Wine

Noir Food & Wine . LOCATION 40 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena; (323) 634-0700; (626) 795-7199; www.noirfoodandwine.com. PRICE Cheese and charcuterie, $9 to $16; soups and salads, $8 to $15; main courses, $13 to $19; snacks and sides, $4 to $11; desserts, $8. Corkage fee, $15, or one bottle free corkage per bottle purchased. DETAILS Open from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 5 to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday, and Saturday from 5 to 11 p.m. Wine and beer.

Bumuelos in red wine sauce Total time: 1 hour, 20 minutes Servings: 6 to 8 Red wine sauce 2 cups regular or turbinado sugar 2/3 cup dry red wine 2 cinnamon sticks 4 whole cloves In a small, heavy-bottom saucepan, combine the sugar, red wine, cinnamon sticks and cloves. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and cook until the liquid thickens to a honey-like consistency, about 5 minutes.

As you look back on the year, you've probably had a glass of wine that's bonked you squarely in the pleasure center and made you say, "Sweet Lord, now I'm in trouble," or at the very least, "Whoa, there's more to this stuff than I thought." We've become a culture that is routinely snared in wine's prodigious, transformative powers. Not only do we delight in sampling as many bottlings as we can, we're buying the books, attending the tastings, filling the wine bars and pestering the sommeliers.

Every few years, I pick up my copy of “A Compass Error” by Sybille Bedford (first published in 1968)  and read it again for the writer's evocation of life between the two great wars in the small fishing port St.-Jean-le- Saveur (a fictional version of Sanary near Bandol) on the Côte d'Azur in Provence. Born in Germany , she had an aristocratic father, a wandering German-Jewish mother and an unconventional education. She grew up, essentially in France where she knew Aldous Huxley (and later wrote a fine biography)

Green papaya salad Look for a white blend from Vienna or Austria that's sweet with a crisp minerality, such as a Gemischter Satz. Phan especially likes it with the 2011 Bernreiter Gemischter Satz, a field blend grown within the city limits of Vienna, typically drunk only at a Heuriger (a wine tavern attached to one of the city's many wineries). Gemischter Satz can have up to 20 varietals blended together. Some add acidity, some musky sweetness some crisp minerality. Grilled pork chops with sweet lemon grass marinade Look for very dry, minerally Rieslings from the Wachau or Kamptal in Austria.

Here starts a series on influential wine people in Los Angeles. To kick things off, we asked Matthew Kaner, partner and wine guru at Bar Covell in East Hollywood, some questions: What's your favorite wine region to visit? I haven't visited a lot of them. I went to Australia nine months ago and fell in love with the McLaren Vale region in south Australia. What blew me away was the consortium producers there have together to keep each other in check. I got to sit in on this master class where the producers taste each other's wines.

I use this wine coaster almost every night. Subtle and understated, it was designed by Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann in 1905. I bought it at the Neue Galerie   in New York. The museum dedicated to early 20th-century German and Austrian art and design has a phenomenal gift shop with reproductions of many of the iconic pieces of Viennese design. (It is also home to Café Sabarsky, a great address for coffee and pastries or a light lunch -- and just across from the Metropolitan Museum.)

It's got to be said that while wine folks are wonderful people, in general (and frequently in specific), they often seem to lack a sense of humor about themselves. I don't know whether you've noticed that. But way back in the day, a guy named Bob Johnson created some of the wackiest wine cartoons ever as covers for Mike Lynch's old San Francisco Pacific Wine Co.'s trade catalogs. These started in 1980 and continued through 1996. But they're just as funny as ever, and now many of them are available for enjoying on Behance .  These days Johnson is busy running his gallery in Healdsburg, Calif., (where signed editions of some of the posters are available to purchase)

Shepard Fairey has made his mark on an unexpected spot -- Drew Barrymore's Pinot Grigio. The street artist and actress teamed up to create a label for her eponymous variety that was released last month. The label features Barrymore's family crest and was designed by Fairey's Los Angeles-based creative firm Studio Number One, which counts Disney, Google and Comedy Central among its clientele. The $20 bottle of wine distributed by Wilson Daniels is made from grapes grown in Italy's northeast area of Triveneto.