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If you’re lusting after some seductive and downright sexy wine for Valentine’s weekend, then look no further than Poetic Cellars. Winemaker Katy Lovell has absolutely nailed it when it comes to making the ultimate romantic nectar.

On the back label of every bottle of Poetic Cellars wine, you will find a poem—and don’t poetry and romance go together like Napoleon and Josephine? I always find myself heaving a sigh when sipping the gorgeous wines of this winery, which is celebrating the one-year opening of its tasting room in Soquel.

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Hallcrest Vineyards has been around for a long time. Nestled on a hill in the town of Felton, it was originally a retreat in the late 1800s for the Hall family, who actually planted the Hallcrest Estate vineyard. The on-site winery, which was started in 1945, is still in use today. When releasing its first wine in 1946, it was one of only three vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Today, there are about 70 wineries belonging to the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association (SCMWA) – with new ones springing up all the time.

It’s rather difficult to pair wine with Indian food. Typically, Indian people do not drink wine with their food. Those wonderful hot and spicy dishes need the cooling flavors of lassi, chai—or just plain water. But friends had invited my husband and I to an authentic Indian meal at their home for 10 people cooked by a lady from Goa on the west coast of India, so I searched for something light to go with the food—and Aptos Vineyard’s Chardonnay ($17 from DeLuxe Foods of Aptos) seemed like just the ticket. It’s an uncomplicated wine with a fruity palate—and with just the sort of apples and pears aroma needed for a zesty Goan feast. It’s certainly not the “buttery” Chardonnay that many wine tasters expect—being much more crisp and perky.

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It took me ages to choose a bottle of Syrah for one of Ma Maison’s Brown Bag dinners. The choices from our local wineries are many. Finally, I plumped for a bottle of Savannah-Chanelle 2006 Monterey County—Coast View Vineyard ($21). I have visited Savannah-Chanelle dozens of times and have always been impressed with their wines. They do a splendid job of turning out excellent varietals—in large part thanks to their winemaker Tony Craig. Also, as a judge for the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers commercial wine competition last year, I know that this particular wine won a well-deserved silver medal with 86 points.

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A couple of friends from Barcelona invited me and my husband and some other people over for paella. They are here for a few weeks and promised they would cook this delicious Spanish dish for me a few times during their stay. Since they were preparing two different kinds of paella—a typical shellfish one and another of chicken and sausage—I knew I would be safe taking a bottle of Zayante Vineyard Zinfandel for us to share. Zayante’s beautiful wines are all estate grown and bottled—and reasonably priced as well. This particular Zin is a mere $13.99 at New Leaf.

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Although I had a huge dose of jet lag, having been back home from a month in Europe for a matter of hours, I hightailed it out to Roudon-Smith Winery on a cold and rainy Saturday in December. After all, it was their annual holiday event of wine and chocolate tasting, and—chocoholic that I am—I did not want to miss out on some delicious chocolaty samplings with some of my favorite wines.

My husband was already at the winery when I arrived—going straight there from a meeting—and standing under the redwoods to save me a parking space. Roudon-Smith is in a bucolic setting a couple of miles down Bean Creek Road in Scotts Valley. It’s owned and operated by Annette and David Hunt and their partner Al Drewke. All of them were there to greet us and chat about wine— and the inclement weather.

There’s an old British song that goes: “Have some Madeira, m’dear. You really have nothing to fear.”

This song came to mind when I bought a bottle of Quinta Cruz Verdelho. The Verdelho grape, like the famous Madeira, both come from Portugal. Verdelho has been cultivated since about the 1400s in a region of Portugal that makes dry wine—and is also one of the grapes used in the making of Madeira.

It takes somebody like Jeff Emery, a master winemaker better known with his other label – Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard—to want to make something really different. He most certainly likes the challenge of steering away from the usual – preferring to make a wine that’s a step or two from the mainstream—and he started the Quinta Cruz label with this goal in mind.