEGNA “COSTAMOLINO” 2003, ARGIOLAS

Although you hear a lot about Sardinia these days, it’s mostly all about tourism. Less well known, though, are Sardinia’s excellent wines.

If any one producer can be said to have put Sardinian wine on the world stage it’s the private company Argiolas. Where most of Sardinia’s wine is processed by uninspired winegrowers’ cooperatives, privately owned Argiolas has different, better ideas. Almost everything they issue, red and white, is worthwhile.

Vermentino is a white grape variety with a long history in Sardinia. Modern winemaking technology has transformed it, Cinderella-like, from a coarse, oxidized white wine into a polished beauty queen.

Argiolas’ 2003 vermentino, brand-named Costamolino, is a lovely dry white wine that’s redolent of wild herbs and a whiff of hay. It’s an ideal accompaniment to any fish dish you can imagine, from something as forceful as salmon to the subtlety of sole. The price is delicious, too: $11.95 a bottle.

CHIANTI RUFINA 2001, SELVAPIANA

What’s so esoteric about Chianti, you might reasonably ask? The answer is that Chianti made almost entirely of sangiovese, the great red grape of Tuscany, is now increasingly rare.

In the past 15 years the trend is to blend sangiovese with large dollops of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, or syrah. Why? Because it makes the wine darker and, above all, more familiar-tasting to foreigners like us. In other words, it tastes like – surprise! – cabernet sauvignon . Or merlot. Or syrah. All of these robust reds ride roughshod over sangiovese’s subtlety.

Selvapiana is a famous estate in the Rufina district (which lies just outside of Florence) that sticks to its traditionalist guns. This 2001 Chianti Rufina is almost entirely made of sangiovese, with just a touch of another local red grape called canaiolo nero. It sees very little new oak, the better for the purity of the fruit to be revealed. This is a characterful wine, filled with the sort of finesse that too many of today’s one-glass-and-you’ve-had-enough blockbusters so sorely lack.

Above all, here you can taste what sangiovese really is all about, namely, a dusty, dried berry quality delivered as effortlessly as a ballerina doing a plie. If you’re looking for a smooth red wine that you can actually drink (as opposed to merely taste), then Selvapiana is your ticket. And you can’t beat the price: $16.95 a bottle. By the way, the 2001 vintage is a standout year.