“That’s probably gonna show up on YouTube tomorrow,” wine importer extraordinaire quipped after throwing out a hilarious obscenity toward the end of a tasting Wednesday night. Well, how about the Internet the day after that, Terry?

After a wonderfully lively, smart and sassy session, Theise opened the floor for Q&A. An attendee raved and rambled about the wonders of the (very) different Donnhoff wines and asked how Theise could explain the varying results from the same basic vineyard – “in three words,” he quickly added.

“No f-ing idea,” Theise responded almost as quickly. OK, you probably had to be there, and it certainly didn’t hurt to have already consumed some of the wonderful wines that Theies imports from Austria and Germany.

Anyway, after the guffawing subsided, the ever-loquacious Theise took a stab at answering, with his usual mix of Zen poetry-like soliloquys and some uncommon horse sense. It was one of many highlights of a perfectly delightful evening shared with about 100 corkheads at, of all places, Elsie’s bowling alley in Nordeast. Blessedly (I think), we were in a party room and couldn’t hear the pins drop.

Theise is nothing if not a hedonist. He compared authors who use footnotes to inept sexual partners and ended an airplane anecdote with the phrase “return your stewardess to the upright position.” He gushed lovingly about his wines from Austria and Germany, and with good reason.

Some of his best material concerned food. He talked of a wine that goes well with every vegetable, even the one that his wife, iconic Wisconsin chef Odessa Piper, calls “sparklefarts” (Brussels sprouts to you and me). He also had a great take on pairing: Just learn what you can and then “use your instincts, experiment. Don’t obsess over hitting the bull’s eye; just try to hit the target and avoid spraying arrows into the woods.”  

And his wines ranged from really tasty to supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. The evening started with the best $25 bubbly I’ve ever tasted, a 70-percent0-gruner-veltliner concoction from Schloss Gobelsburg, and ended with an astounding $38 Spatlese from Jakob Schneider. I bought four bottles of each without batting an eye.

Theise will be back in November. Anyone who loves wine and/or a great raconteur should be there.

I had some really good organically grown and biodynamic wines Monday, but I can’t tell you what they were.

Actually, I later found out what a couple of them were, but when I was trying them, they were numbers rather than names. I was a judge for the second International Green Wine Competition in Santa Rosa, Calif. It was my first foray into judging, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The judges were divided into two panels, each of which rated about 100 wines. Our group awarded four golds and a slew of silvers and bronzes, and found only two wines not worth recognizing.

Here’s how it worked: We did the reds in the morning, when our palates were fresher, and the whites after lunch. We were presented with flights of the same varietal or blend, each with a three- or four-digit numeral on an attached card. We took as long as we needed to sample — I went through each flight once, taking notes, then backwards through it again, sometimes adjusting my grade. The grades were G for gold, S for silver, B for bronze and N for “no-way-no-how anyone should buy this swill” (or something like that).  As it was back in school days, we often appended a plus or minus to the grade.

The final designation was the average of the grades. If that couldn’t be readily determined, we’d talk about the wine, and someone would raise or lower a grade to get us to a semi-consensus.

To earn a Double Gold, a wine had to get G’s from all the judges; that didn’t happen in our group. To earn a “no medal,” though, only one of us had to vote that way — and then convince the others that this wine deserved no medal. If we were headed that way, we’d ask for another bottle of the same wine, just to be sure. We all agreed on one seriously flawed wine, and I won the panel over on a sauvignon blanc that had an overwhelming cat-pee aroma. (There’s nothing wrong with that being part of the bouquet, but not to this litterbox-esque degree.)

The other judges on my panel were fun and smart. Jim Caudill is a Kendall-Jackson veteran who runs a PR company in Santa Rosa. Jil Child plans and coordinates personalized excursions with Wine Treks of the World. And Amy Atwood has a swell blog “with an organic bent” called MyDailyWine.

Here’s the really good news: Jil was a judge last year and said that this year’s lot was “probably 75 percent better” than the 2008 entries. I have noticed an improvement in wines with organically grown grapes as well.

I moseyed over to the coordinators’ space after we were done to identify two wines I had particularly liked; turns out they were an Alma Rosa pinot noir and a white blend from Oregon’s Montinore winery called Borealis, which was primarily muller thurgau (one of my new favorite grapes).

The medalists will be posted at the competition’s website next week.

Going for a long drive is one of the strongest recommendations I make to folks journeying to Sonoma for the first (or fifth) time. But perhaps the top tip, vying with a visit to A. Rafanelli winery and a dinner at Cyrus, is to spend some time at the Locals tasting room in Geyserville.

Started by New York transplant Carolyn Lewis at the turn of the decade, the Locals now pours juice from 11 wineries that either are too small or have no interest in having their own tasting rooms. Lewis carefully scopes out up-and-coming wineries, and her exacting standards serve the operation well.

On my first visit in 2001 or ‘02, a dude named Dan Browne was hanging out and helping with the pouring. Turns out he was the winemaker for a new operation called Kosta Browne, soon to become a revered pinot-noir producer.

The amazing thing is that the pours are free. You can do flights or individual pours or whatever. I had delicious wines from Hawley, Eric Ross, Portalupi and Peterson on Monday, and bought two bottles of Ramazotti’s sensational cab franc.

I also joined the club, in which Lewis and manager Diane Lieberman select two or six wines every three months. Club members get 15 percent off those selections and any other wines they purchase. And these are not spendy wines to start with, ranging from $14 to $45 or so. That’s a way to enjoy the Locals without coming to Geyserville. But I recommend the latter course if at all possible.

OK, so there is one downside to the visiting in person. There is such a great atmosphere and so much swell juice that a designated driver — or at least someone who’s consuming more moderately — is not a bad idea at all.

I love going to Napa, but one of the biggest reasons I prefer Sonoma goes back to my childhood. No, it’s not drinking Sonoma wines as a young ‘un, although I confess to having quite enjoyed the occasional sip of Lowenbrau that my dad shared.

It’s actually all about developing a huge ardor for long rides “in the country.” And even in 2009, one can take just such a drive in Sonoma. As I did today, with Pablo Casals playing Bach’s Cello Suites as the soundtrack. I followed the route that I recommend to all friends who visit Sonoma:

Take Hwy 101 north past Healdsburg to the Dry Creek Road exit. Go left and you’re immediately in farm country. Stop at the Dry Creek General store for provisions. Keep heading north all the way to and above Lake Sonoma, stopping for an amazing view before turning around.

Go past the sign that reads “$1,000 fine for littering” (yay!). The first stop sign on the way back is Yoakim Bridge Road. Take that and when it ends take a left on West Dry Creek Road. It doesn’t get any more country than this, at least with paved roads. West Dry Creek is only marginally wide enough for two cars and passes through overhanging trees and near vineyards with think old-vine zins that look like nothing more than a forest in Munchkinland. Not to mention bougainvillea, olive trees and other gorgeous vegetation.

West Dry Creek eventually dead-ends into Westside Road. Go right, and there’s another gorgeous, winding drive en route to Guerneville. Go left, and you’re a mile or so from downtown Healdsburg. Tough call there.

This can be a leisurely 2-hour tour or an all-day affair, with stops at wineries such as Ferrari Carano, Unti, Bella and A. Rafanelli all recommended (and usually requiring an appointment). Taking Westside Road means a must-stop at Rochioli and a strongly advised appointment at Gary Farrell, where you’ll feel like you’re pretty much on top of the world.

But I feel that every way throughout every mile of this particular ride in the country.

OK, today we’ve got two Italian wines labeled “White” with different spellings (those ever-wacky Italians). Both retail for around $15 and contain some chardonnay but are predominently made from indigenous grapes.

Maurigi Bacca Bianca: This blend of insolia (aka inzolia), chardonnay and grecanico comes from Sicily. It’s lush and lusty, with a great amalgam of juiciness and acidity providing a smooth texture. It starts with a wonderful floral nose and might have the longest finish of any Italian white I’ve ever tasted.

Villa Antinori Tuscan Bianco: The Antinoris are among the world’s pre-eminent wine families (Sassicaia, Col Solare, etc.). This wine has been bottled since the 1930s, with chardonnay added to the mix in the ’80s; it’s 8o percent trebbiano and malvasia and 20 percent chard. The wine is light and stony with some delicate citrus touches, solidly made but … well, kinda boring, like it was made by a committee to be as innocuous as possible.

The clear winner: the Bacca, which would look mighty good the next time grilled seafood is on the menu.

OK, first I had to clear up a likely misperception/bad rumor.

“Someone said that your winery was pronounced “Pahn-ZAI,” I asked Maria Ponzi Fogelstrom before she had had a chance to get comfortable at the Red Stag Supper Club the other day. “Uh, no,” she said, chuckling softly and charmingly. Whew; reports that Bernie Madoff might have prompted a pronunciation change were indeed unfounded. “We’ve always been PAHN-zee,” she added.

And always is a pretty good while in this case, since Maria’s father, Dick Ponzi, started the northern Oregon winery in the early ’70s. In the early years, she said, the family “traveled all around Europe to wineries where Dad asked all these dumb questions like ‘How do you trellis?’ and ‘How do you drive in a stake?’ ”

Dick must have been a quick study, as Ponzi started releasing impressive wines right out of the gate, with the 1974 pinot noir. A commercial turning point arrived “when Mr. Parker discovered us in the mid-1980s,” Maria said.

Luisa Ponzi, Maria’s sister, has been winemaker for the past 15 years, but Dick is still active, she said. For his 74th birthday recently, they pulled out some ‘74 pinot noir and “we couldn’t believe how good it was. I think it’s a testament to having the right grape in the right place, because there was not a lot of winemaking expertise going on at the time.”

As for the current releases, the $17 pinot gris has lovely citrus and melon flavors, and like all the Ponzi wines, a lovely and lengthy finish. The $17 pinot blanc is stony and tarter (lime) than I expected. The $25 chard is juicy and lush but light on the oak.

I also enjoyed three pinot noirs: the $25 “Tavola” has classic cherry flavors an surprising smoothness. The $35 “regular” pinot is lusher and loaded with blue-fruit flavors, and the $60 reserve is quite smoky but quite velvety.

All the Ponzi wine provide seriously swell quality-to-price value.