Of all the wines we tasted this month, none met our criteria for a great wine as well as this fastidiously crafted Chardonnay from the Russian River Valley.

It's also the most compelling cult-like bottling we've tried this year, and with good reason: Peter McCoy met John Kongsgaard at a Napa Barbeque in the mid-1990s when Peter's winery was still in the formative stages. After some conversation, he convinced John to write down the "recipe" for the famous Kongsgaard Chardonnay on the back of a cocktail napkin.

Excellent Pinot Noir is hard to find.

Finding excellent inexpensive Pinot can be nearly impossible (see sidebar), requiring a holy confluence of factors to get it right.

California is best known for its blockbuster Cabernet, opulent Pinot Noir, and deep rich Chardonnay, not its pink wines ... unless you're talking about Cold Duck.

Unfortunately, it is this pungent and hangover-inducing 1970's brew of sweet red and sparkling white wine that most frequently comes to mind when most people think of California pink.

The latest generation of California winemakers is trying to change that by giving Cali rosé a sorely needed new identity.

As you know, the crush motto is "The truth is in the bottle" and my primary focus is finding great, uncommon wines and bringing them to you, regardless of ratings, reviews or point scores.

The Scholium Project "Naucratis," a verdelho (!) from rebel winemaker Abe Schoner, is easily one of the most original and unique wines that I have tasted from California. Abe's approach to winemaking (the project) is about letting the vineyard speak, and you can even tell from the packaging. While other wines contain cute pictures of animals or catchy designs, the only text on the front label of Abe's wines is the "Scholium Project." The back label contains simply the vintage, vineyard and sometimes the grape variety.

Abe Schoener's Scholium Project is definitely one of the most interesting, outrageous and original Cult Wine endeavors taking place in California today.

We've previously offered a number of his sometimes luscious and always cerebral wines and have been blown away by the responses.

From the "Old School Wine Geek" to the "Napa Cabernet Afficianado," so many of you have enjoyed these wines and come back for more, only to find them sold out. The diversity of Scholium die-hards is a true indication that these wines uniquely mix California muscle with Old World finesse.

The Santa Lucia Highlands has emerged as one of the star's of California's northern central coast. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are the key grapes that have excelled here and California Pinot Noir aficionados will no doubt know the Pisoni and Sleepy Hollow Vineyards of the Santa Lucia Highlands. These vineyards produce some of the most coveted (and most expensive) Pinot Noir and Chardonnay fruit in California.

The fruit grown here is like no other. Combining the intense, sun-soaked days with foggy afternoons and evenings, the region has an extremely long growing season - this is key - so harvest can occur as late as November. The resulting wines are intense and show a luscious fruit with dazzling freshness and firm spines of acidity.

One of the factors that allows the Santa Lucia Highlands to achieve such a combination of ripeness and poise is that the mountain ranges run east to west, which allows cool afternoon fogs to come in from the ocean unobstructed and to settle in the vineyards until the next morning sun burns them off.

Another factor delaying ripening and building balance are the infamous "howler" winds that start in the afternoon. The winds are so intense that they can cause the vines to shut down and stop focusing on ripening through a complex moisture-conservation process. Combine these factors with beautiful terraced vineyards that face southeast allowing for maximum sunlight and you can begin to get a sense of what the best of Santa Lucia has to offer.

We recently came upon a collector with a large caché of well stored verticals in multiple formats. The first in our series are the notoriously long-lived Cabernets of Dunn Vineyards. These dense, chewy, huge wines are tops in California, for lovers of intense, full-bodied style.

One of our specialties at Crush is finding rare, high-quality New World Cabernet Sauvignon for under $100. These are wines that have the palate impact of bottlings that sell for 50-200% more.

Small production wonders from this difficult-to-navigate category have been delighting our customers for the last year and a half.

Of note lately is the 2002 Peacock Family Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon.

We can�t tell you too much about this wine because its exact origins must be kept a secret. Yes, this is 007 meets the wine business.

What we do know is that 2005 Shelter Sauvignon Blanc from Napa Valley is blended from the top vineyards of one of the most famous winemakers in the region. Superstar vintners obviously don't want you to know where their extra juice goes, so it is sold with the promise that its identity will kept on the DL.

Back Up the Truck! Purist's Willamette Pinot
2006 Amalie Robert Pinot Noir Dijon Clones

Sounds downright Burgundian to us...

...but the motto actually doesn't belong to any producer in Burgundy. Instead, we find ourselves in Oregon with the soil- and vintage-signed wines of Dena Drews and Ernie Pink at the Amalie Robert Estate. These have been some of our favorite Willamette Pinots for over three years.