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Sparkling wine will be called on to make many a Valentine’s Day dinner romantic, but the bubbles needn’t burst the budget. This week I have three moderately priced sparklers to set the mood. Two are made from riesling, one from Germany’s Mosel region, the other from New York’s Finger Lakes. The third is a charming Italian spumante from Campania that takes us on time travel back to an ancient era.

If you haven’t had a good Riesling in a while, take a good look at the wine lists of some of your favorite restaurants. Riesling is definitely on the rise and more and more sommeliers are including their favorites on wine lists. We have seen quality offerings in the most unlikely places, such as New York City steakhouses, Atlanta rib joints, Vancouver dim sum restaurants and Michelin starred temples of fine dining in Paris.

Dry January is in full swing, and while there are more and more nonalcoholic options on the market, from canned cocktails to nonalcoholic spirits, sometimes all you want is to pour yourself a nice glass of wine — alcohol-free wine, that is. Whether you’re hanging out at home bingeing on Real Housewives or heading to a dinner party at a friend’s, we’ve found plenty of wines that will please those on the detox train or are sobering up for the month. These are so delicious that even those that aren’t doing Dry January will want a sip.

Every service professional has that one item they wish guests would be more open to trying. For some, it’s an obscure cut of beef or a special type of stinky cheese. Among sommeliers, whose job is to tempt their guests away from the familiar grapes and regions, many have a pet region or grape that they spend years convincing guests to try.

When it comes to popping the cork and ringing in the New Year, swap Champagne for Sekt—German sparkling wine—and save some dollars.

Our German Wine of the Year for 2022, the Künstler Riesling Rheingau Hölle GG 2021, says so much about the radical transformation German wine has undergone during recent years and about what makes high-end offerings from the country such a great choice today.

Drinking wine is a fleeting pleasure. You sniff, sip, savor it in your mouth, swallow and move onward. Soon enough, the wine is gone. What sets wine apart are the memories after consumption. Wine’s power to conjure up a moment, an emotion and a sense of time and place is uncanny.

The salty, savory flavors of a good charcuterie board are an easy way to please a crowd this holiday season, but what about the best wine pairings?