YOUR GUIDE TO DINING OUT

The BEST BES E AT S in our neighborhood

BACK COUNTRY BBQ $WB Over 30 years of Texas-style BBQ. Family dining - 8 different meats, variety of homemade vegetables. Complete catering & custom cooking. Beer, wine, margaritas. 6940 Greenville Ave. 214.696.6940.

TEX MEX GRILL $WB If you are looking for great Tex-Mex dining at reasonable prices try Tex Mex Grill and Cafe at the corner of Walnut Hill Lane and Plano Rd. Everything on the menu is quickly prepared using fresh ingredients. Lunch specials all day, everyday $4.99 with this ad. Private Party room, seats 40 people. Adult beverages are limited to margaritas and beer. Catering beginning at $6.50 per person. New Hours: Mon - Thurs 11 am - 9 pm, Fri - Sat 11 am - 10 pm CLOSED SUNDAY 214.343.8740 texmexlakehighland.com

Wine is complicated enough, what with all of the kinds of wine and all of the different places in the wine is made. So what does the wine business wine even more complicated? Invent wine terms, language all its own.

This is troublesome for anyone who likes wine, or not. Even today, after two-plus decades of doing a wine description and have no idea what it means. imagine the difficulty wine-speak gives beginners.

How to get around this problem? One way is to Wine Garden at the State Fair of Texas between Sept. Oct. 23, where The Two Wine Guys, John Bratcher myself, will speak again this year. We’ll be at the stage Monday through Thursday at 1, 3 and 5 p.m., and will be happy to answer any questions.

The best way? Taste wine, and learn the differences:

Many California red wines, like Toad Hollow’s Erik The Red ($15) are fruity, which some wine drinkers often confuse with sweetness. Think of a sweet wine, like riesling, as iced tea with lemon and sugar. Think of fruity wine as the tea with just lemon. The latter is fruity (the taste of the lemon) but not sweet. Does the wine pair easily with food? If so, and if it doesn’t overwhelm the taste of the food, then it’s food friendly. Usually, but not always, food friendly wines have more simple, straightforward flavors, such as a New Zealand sauvignon blanc like Nine Walks ($10). Drink this with summer salads, roast chicken or boiled seafood, and the wine complements the food, which is about as friendly as you can get.

Wineries release a new vintage every year, which is the current vintage. But what happens when retailers haven’t been able to sell all of the previous year’s current vintage? It becomes the previous vintage, and retailers cut prices to get rid of those wines to make room for the current vintage. It’s not unlike what car dealers do — cut prices on last year’s models to make room for the new models. The Australian red blendPillarBoxRed 2008 used to be $12 or $13; you can find it these days, since it’s a previous vintage, for as little as $10.

—JEFF SIEGEL