One of the hidden secrets of wine is that much of what we think of as irrefutable good taste is … fashion. I can hear you already: Do you mean to say that there aren’t eternal verities to fine wine? There are indeed. More than most of my wine-writing colleagues, I’ve expended considerable verbiage on just that subject in one of my books (“Making Sense of Wine,” revised edition 2003).

Fine wine’s eternal verities include elements such as balance, finesse, complexity, and originality. But, curiously enough, what’s not included is taste. Taste is wine’s wild card, the fashion element that does not transcend time.

Think of wine as a dancer. A great dancer – anywhere, in any culture, at any time – always displays line, suppleness, and control. But what you dance matters not at all; it’s how you dance. Ditto with wine. Taste is only the choreography, which changes with fashion and preference.

Fine wines, by definition, always deliver whatever tastes they offer with certain essential attributes such as finesse and complexity. Even a wine fossil such as Retsina – an ancient Greek wine flavored with pine resin still popular with the modern Greek palate – offers the opportunity to distinguish better versions from worse. I can’t abide the stuff, but that’s just taste. The underlying, eternal qualities of finesse, complexity, and balance nevertheless remain. The ancient Romans, for their part, flavored their wines with seawater. Yet they were great connoisseurs, going on like the worst wine bore (another eternal wine verity, it seems) about the virtues of this or that Falernum. (A red wine, it’s still around today under the grape name aglianico.)

All of this is by way of pointing out that current tastes are just that. There’s nothing eternal or, for that matter, inevitable about the wines we like today. Tokaji and Sauternes were among the most highly priced, and praised, wines of the 1800s. Today, producers in Hungary (Tokaji) and France (Sauternes) are fighting desperately to prevent these sweet, rich wines from becoming irrelevant. And they’re profoundly great wines, too, not just amusing little wine squibs from yesteryear.

What’s more, most of the prescribed food and wine pairings – which are usually given to us as if inscribed on stone tablets schlepped from Mount Sinai – are also fashion driven.

Want proof? Take the hoary injunction “red wines with red meat.” Is it wrong? No, it works just fine. Technically minded sorts trot out specifics involving tannins, proteins, and saliva. (Makes your mouth water doesn’t it?) But it’s all just fashion. In the mid- and late 1800s Champagne commonly was served with prime rib. Red wine was saved for the cheese course.

Today, if you go to Alsace, you’ll be served dry riesling with their classic choucroute garnie, a pile of sauerkraut garnished with whacking hunks of cured pork and sausages. You’re wolfing down red meat like a hyena and you don’t even think about red wine. Red meat with riesling works just fine – if it’s the right riesling.

Moral of the story: If the food pairing is even remotely plausible, all really good wines can take care of themselves. The trick is finding really good wine.

HERE’S THE DEAL

RIESLING “CUVEE FREDERIC EMILE” 1999, TRIMBACH

One of the consistently great white wine bargains of our time is the dry riesling offered by the Trimbach family in Alsace. One of those great European wine families, Trimbach has been at it since 1626. It’s currently in the hands of the 14th generation, having been passed down from father to son like the family jewels.

Like other Alsatian wine shippers, Trimbach offers a range of wines, including multiple versions of rieslings, from basic ($15 a bottle) to a rare single-vineyard version (Clos Ste. Hune at $150 a bottle). But the steal is the riesling designated Cuvee Frederic Emile.

What makes this wine such a good deal is the fact that the grapes come from two Trimbach-owned parcels in the grands crus, Geisberg and Osterberg. Because the wine is a blend of the two, a grand cru vineyard name cannot be cited. The Trimbachs couldn’t care less. They’d rather you concentrate on the Cuvee Frederic Emile brand name.

This is flat-out great dry riesling, suffused with a steely, minerally fruit; bracing acidity; and a length that seemingly refuses to quit. A dry white wine like this can handle itself in any food setting, from sushi to steak. Ideally, the more age the wine has, the better. Great Alsatian rieslings such as this really only come into their own 10 years after the vintage. Because Alsace’s rieslings are still undervalued you can come across an occasional older bottle, often selling at the original (cheap) asking price. If you see one, grab it.

Currently on the shelves is the 1999 Cuvee Frederic Emile, which delivered a superb performance: ripe, intense, and beautifully balanced. Tasty as it is now, it really will do nothing but amplify in flavor and depth with additional cellaring. You would be well advised to buy multiple bottles and stow them in a cool place for a few more years, if it’s at all possible. $35.

A word to the wise: The 1999 vintage will soon be replaced with the just arriving 2000 vintage. It too is lovely, but it will be about 10 bucks a bottle more.

KING ESTATE “DOMAINE” PINOT GRIS 2003

A decade ago I predicted that pinot gris would be the next “big white.” I was correct (for once), but I was wrong on two counts: It didn’t happen as quickly as I predicted it would, and it didn’t happen under the name pinot gris. Instead, success came under the Italian name pinot grigio, fueled by the immense success of Santa Margherita pinot grigio, a best-selling, if bland, Italian import.

Today, pinot gris/pinot grigio is indeed a “big white.” In this country the biggest producer is Oregon, which to its credit ardently pursued pinot gris long before the Santa Margherita phenomenon. Oregon’s strict labeling regulations prohibits using the name pinot grigio, which now hamstrings its growers. (Ital ian restaurants want labels that say pinot grigio.)

Unfortunately, too many pinot gris bottlings – never mind whether from Italy, Oregon, California, Germany, or Alsace – are bland, watery affairs. A great pinot gris should be dense, rich, utterly dry, and offer a lip-smacking texture. Too many Oregon bottlings, to say nothing of the Italian versions, are overly light, thin, and flavorless. They’re “food friendly,” insist the producers, which conveniently allows them to reap high, lucrative vineyard yields resulting in characterless, bland grapes.

So you can imagine my surprise when I tasted Oregon’s King Estate first-ever “Domaine” bottling of pinot gris, drawn exclusively from King Estate’s own organically grown 250 vineyard acres in the southern Willamette Valley. Here, finally, is Oregon pinot gris as it should be: marvelously dense, rich, and succulent, offering headspinning whiffs of mandarin orange, melons, hay, and stones all deftly delivered with the just the right amount of balancing acidity. Oregon’s 2003 vintage was unusually warm, which pinot gris likes just fine.

This is superb pinot gris, indeed one of the best American bottlings yet produced. It has the finesse, balance, and complexity that distinguish fine wine from ordinary. Try this intense dry white wine with anything from a seafood stew to braised beef and you’ll see just how dimensional and big-scale it is. This is well worth the $20 (to be upped to $25 early next year) asking price.