WINE TALK
LEAD: TO finance some of the wines we'll look at today, bring what is in your wallet; to finance the others, bring a Rockefeller. Our tour d'horizon takes us through what I think are the first wines made by Greeks that do not taste of retsina (resin), through chardonnays under $10 and then to the wines of La Romanee, a crown jewel among Burgundy's vineyards.
TO finance some of the wines we'll look at today, bring what is in your wallet; to finance the others, bring a Rockefeller. Our tour d'horizon takes us through what I think are the first wines made by Greeks that do not taste of retsina (resin), through chardonnays under $10 and then to the wines of La Romanee, a crown jewel among Burgundy's vineyards.
First, meet the Lolonis Winery. It is Greek - more precisely, Greek American - and its 275 acres lie in the Redwood Valley of Mendocino County in northern California. This 10,000-case boutique makes whites that will appeal to wine mavens who, like Odysseus, are eternally questing for novelty.
Until recently, when Maureen Lolonis, an owner, dropped by to chat, I had never heard of the winery, but as she spoke the name rang a bell. Fetzer Vineyards, a Mendocino neighbor, valued grapes it bought from Lolonis so highly that from 1962 to 1983 one of its zinfandels carried 'Lolonis Vineyards' on the label.
What makes Lolonis's grapes so desirable? Mrs. Lolonis gave several reasons. The microclimate and soil conditions of the vineyards are exceptional. Very old vines make fine wines, and Lolonis's oldest vines (zinfandel) date to the 20's. The French chardonnay and sauvignon blanc vines that the University of California at Davis planted experimentally in the late 40's are the proper clones for the soil. And the yields are kept low to heighten flavor.
The winery's co-owners include the Lolonis brothers, Nickios, Ulysses and Mrs. Lolonis's husband, Petros. For years, the family has sold grapes to other wineries. The customers, Mrs. Lolonis said, have included Simi, Kendall-Jackson, David Bruce and Parducci, all premium-wine producers.
One day the Homeric dawn came. The brothers asked themselves, 'Why don't we make our own wines?' Good thinking, fellows. (They left out the resin, or pine sap, that in Greece caters to a traditional national taste.) The winery's first vintage, chardonnay, was in 1982; this fall, it will make its first zinfandel and cabernet sauvignon. Three Lolonis wines are available from Attiki, a Hempstead, L.I., distributor. The '85 fume blanc ($7.67) is delicate, round and slightly oaky. The '84 chardonnay ($15) is fruity, agreeably austere but a degree or so too woody. The unusual, big-flavored, nectarlike '83 late-harvest sauvignon blanc, a dessert wine, ($9.58 a half bottle) captures the essential grassiness of the grape and goes down the throat dry.  Judging for Oneself
In a search for the best chardonnays under $10 in New York area, the International Wine Center plowed through 184 domestic and imported bottles solicited from importers, distributors and wineries.
The center, a Manhattan wine school, said six people - staff members and wine writers - tasted the wines blind. Some of the 20 winners indeed were head-of-the-class values, but others were disappointing.
My own recent tasting suggested that only a surprising 15 of the 20 bottles, 75 percent, seemed acceptable. Why? After all, so many chardonnays jostle for scarce space that wine-store shelves resemble a Wall Street alley at rush hour. Here's why: Unanimity in scoring is rare, especially because chardonnay styles vary and judges' preferences vary even more.
Nonetheless, the competition provided a dual service for consumers. First, it offered a compass of sorts for buying. Second, the drop-off in quality of five bottles warns against treating platinum, gold, silver and bronze medals cascading out of summer fairs as the word from Olympus. Besides, the qualifications of judges at those fairs might at best be unknown and at worst dubious.
Vintners understandably trumpet medals and ribbons. Quality and advertising aside, how else can their wares draw attention? But wine judging - indeed, all wine experience -is highly subjective.
Ultimately, your own palate - not an 'expert' panel's roman-candle burst of adjectives, not a critic's market-heating scores of 89 and 96 points - is the sole trustworthy judge of a wine's interest and worth.
How do you learn what's good? Wine books furnish a tasting vocabulary, define standards and identify famous vineyards, vintners and vintages, but that's all. Wine classes offer the palate useful introductory and 'graduate' training. In the end, there is no substitute for pulling corks for a long time. It's as simple, and potentially expensive, as all that.
Trend-hunters might unearth a lode of implications in the International Wine Center's statistics.
The 98 California entries represented 53 percent of the total field, yet only 12 finished in the money. Of Australia's 13 contestants, there were a disproportionate 6 winners. Paris might break diplomatic relations with Washington: Only 1 among the 40 French entries crossed the finish line.
Here are my favorites, in order of preference and priced at the standard 50 percent markup (some might be sold at discount):
'85 Ventana Vineyards, gold stripe selection, Monterey County, Calif. ($9.99); '84 Estrella River Winery, Paso Robles, Calif. ($9.99); '86 Lindemans, Padthaway, Australia ($9.99); '86 George Duboeuf St.-Veran 'Coupe Dailly,' Burgundy ($8.50); '85 Fetzer barrel select, California ($9.43), and Rouge Homme, Coonawarra, Australia $9.99).
Also, '85 Callaway 'Calla-Lees,' Temecula, Calif. ($9.25); '86 Lindemans, Bin 65, Victorian, Australia ($5.99); '85 Chateau Reynella, McLaren Vale, Australia ($6.49); Domaine du Soleil, McDowell Valley Vineyards, north coast, California ($6.75); '86 Krondorf, Barossa Valley, Australia ($8.75); '86 Raymond, California ($8.50); '85 Kendall-Jackson vintners' reserve, California ($10); '85 Corbett Canyon, select, central coast, California ($9.75), and '84 Guenoc, north coast, California ($9.49).  In the Stellar Ranks
The other day, I expected to find an armored van outside the International Wine Center while Awacs aircraft circled overhead and French Foreign Legionnaires frisked me, searching for clandestine corkscrews.
Upstairs, the objects of this imagined security awaited a public tasting: the '79 La Romanee ($110 a bottle), the '82 ($170), the '83 ($190), the '78 (no price was given - perhaps mankind cannot invent one - and besides, the wine is gone from the market) and the '76 ($200).
The world is not exactly overflowing with La Romanee. In its biggest year in this decade, this Burgundy vineyard yielded 550 cases. Only 2.1 acres in size, La Romanee, in the commune of Vosne-Romanee, is France's smallest vineyard with an appellation controlee (controlled place name).
The vineyard is owned by the Abbe Juste Liger-Belair, who, the literature of Burgundy reports with apparent glee, on occasion has celebrated mass with La Romanee as the sacramental wine (sparingly).
The centuries-old La Romanee - a grand cru, or great growth - lies a few feet uphill from the 4.5-acre Romanee-Conti, a far more famous vineyard whose reds are among the most expensive anywhere. La Romanee wines are made and exported by Bouchard Pere et Fils, a negociant (shipper).
The word 'elegant' was invented to describe the wines. Although different vintages, like prisms, shift the focus of La Romanee's highlights, a remarkable concentration of flavor abides. The bouquet tends to be smoky, the flavor has cherrylike grace notes, the texture is velvety and the aftertaste lingers. Most vintages take at least a decade to mature.
If you find a bottle, carry it home as you would a van Gogh from an auction.