Dinner parties, like summer camp, have a way of throwing you together with people you might otherwise not meet — or want to. Recently, I found myself at a small dinner party with a species of wine lover I assiduously try to avoid: the star-seeker.

This fellow, who was in his late 30s, was interested to the point of obsession with drinking famous wines and meeting the winegrowers who made these wines. “I want to meet Bruno Giacosa,” he exclaimed.

When I gently pointed out that Mr. Giacosa, 77, recently suffered a stroke and is likely in no condition to be meeting anybody, my stargazer was unfazed. “I want to able to say that I shook his hand,” he said.

Evangelist that I am (however un-Christian I may be in my thoughts) I suggested — less gently this time, I admit — that he should find his own stars. He should get out and explore less well-known areas and meet upand-comers who might very well become the stars of his era.

This advice was unsatisfying.”How can I know wine if I don’t taste the great vintages of the past?” he declared. Interesting and educational though that exercise surely is, I suggested that it’s not essential. The way to wine enlightenment, I said in my best Yoda fashion, is through fascination with today’s wines.

He wasn’t having it. But you should. The following wines will bear me out. They are new stars — or soon will be — in today’s wine firmament.

HERE’S THE (STELLAR) DEAL

ITSAS MENDI “BIZKAIKO TXAKOLINA” 2005 You thought French wine names were difficult to pronounce? Hah! You can’t beat Basque for apparent unpronounceability. Actually, it’s not as hard as it (literally) looks. The key is that “tx” in Basque comes out sounding like “ch.” Txakolina therefore sounds like “chocoleen-ah.”

Still, what have we got here? What we’ve got is the kind of New Wave wine that makes today’s wine modernity so exciting. Bizkaiko Txakolina is a district name in the Basque region, where Spain meets France. (In Spanish it’s Chacolí de Vizcaya.)

Never heard of it, you say? Then it’s a good bet that the grape variety will be new to you, too (it sure was to me): hondarrabi zuri. I kid you not.

Hondarrabi zuri is a white grape native to the Basque country that creates a citrus-inflected, dry white wine that in the unusually ripe 2005 vintage created an unusually lush, succulent dry white wine.

One of the top producers is Bodegas Itsas Mendi. This is the only wine they make, which makes it mercifully easy to inquire after. It’s packaged in a clear bottle with a dazzlingly modern label arrayed in orange, lime, and yellow. It looks like something designed by the ’60s Pop artist Peter Max, yet is really quite wonderful.

So’s the wine. This is delicious, lush dry white wine with a faint, inviting scent of orange blossom and lemon zest. The texture is unusually dense yet excellent acidity buoys the wine handsomely.

If you want to see why today’s wine modernity is so gratifying, then you have to try this Spanish white. Happily, it’s well distributed by its national importer, Winebow. $17.95.

CHABLIS “CHAMPS ROYAUX” 2004/2005, WILLIAM FÈVRE How is it possible that Chablis, one of France’s most ancient wine districts, could be considered an exemplar of modernity? Put it under the category of “new wine in old bottles.”

The short version is that its namesake originally created Domaine William Fèvre in 1959 (under the name Domaine de la Maladière). Mr. Fèvre sold the estate — which owns an impressive 116 acres of vines in Chablis — in 1998 to Joseph Henriot, a man from Champagne who made a bundle in bubbly and three years earlier had bought the Burgundy shipper Bouchard Père et Fils.

Prior to the sale of Domaine William Fèvre, the wines of the estate were marred by excessive oak. It was heavyhanded winemaking at its worst, as it obscured Chablis’ unique-on-the-planet taste and scent of liquid seashells. The new owner soon stripped this unfortunate varnish of oak and a cornucopia of lustrous Chablis wines emerged.

Chablis “Champs Royaux” is Fèvre’s so-called basic Chablis. But to call it that is an injustice. This is superb, true-toits-place Chablis — 100% chardonnay by law — that delivers the unique Chablis goods of intensive minerality in taste and scent allied to impeccably clean, respectful winemaking. Tasty today, it will do nothing but improve over the next five years.

If there’s a better Chablis at this bargain price, I haven’t tasted it. $16.95.