Moments into my first visit to Vino, a pristine little wine shop on East 27th Street that’s easy to miss, I found myself chatting with a young salesperson named Jesse Kupferman, who held firmly iconoclastic views about chardonnay. The world’s most honored white wine grape, he said, “doesn’t really have much flavor,” and “really works only in cool climates where it can deliver heavy minerality.” Quite possibly, Mr. Kupferman would have given the back of his hand to certain chardonnays on Vino’s shelves. That didn’t seem to bother Charles Scicolone, the shop’s wine director. When I mentioned Mr. Kupferman’s strong opinion, he nodded benignly and said: “We need to have people on the floor who have real opinions, because we have a lot of wine nobody else has. We need to talk about wine before we sell it. We like to have dialogue with customers.”

It’s easy to guess from its name what Vino’s passion is: Italian wine and nothing but Italian wine – almost 600 selections. Such a single-minded, self-imposed limitation is abnormal in the wine retail world. The only other wine shops I can think of in the city that do the same are the nearby Italian Wine Merchants and Vintage New York, which sells only wines from the Empire State. Not that Mr. Scicolone feels he’s constrained: “We could throw out everything in the store,” he said, “and fill it up again without repeating any wines. We could do it just limiting ourselves to Piedmont and Tuscany.”

Normally, the way to introduce yourself to a wine shop is to walk right in. But a few painless preparatory steps can be taken before entering Vino, and they only require walking directly across the street. One of these steps is dining at I Trulli, a rambling, easygoing Italian restaurant emphasizing the culinary roots of owner Nicola Marzovilla, a native of Puglia, who owns Vino as well. I Trulli’s long wine list traverses all of Italy. Since many local restaurants don’t deign to sell wines for under $30, I was pleased to find plenty of bottles on I Trulli’s list priced in the mid-$20’s or lower. My choice at a light supper earlier this month was a simple yet character-filled Pugliese red wine called Eloquenza, made from the Negroamaro grape in Copertino. Priced at $24 at I Trulli, it is just $9 across the street at Vino, where all wines offered at the restaurant are sold.

Another way to “warm up” for Vino is to sidle up to Enoteca, the intimate wine bar also owned by Mr. Marzovillo and adjoining I Trulli. More than 50 wines are offered by the glass or, better yet, in various tasting flights of three wines each, grouped by region. Last Wednesday afternoon, I ordered a flight each of Piedmontese whites and reds, matched to flights of three cheeses proposed by Enoteca’s Bob Franco. Each wine spoke its own mind, and that could be off-putting. In the first flight, for example, I was underwhelmed by my first sip of La Spinona, a chardonnay made by Pietro Berutti in the Langhe region near Alba. Neither buttery nor open-textured in the modern style, this wine was reserved and steely. But with nibbles of Brinata, a Tuscan sheep’s milk cheese aged for 20 days, the wine suddenly opened up, even softened up. It and the cheese needed each other and deepened each other’s taste. A flight of three wines and a plate of cheese or cured meats, here called affettati, can be had at Enoteca for as little as $20.

Yet another arm of Mr. Marzovilla’s wine and food network is Vinoteca, an Italian wine school at 143 East 27th St. Its fall course schedule is expected to be posted next week at vinosite.com. Currently posted is “Our Man in Piedmont,” a diary kept by James Hutchinson, operations manager for I Trulli and Vino, during a 10-month sojourn in a town called Bra, headquarters of the Slow Food movement. The diary covers a range of experiences, from learning how to butcher a baby goat to poking around a musty cellar filled with great old bottles of Barolo.

Once you’ve tasted some of the wares at I Trulli and Enoteca, you’ll be better prepared for Vino, where wines are neatly arranged by region along opposing walls of the narrow space. So many labels will be unfamiliar to any but the most seasoned Italian wine geek, however, that browsing can turn daunting. Even if a displayed wine has received a high score from a rating publication, you won’t see it trumpeted here. “We have nobody’s ratings but our own,” Mr. Scicolone said.

This system is possible, he said, because he regularly scouts Italy for new wines, and none come in the store untasted by the staff. Many are exclusives. Just now, for example, Mr. Scicolone is high on a pair of “library selection” red wines called Grato Grati, made by Villa di Vetrice in the Rufina area of Chianti. They are from vintages 1979 ($45) and 1982 ($38). “They gave me lunch at the winery and one of the wines they served was this 1979 Grato Grati and I went crazy,” Mr. Scicolone said. While this pair of wines would normally rate the official place name “Chianti Rufina,” they are labeled simply as Tuscan red table wine. Mr. Scicolone guesses that these vintages may have been held too long in barrels to qualify for the higher designation. In any case, he said, “this is an older Sangiovese and I love this grape.”

RECOMMENDED WINES FROM VINO

PALAI, MULLER THURGAU DELLE DOLOMITI 2003, POJER & SANDRI ($19) When I asked the aforementioned Mr. Kupferman for an offbeat white with pizzazz, he handed me this. Made from a much-maligned poor cousin of Riesling in an unlikely region, Palai is gutsy, grainy-textured, and an ideal match, as it turned out, for a dish of turnips and their greens, an early offering from my farmer’s market.

SAN CLEMENTE “SUPER-TUSCAN” 2001 TRAVIGNOLI ($26) A new arrival and favorite of Mr. Hutchinson made from a nontraditional blend of sangiovese and cabernet sauvignon. “Super-Tuscan blends are normally aged in new oak, but this one was aged in old casks,” Mr. Hutchinson said, “so it’s a new wine made in an old way. It’s full-bodied and quite rich, its tannins are ripe and soft, and it has a nice earthy quality.”

AGLIANICO TERRE DEL VOLTURNO “NICOLA I” 2001, CAPUTO ($24) Dark, deep, and austere, Aglianico is a grape that can make even the casual sipper take notice. This one, from Campagna, has inky, explosively potent aromas as well. This is a wine to open when there’s a roast on the table and the cold winds blow once again.

LAMBRUSCO REGGIANO SOLO 2002, MEDICI ERMETE ($13) Not to be confused with the pale-pink, slightly sweet Reunite version that was the rage a few decades ago, this one, from a vineyard called Tenuta Quercioli, is colored a deep royal purple and is fully dry. It’s soft in the mouth but not flabby. Take this to a barbecue. This tasted good even after it went flat.

Vino, 121 E. 27th St., 212-725-6516, www.vinosite.com. Open Monday-Saturday, noon-10 p.m., Sunday, noon-8 p.m. Free tastings Friday and Saturday, 4-6 p.m.