WINE SHOP ADVISER There’s a new guide in town. For an annotated, interactive map of 46 notable wine shops in New York City, check out www.DrVino.com. Shops are appraised for strengths (Nancy’s Wines for Riesling) or drawbacks (Italian Wine Merchants’ prices are “beyond the range of mere mortals”). Locations can be seen on a drawn map or in satellite view.

Dr. Vino is Tyler Colman, 34, who created the Web site three years ago after getting his doctorate in political science at Northwestern University. In Chicago, wine is sold differently than it is here. “One owner can have multiple shops, and wines can be sold in supermarkets. Not so in New York,” Mr. Colman said. “So when I moved here a year ago, I was overwhelmed by the wonderful diversity of shops. But they needed to be mapped, and so I used Google technology to put it all together.”

BEST WINE GUIDE The Wine Report 2006 (DK Publishing, $15) gets my vote as the best and most wide-ranging of all guides to wine trends. Lead writer Tom Stevenson and 40 highly opinionated regional specialists smoke out issues as diverse as overextraction of flavor by new-wave Spanish winemakers and the need for reducing the size of the Corton appellation in Burgundy. No winemaking region of the globe is neglected. For anyone contemplating a plunge into the wine auction arena, Anthony Rose’s tracking of last year’s gyrating prices is cautionary.

Wine Report’s final chapter, “100 Most Exciting Wine Finds,” is meaty and often offbeat, as in chardonnay from Luxembourg, Palomino from Brazil, and “Very Late Harvest” St. Pepin Ice Wine from Wisconsin. England’s Three Choirs Estate Reserve Bacchus 2003 is described as tasting of “cat pee.” If that seems unappetizing, thumb backward a few chapters to Serena Sutcliffe’s “Classic Wine Vintage Guide.” It’s delectable reading, even if few of us are privileged enough to savor the range of luxury wines she has sipped.

SALUTING SAUVIGNON BLANC Sauvignon blanc, which can take on as many guises as Cindy Sherman, is a second-string player at most Napa Valley wineries where “noble” grapes – such as chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Riesling – command the spotlight. But not at St. Supery. Earlier this month at EN Brasserie, the winery presented a tasting of nine examples of sauvignon blanc from points the world over.

“This isn’t a competitive tasting, it’s a relational tasting,” St. Supery winemaker Michael Beaulac said.

Well, yes and no. It was hard to see any relation between New Zealander Kim Craw ford’s snappy, grapefruity, 100% sauvignon blanc 2005 ($14.95) from Marlborough, and Chateau Carbonnieux’s 2003 version ($22.95) from Bordeaux. The latter was almost unctuous thanks to a dosing of lanolin-like, barrelaged Semillon. And there seemed to be a competitive strategy at work in the tasting, despite Mr. Beaulac’s claim to the contrary, in the choice of Didier Dagueneau’s Blanc Fume de Pouilly 2004 ($39.95). Dagueneau stands atop the Loire Valley white wine hierarchy with pricey wines that can taste like an entire meadow abloom in spring. Among St. Supery wines was the vineyard’s first designated bottling of its grassy “Dollarhide” sauvignon blanc, vintage 2004 ($28).

“Dollarhide,” a limited edition of 440 cases from Napa’s largest producer of sauvignon blanc, took the middle ground in this tasting. It had an intense array of citric aromas and tastes, melded with the herbal zing of freshly mown grass. It’s an oak-free wine. “Restaurant people know that sauvignon blanc works better than chardonnay with most dishes,” St. Supery’s CEO Michaela Rodeno said.

UNCOMMON TASTING Harlem Vintage, the welcoming wine shop located amidst an efflorescence of new residential construction on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, boasts all the conventional categories of wine on its shelves. But it also has one that may be unique in the city: the “Winemakers of Color Collection.”

“When we were thinking about how to distinguish our shop from others, we decided to showcase black winemakers,” co-owner Jai Jai Greenfield said. “Often, they haven’t had great distribution, so we had to seek them out.” Among the 14 wines currently available are South Africa’s Fairvalley Pinotage 2002, ($10.99), the sought-after Vision Cellars Sonoma Pinot Noir 2002 ($27.99), and Sheba Te’j Honey Wine ($11.99), an Ethiopian-style wine made in New York.

The “winemaker” designation isn’t strictly interpreted. In homage to a jazz great, for example, there’s a fine champagne, Paul Georg’s “Cuvee Lionel Hampton” Blanc de Blanc Brut NV ($39.99). And what about Il Palazzone, Rosso di Montalcino, 2000 ($21.99)? The owner of this Tuscan property turns out to be Richard Parsons, the chairman of Time-Warner.

The “Winemakers of Color Collection” will be poured at a free tasting at Harlem Vintage (2235 Frederick Douglass Blvd.) on Saturday, February 25, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. On Tuesday, February 28, the shop will offer a Fat Tuesday tasting of dessert wines with sweets from local bakeries.