Some cool — and very different — events are on the local docket in the coming weeks:

*Meritage, my favorite downtown St. Paul restaurant, is having a fun weekly promotion (for cork dorks, at the very least) called “Blind Wednesday.” For $15, guests on Wednesday get a flight of three wines (3-ounce pours). They try to answer four questions on each wine and get 50 cents off for every correct answer. The flight is free for anyone who answers all 12 questions correctly. It wouldn’t be the worst idea to sample from Meritage’s amazing cheese cart while taking the challenge.

*For those who think green, Artisan Vineyards is hosting a tasting benefitting the Land Stewardship Project at 6 p.m. on July 28. Besides sampling some tasty organic and sustainable wines from Oregon, attendees can chat up two viticulturalists and three winemakers (St. Innocent’s Mark Vlossak, A to Z and Rex Hill’s Michael Davies and Torii Mor’s Jon Tomaselli. Pre-registration is required for the $20 event; call 651-487-1212 or go here.

*“Wine That’s Found Its Time: Minnesota Vineyards” is the theme of the University of Minnesota’s Curiosity Camp session on July 29. Grape guru Peter Hemstad will delve deeply into his favorite topic, including the process of “tweezing,” which is essential to developing grape vines that work here. Wanna know what “tweezing” means? Sign up for the 9:30 a.m-4:30 p.m. session, which starts at the St. Paul campus and then heads out to local vineyards. Cost is $135; call 612-624-4000.

Minnesota’s oldest winery has long had an apropos slogan: “Where the grapes can suffer.” Unfortunately, that catchphrase is proving all too true at Alexis Bailly Vineyards.“I lost 80 percent of my vineyard,” proprietor/winemaker Nan Bailly told me earlier this week.

She’s not sure why. It was a long but not especially cold winter, with decent snow cover during the worst stretches. “It hit 22 below” at the vineyard near Hastings, she said, and “we’ve been in a drought the last 4, 5 years. This year we had ¾ of an inch of rain from snow melt till the 1^st of June.”

Oddly (or maybe not), the grapes that have been developed locally for their cold-hardiness fared worst during the winter. “I lost 90 percent of my Frontenac,” Bailly said. “But my French grapes that my father planted in 1973 have shown no stress. The Marechel Foch and Leon Millet came through no problem.”

Bailly added that she will get a waiver on the Minnesota law that requires wineries to use at least 50 percent state-grown grapes in the overall wine output, until she can get new vines up and going. And I wouldn’t expect her to plant a whole lot more Frontenac, even though her very tasty Voyageurs blend contains about 30 percent Frontenac. “I think Frontenac does better in a warmer climate,” she said. “I think the heat in states like Illinois gives it a juicier fruit flavor.” said Bailly.

That point actually was relevant to the reason I originally had called Nan: the announcement that for the first time, Minnesota would be part of the nation’s largest AVA (American Viticultural Area). The Upper Mississippi River Valley AVA will be cover 29,914 square miles, including some or all of 10 counties in Minnesota, nine in Illinois, 18 in Iowa, and 23 in Wisconsin. It runs from near St. Paul to Moline, Ill., and is 50 times bigger than Bordeaux. The Alexandria Lakes AVA in western Minnesota was established in 2005.

“It’s a pretty broad-reaching area,” said Bailly. “It will be pretty hard to say that grapes being grown in the Hiawatha Valley where we are are like grapes being grown in Galena [Ill.]. But it does highlight that there are winemakers here, or maybe they should be called hobbyists, sufferers, strugglers. That hey, there’s a small burgeoning area where they are growing grapes and making wine.

“We’re still figuring it out here.”

And fighting the good fight, in Bailly’s case.

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For the location and other info on Bailly’s vineyard and 23 other Minnesota wineries, check out our map on the upper-right side of this page.

Today’s Liquid Assets column was the incentive I needed.

I’d been hoping for a long while to add Minnesota wineries to the map on the top right of this page. (Actually, I had hoped for a separate map for them, but I’m fine with this; might actually prefer it. And molto grazie to Chandra Akkira for making this happen!)

Anyway, at some point soon, I’ll try to add the hours that these places are open. Just wanted to get the boilerplate stuff done for now. (And there’s a lot more to come on this page, including recommended red wines and Wine Country travel tips.)

I think Minnesota wines have improved markedly in the last five years. I’m not saying that the wines, often priced in the $14-$18 range, are as good as the better wines from long-established growing regions at that price point — but they’re better than a lot of them.

Growing grapes and making wine in Tundraland is not for sissies — I’ll be posting soon on the latest bad news for the state’s oldest winery. But rewarding these people’s efforts is not the only reason to buy these wines. Nor is state pride. The proof need to be in the bottle, and more and more it actually is.

Plus, a nice ride out in the country and some time spent sipping on some juice at a scenic vineyard is not a sucky way to spend a lovely summer’s day. There should be no obligation to buy — you’ve already spent some dough on petrol to get there — but more and more, there’s incentive to do so.

I have a new favorite holiday. Actually, I started in this direction years ago, when the New French Cafe’s ever-fantabulous celebration of Bastille Day was one of the true highlights of the year: fab food, wine, beer, people- (and dog-) watching and music.

So yesterday was a delight. I spent part of the afternoon at a World Class Wines tasting that featured great reds (including an $8 Lesac Petite Crau), whites (the $22 Emile Baillard Sancerre Croq Caillotes positively rocked, and the $9 Tertre de launeay Entre-deux-Mers was delightful) and pinks (another $9 gem, the Routas Rose’).

Then last night a couple of friends came by for baseball’s All-Star Game. My buddy Craig brought along a positively beautiful California cab made in old-world style, the 2004. Diamond Creek Red Rocks Terrace (from a winery founded by Minnesota native Al Brounstein). Full and rustic and deep as the ocean, it would have been the star of most any other night.

And for a time, it was last night. That’s because we had to wait a couple of hours while my friend Karl’s 2005 Louis Jadot Gevrey Chambertin Lavaux-Saint-Jacques unfolded in a decanter. It started off tight as a, well I can’t use the metaphor he rolled out, but our patience was more than rewarded. It was pure silk on the palate, with lovely cherry flavors and a bountiful finish, with a mystique that kept you coming back for more more more.

This is the kind of tres elegante wine that helps Burghounds keep the faith. It’s also an example of why Mike Steinberger’s Bastille Day column was spot-on. The premise: France is still the king of the wine world. The redoubtable Steinberger delineates several reasons why, as he puts it:

“For all the viticultural progress in California, Australia, Argentina, and elsewhere, most of the major grape varieties — pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, grenache, syrah, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, chenin blanc — still achieve their finest expressions on French soil. I think France also makes the best sweet, sparkling, and rosé wines. Certainly, there is no other bubbly that can rival a premium Champagne for complexity and pleasure. Hang out in wine circles long enough and you will meet scores of people who were once hooked on Napa cabernets or Australian shirazes but who have now partially or completely sworn them off in favor of Bordeaux, the Rhône, and other things French. You don’t find much traffic heading in the opposite direction.”

There’s a great reason to journey to Chicago in the next couple of months: this exhibit.

Need more incentive? Go here (I’ll be writing about the proprietor soon). And read this piece by my colleague Mary Abbe for some great recommendations. Great photo gallery as well.

More than ever, it’s a good time to think green when it comes to wine. And I’m not talking about being in the midst of prime vinho verde season.

The winners of the 2nd annual Green International Wine Competition have been made public and can be found here. I wrote a few weeks ago about the experience of being a judge, and noted then that the wines were way better than I expected (and markedly improved from the same contest the year before, a fellow judge opined).

My judging group’s standards were pretty tough — we only awarded five golds out of 110 wines and no double golds (which requires a unanimous “going for the gold” among the judges). But we gave almost everything at least a bronze. Upshot is, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to be daunted by a bottle that has “organic” or “bioodynamic” on the label.

Now that the winners have been released, I know a few more of the wines that I loved in this blind tasting:

Montinore Borealis: One of those whites that starts crisp and then socks in some ripe (but not overly ripe) fruit and finishes clean enough to whistle, this is a blend of Muller Thurgau, gewurztraminer and pinot gris.

Summerhill “Pyramid” Gewurztraminer: Clean and tropical with a slightly sweet finish, this (damning with faint praise alert!) is probably the best still wine I’ve ever tasted from Canada. Delicious stuff.

Biokult Gruner Veltliner: An elegant beauty from Austria’s Niederosterreich region, this light, slightly spicy and refreshing white is a great example of how certain wines (gruner, muscadet) can be both bone-dry and thirst-quenching.

Alma Rosa La Encantada Viineyard Pinot Noir: Probably the wine of the day, seamlessly meshing California fruit with a Burgundian style. I’ll be writing about this winery as soon as I transcribe my interview with owner/winemaker Richard Sanford from last week.