If you’re not much of a wine drinker (yet), you might not know that Alsace — that famed region that has sometimes been called Alsace-Lorraine and has flipped back and forth as part of Germany or France since the time of Charlemagne — is actually a vibrant winemaking region. The focus is primarily on white wine, although some light-bodied Pinot Noir is produced as well.

What makes Alsace different from other areas in France? For one, Alsace is one of the few French regions that produces varietal wines rather than blends, possibly due to the influence of winemaking in Germany, where wines are also usually single varietals: wines are named after the grape, rather than the region — virtually unheard of in the rest of France. Similarly, the grapes planted are much more German than they are French: Riesling and Gewürztraminer, for example, along with Pinot Gris, are the three most popular wines of Alsace.

Additionally, the Vosges Mountains cut Alsace off from the Atlantic climate that prevails in most of France. As rain moves from west to east toward Alsace, the mountains block it, leaving Alsace with the driest region in France (particularly in September and October, making for perfect harvest conditions). The sloping, stony foothills of the east side of the mountains provide ideal vineyard locations.

Rieslings from Alsace will probably be the easiest to find, are considered the best in the region, and are usually clean, stony wines with citrus fruit flavors. Alsatian wines are typically void of oak flavors, relying on the pure flavors of the grape and the soil. The Rieslings show that sense of place (or “terroir”) more than just about any other white wine, and as a result of the varied terrain of Alsace, they display a tremendous variety. Wines produced from vines growing at higher altitudes or on rocky soil will show different flavors than those grown in valleys or in loamy, clay soil.

Domaine Zind-Humbrecht (not exactly a French name) is a classic Alsace producer that makes outstanding Rieslings. The 2012 ($20, 90 points from Wine Spectator) displays really well-integrated floral notes, petrol (yes, believe it or not, gasoline is a typical Riesling characteristic), and apple aromas, with a palate of honey, orange, lemon, and apricot flavors. The wine is rich and, like most Rieslings, has an acidic backbone that make it very food-friendly.

Gewürztraminer in general is somewhat of an acquired taste, and those from Alsace are no different. The intensely floral, “perfumey” characteristics are somewhat odd to the novice wino. The 2012 Albert Mann Gewürztraminer ($20) is an intense wine with aromas of peach, honey, and perfume, followed by by bursts of spice, apple, lemon, lychee, and mango on the palate.

Pinot Noir is just about the only red you’ll find from Alsace, and these are normally light-bodied wines, again with very little oak. Trimbach, another classic Alsace producer, makes a Pinot Noir Reserve with fantastic earthy aromas of forest, subtle flowers, and spice, with cranberry and dark cherry flavors on the palate, and very soft, earthy tannins on the finish. Don’t stop with the Pinot Noir — try Trimbach’s Rieslings and Gewürztraminers as well.

Finally, Alsace also produces a fair amount of Pinot Gris, which is called Pinot Grigio in Italy and by some U.S. wineries. If you can find a bottle of Pierre Sparr Mambourg Grand Cru Pinot Gris, give it a try. The flavors are concentrated and intense, with a slightly viscous consistency, and flavors of tropical fruit like pineapple and tangerine, plus apricot, pear, and zesty acidity.

Alsace is also known for its sparkling wine, Crémant d’Alsace, which is widely available. The sparkling rosés are particularly worthwhile.

Alsace is definitely unique within France, and its wines make for a great change of pace. The price is usually right, too, with reasonably priced bottles widely available for $15 to $25.

Champagne and the Academy Awards seem to go together like ice cream and apple pie. It’s become a natural pairing: glitzy, glamorous Hollywood celebrities sipping the finest sparkling wine available. And if you feel like splurging on $100 or $1,000 bottles, go for it! But alternatives abound, including some unique, interesting sparklers.

You probably know that Champagne originates from the Champagne region of France, and only sparkling wine produced there can carry the name in that country. But plenty of comparable sparkling wine is produced elsewhere and for a lower cost. So how is sparkling wine made?

The process starts out similarly to normal wine: harvesting and crushing grapes into juice, and allowing the juice to ferment. Sparkling wine from France is either “Blanc de blancs,” made with white grapes, or “Blanc de noirs,” made with red or black grapes. Blanc de blancs are usually crafted from Chardonnay, while Blanc de noirs often use Pinot Noir and/or Pinot Meunier. Despite these Blanc de noirs being dark-skinned, the juice is drained off the skins almost immediately, so the wines still look “white,” much like the process used for many rosés.

After this, sugar and more yeast are added to the wine before it is bottled to undergo a second fermentation and aged “on the lees“. This is when the bubbles are created. Next, the bottles are stored at a 45-degree angle with the cork pointed down, then “riddled” — turned and gently shaken every few days — to force the dead yeast cells down towards the cork. The necks of the bottles are dipped in a freezing brine and turned right side up when the pressure builds enough to push the dead yeast cells (and a small amount of wine) out.

The expelled wine is replaced with a sugary mixture that determines how sweet or dry the sparkling wine will become, and then is finally re-corked. This is referred to as the “méthode champenoise” in Champagne, or the “traditional method” everywhere else. For designations of sweetness, drier bottles will typically labeled Brut (dry), Extra Brut (extra dry) or Brut Natural (driest).

Elsewhere in France, there are multiple “Crémant” (French for “creamy”) appellations which focus on sparkling wine. Crémant de Bourgogne (Burgundy) is one such appellation, and there are definitely smart buys to be found. Louis Bouillot Crémant de Bourgogne Rosé Brut Perle d’Aurore is one example — a rosé that, while not complex, has delicious creamy flavors of strawberry, cranberry, cream, and apple, and is very affordable.

Of course, there’s plenty of sparkling wine from France produced outside the well-known regions like Champagne and Burgundy. One of my favorites is the Domaine de Martinolles ‘Le Berceau’ Blanquette de Limoux. Limoux, in the western part of the Languedoc region, is one of the few places left on Earth planting the Mauzac grape, which must make up at least 90 percent of wines produced there. The wine is an easy drinking sparkler, with refreshing lemon and tart apple flavors that intertwine with yeasty bread, herbs, and fresh-cut grass. This is great with light appetizers or cheeses, but my favorite pairing is buttered popcorn — perfect for Oscars night. The lemony acidity cuts right through the butter. The Lucien Albrecht Crémant d’Alsace Brut Rosé is also a great sparkling rosé, with similar red berry flavors to the Louis Bouillot, but with an added fresh baked bread component.

If you are looking for something domestic, there are plenty of examples from California at decent prices. The Piper Sonoma Blanc de Blancs Sonoma County Select Cuvée is a solid purchase at $18, as is Korbel’s Brut Rose for an easy-drinking value buy at $15. But the Gruet Winery is creating some outstanding sparkling wine — in New Mexico, of all places. Their line of non-vintage sparklers is outstanding both in quality and price, falling between $15 and $18. The Gruet Brut has classic flavors of toast, yeast, apples, and a little lemon, while the Brut Rose exhibits creamy strawberry, raspberry, and tart cranberry flavors. I’m looking forward to trying the Extra Brut, Sauvage, and Blanc de noirs as well.

Finally, the new kid on the block is Cava, a sparkling wine from Spain. Cava is also produced using the méthode champenoise, but uses lesser known grape varieties including Macabeo, Parellada, and Xarel-lo. Cava is typically much less expensive than Champagne or California sparklers because it is still relatively unknown: the demand is low, so there are some good wines available for very good prices, sometimes less than $10. Cava typically shows less fruitiness than Champagne or Italian Prosecco (another sparkling wine worth trying) and more earthy, mineral, and citrus flavors.

Freixenet produces a variety of Cavas from sweet to dry, and their two driest, the Cordon Negro Brut and Cordon Negro Extra Dry, are both worthy of an Oscars party. The Brut shows plenty of grapefruit and lemon citrus, with hints of apple and ginger. The Extra Dry is just a little bit sweeter, with melon, peach, and earthy mineral flavors. Both are widely available for less than $15.

There are plenty of options out there and many sparkling wines are offered for a decent price. For most of us, the Academy Awards are an excuse to have a fun night, but it is by no means a huge milestone that requires a magnum of Dom Perignon. So try something new! Who gets your award for “Best Wine”?

My first real introduction to dry red wines was by way of Australia. The bold red wines produced there match the personality of its people: lively and exciting, with an explosion of flavor. Australian wines (and its people) are rarely subtle or boring.

Shiraz is the grape that really put Australian wine on the map, but it’s actually the same grape as Syrah, which is widely planted in France. The Syrah grape is the fourth-most-planted in France, with a large percentage grown in the Rhône valley, but like with most wines from that country, Syrah is often mixed with other varietals to make custom French blends.

In Australia, however, there are plenty of single varietal Shiraz bottlings. I use the term “single varietal” with some qualification: different countries have different rules about what can be put on the label. In Australia, up to 15 percent of the wine can be from a different grape while still being called a single varietal. (For example, a bottle labeled Shiraz might have up to 15 percent Cabernet Sauvignon blended in.)

Australian wine did not register on the radar of most drinkers in the United States until the 1990s, when imports rose dramatically (from 578,000 cases in 1990, to 20 million cases in 2004). The Shiraz/Syrah wines from Australia were and still can be big, tannic, jammy, full-flavored “fruit bombs” with a peppery finish.

If you’re like me and appreciate the tannins (which create that puckering, cotton-mouth sensation), Aussie Shiraz makes for an easy introduction to dry red wines, because of the overwhelming fruit flavor characteristics. (If you don’t like the tannins, try Merlot or Pinot Noir instead.) In my experience, wines from McLaren Vale and the Barossa Valley tend to fall in this “fruit bomb” category: rich, intense, with higher alcohol and flavor profiles in the “dark fruit” category, like black cherries and blackberries.

If the fruit bomb style is too over-the-top for you, not all Aussie Shiraz is that way. In cooler climate regions, like the Yarra Valley, Eden Valley, and Coonawarra, Shiraz is definitely more low-key, with “red fruit” characteristics, lower alcohol, and higher acidity. Check the region on the label before you make a quick purchase.

The “fruit bomb” style has predominated in Australian Shiraz, but the pendulum is swinging toward a blend of fruity and savory flavors with a little bit of restraint. But don’t worry — it’s still Australian wine, and “restraint” is a relative term.

Penfolds Grange is the premier Shiraz of Australia, ranking at the top of the wine world alongside Grand Cru Bordeaux blends. But it’ll set you back quite a bit — say, hundreds of dollars per bottle. I recently saw the 2008 selling for $850. Yikes!

Fortunately, Australian wine is flooding the market right now. In the early 2000s, when demand for Australian wine was huge, wineries planted more and more vines and increased production. Now that demand has plateaued, and even decreased on occasion, there’s more wine sitting around than there is demand for it. (Some have even called for wineries to rip vines out of the ground to lower future supply.) As a result, you can probably find some great Shiraz that won’t break the bank.

If you’re trying Aussie Shiraz for the first time, don’t bother with Yellow Tail; it’s not even sold in Australia, and Aussies themselves laugh about Yellow Tail the same way they do about Foster’s Beer. Instead, check out Jacob’s Creek or Rosemount Estate for inexpensive introductions.

For a bit more cash, around $18 to $20, the 2008 Blackbilly Shiraz is great: a dark garnet, almost purple, color with crushed dark fruit on the nose, intense dark berries on the palate, hints of coffee, chocolate, and a little bit of a savory, gamey flavor. The 2010 Gatekeeper Shiraz is nice as well, showing raspberry, licorice, and chocolate on the nose, with flavors of cherries, plum, and black pepper on the palate, for a cool $14.

There is some debate as to the value of of aging Australian wines. Many ask if the flavors will hold up after 15 or 20 years. In the past, most people said they would not. But in recent years, some experts have begun to change their minds.

In my own experience, the best Australian Shiraz I’ve ever had was The Gate from the excellent 2002 vintage. This was by no means a top-dollar bottle, but after 11 years in my cellar, my wife and I drank it for our fifth wedding anniversary and it performed beautifully: dark berries, licorice, dusty and aged on the nose. A mix of blueberries and blackberries, vanilla, savory herbs, leather, crushed black cherries, molasses, and licorice on the palate. The finish was gloriously long. Not overly complex, but the time spent in the cellar brought out some great flavors.

Aged or not, Shiraz is a spectacular introduction to dry red wines, and the Australian single varieties are often a delicious choice.

Poor rosé. Recent decades have not been kind to the pale wine, due in large part to that dreaded enemy of serious winos everywhere, White Zinfandel. But rosé has a long history in the wine world, from its heights as the premier wine of the Western world to its lamentable current position as merely an afterthought.

Rosé wines are, for the most part, actually red wines. In all red winemaking, grapes are crushed and the juice is allowed to rest in a tank with the broken skins; this mixture of juice and skins is called “must.” The juice pulls flavors and colors from the broken skins during maceration. After a period of time determined by the winemaker, the must is pressed, and the skins discarded. Here’s the key: how long the juice is in contact with the skins determines whether the wine will be red or rosé: The less time, the paler the rosé; the more time, the deeper the red.

(The solid parts of the must, called “pomace,” are sometimes reused in certain brandies, including grappa.)

Believe it or not, rosé was actually the preferred style of wine for centuries. The Greeks and Romans both allowed minimal grape skin contact time. Winemaking technology was primitive, and when red wines were attempted, they were often harsh or bitter. Instead, grapes were crushed by hand (or rather, by foot) and juice was drained off the skins almost immediately, creating a pale pink wine. This practice continued for centuries, well into the Middle Ages. During England’s Elizabethan Era, pale “clarets” (the British term for Bordeaux vintages) were the preferred wine.

As techniques advanced, rosé was forced to share the limelight with powerful reds. The tipping point for rosés came after World War II. Two Portuguese wineries began producing popular, sweet, sparkling rosés. At the same time, white wine was surging in demand, and California wineries found themselves flush with red wine grapes. California vintners began making sweeter “white” wines from red wine grapes, using minimal skin contact time. This gave birth to the generic term “blush” in the 1970s, as well as to Sutter Home’s infamous White Zinfandel.

Americans who didn’t normally drink wine gravitated toward the sweet White Zinfandels, so some wineries began to copy that style in their rosé offerings. Wines labeled rosé became confusing — was the bottle going to be sweet or dry? Eventually, “serious” wine drinkers gave up on rosé, especially in America, assuming that most would be too sweet, and they stuck to dry reds and whites.

During the last decade, however, high quality rosé has seen a resurgence. Perhaps those novice wine drinkers of the 70s and 80s have finally grown up, or perhaps more adventurous drinkers are willing to take a chance on the pale wine. Whatever the reason, in 2010 alone, U.S. retail sales of imported rosés of $12 or more increased by almost 20 percent in volume, a rate of growth well ahead of total table wines.

So where should you start exploring this reinvigorated segment of the wine industry? France, naturally, and Provence in particular. Provence, on the southeast Mediterranean coast, has been, and continues to be, the standard-bearer of rosé wine worldwide. It is one of the few regions on Earth that produces more rosé than red or white. And why not? The traditional cuisine of the region, full of fish and fresh vegetables, is a perfect match for light bodied, fruit-forward, acidic, dry and off-dry rosés.

Chateau Montaud is a fantastic example. At $10 to $12, the wine is inexpensive and has terrific strawberry, cherry, and herbal flavors, with hints of melon and tart apple. The zingy acidity makes it food-friendly, especially with light appetizers or cheeses, salmon, and shellfish. It’s really refreshing and is my go-to rosé.

Elsewhere in France, the Tavel appellation along the Rhône River (in the Côtes du Rhône) is another prominent rosé region. Tavel wines are 100 percent rosé: no reds or whites are allowed to be produced. Some wineries here drain part of the must off the skins early, after only 12 to 24 hours, while the rest is left to macerate longer, imparting more powerful flavors. These two batches are then blended together to create rosés with higher alcohol content (up to 13.5 percent), darker coloring, and more intense flavors. (Contrast the light bodied rosés from Provence with these full-bodied offerings.)

Check out the Domaine des Carteresses Rosé, for around $12 or $13. The color is a far deeper pink than the Chateau Montaud, with a level of intensity more like a light-bodied red wine. On the palate, you’ll find watermelon, red berries, grapefruit, and tart apple characteristics and a clean mineral finish. (Try it with chicken barbecue.)

Most French wines are blends of multiple grape varieties, and French rosés are no exception. Both Provence and Tavel winemakers primarily blend Grenache, Mouvedre, Syrah, and Cinsault grapes in their rosés.

There are, of course, plenty of other options when purchasing rosé from elsewhere in Europe and in the United States. Outside of France, the regions of Navarra and Rioja in Northern Spain make delicious rosados — though rosé is not the big focus there as it is in Provence and Tavel. In my earlier column about Finger Lakes wine, for example, I mentioned that wineries in that region make rosés, and I have purchased quite a few — though I did have the chance to taste them first, which I recommend.

Be warned that rosé is sometimes an afterthought for wineries. The best red wine grapes go to the red wines, leaving lesser quality grapes for rosés. Some other wine regions in France use the saignée method: draining some juice off the skins after limited contact and bottling it as a rosé, while leaving the rest of the juice on the skins to make a more powerful red wine. And let’s be clear with this method: the red wine is the true focus; the rosé is bottled quick and cheap for short-term income, while the red ages in barrels for months or years before bottling.

Personally, I’d rather drink a rosé that was the focus of the winemaker, which is why I mentioned Provence and Tavel. Bottom line: unless you have a chance to taste before you buy, try a rosé from a region known for the style — and dump that White Zinfandel bottle. For a picnic or hot summer day, a dry rosé is tough to beat.