White Wine

2001 Chateau Ste. Michelle Pinot Gris, Columbia Valley ($13). This reliable Washington winery's debut with this increasingly popular white-wine grape is typically impressive. It's a dry wine in the style of a very good Italian pinot grigio, as opposed to an Alsace pinot gris (same grape). There's good pear and melon fruit, with a hint of lime, but the dominant impression is of minerals and herbs - including a nuance of mint. It's a refreshing wine that should go well with seafood, salads or fresh fruit.

This well-balanced white wine is an imaginative blend of Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, Chardonnay, Semillon, Roussanne, Pinot Blanc, Riesling and Muscat Canelli drawn from vineyards around California. It comes to the palate as a very fruity wine, but leaves with a dry impression. It offers vibrant flavors of grapefruit, lime, pear, kiwi, honey and white pepper. It's immediately appealing, but with some complexity too. Drink it while it's young. Wine Find: 2009 Kendall-Jackson Summation From: California Price: $14 Serve with: Salmon, fried chicken

From: Valle Central, Chile Price: $10 Serve with: Salmon, ham, poultry I'm not a big fan of Chilean chardonnays, most of which seem heavy and clunky, but this one I found very appealing — especially at this price. It combines the standard flavors of New World chardonnay — apple, lemon and vanilla — but does so with admirable balance and harmony. It's not a great dry white wine, but it is a great value. — Michael Dresser

Fish is one of the best options for quick cooking, but it can make a mundane meal unless you use a little creativity.Unfortunately, some timid cooks feel insecure about cooking seafood the right way, and they stick to formulas.They buy the same fish fillets -- flounder one time, salmon the next.They dab the fish with butter, squirt it with lemon and broil.Next time try a firm fish that you can put on skewers, such as swordfish or marlin.Prices vary widely, but if you go to a seafood market like Faidley's in Lexington Market you can find the swordfish for about $9.95 a pound and the marlin for $6.95.

In wine, as well as in life, the exceptions are a lot more interesting than the rules. One of the most reliable rules about wine is that if it's white and dry, it won't age well. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time that's good, solid information for anyone interested in starting a wine collection. Then you run into a wine that turns the rule on its head, swings you around in the air and makes you love it. Such a wine, in my case, was the 1991 Zind-Humbrecht Rangen de Thann "Clos St. Urbain" Riesling from Alsace.

2001 Dry Creek Vineyard Dry Chenin Blanc, Clarksburg ($9). Once again, Dry Creek Vineyard has come through with a white wine of extraordinary quality for its price. Fans of this wine can only hope that the masses continue to swill chardonnay and ignore the excellent and inexpensive chenin blanc grape, which requires no oak aging to be palatable. This year's version manages to be both very dry and very fruity - with an exotic mix of melon, cherry, tropical fruit and peach flavors - seasoned with honey and spices.

2005 Zaca Mesa Roussanne, Santa Ynez Valley ($25) The little-known roussanne white-wine grape is best known as one of the two main varieties used in making the white wines of Hermitage in France's Rhone Valley. The grape produces big white wines, full of flavor and with body that makes most chardonnays seem skinny, both there and in California. This well-made example is quite faithful to the Rhone style, with mouth-filling flavors of peach, pear, tropical fruit and spices such as clove and nutmeg.

Standing up to the wide variety of flavors on the traditional Thanksgiving table is a tall order for a white wine, but few do it as well as a well-made Alsace Gewurztraminer. This wine, from the venerable and well-distributed Hugel firm, is powerful and concentrated, dry despite the sweet impression given by the voluptuous, spicy fruit. It's a long-finishing, gripping wine with flavors of peaches, pears, mulling spices and a hint of orange. If you're serving turkey and you can't find this at the last minute, ask a knowledgeable wine merchant to recommend an Alsace Gewurztraminer or pinot gris.

Pierre Franey and his series of 60-Minute Gourmet cookbooks taught a generation of Americans the versatility and speed of the classic French saute. Franey would cook whatever was for dinner - chicken or beef or veal or fish - deglaze the cooking pan with red or white wine, tomato sauce or whatever, and then enrich the sauce with stock or cream or both. The technique would always be the same, but the results were markedly, deliciously, different. This dish of boneless chicken breasts paired with roasted red peppers in a mustard- and cream-laced sauce is an adaptation of one of Franey's recipes.