It is a little silly for us to write a headline like the above, being that we happen to be 50 percent Italian ourselves and therefore a little biased. But what it refers to is the fact that every wine article except for one in this week's food pages was about wine from Italy. The L.A. Times did its own thing with a nice service piece on affordable Pinot Noirs, but everyone else was thinking Barolo, Chianti, Montepulciano.

We'll give you the Pinot articles first. Did you know it's known as "The Heartbreak Grape" because "it is notoriously difficult to grow ... and its trademark delicacy is easy to muck up in the winery. It requires kid-glove care from the crush pad to the bottle." Anyhow, the first article in the Times is a history of the challenging grape's rise to popularity, and it also explains what you get for $25 or less if that's your Pinot budget. The accompanying article is a list of 11 Pinots in the $25/under range that writer Patrick Comiskey recommends. Very much the clip-and-save guide if you like this wine.

Our Washington Post wine writers were in a sauce-making mood, and they wrote about Chianti, the wine they think best stands up to red-sauce dishes. Unfortunately for Chianti, it has some negative associations to work on. People still think of it as a thin, young wine that comes in a straw basket for a few dollars; in pop culture it's recalled as a drink enjoyed with human liver and fava beans. But this is the second time in a month we have read wine critics saying Chianti is coming back into vogue. The Post writers say red sauce can be "lethal" to a nice bottle of red wine that lacks the acidity needed to complement such dishes. In the article they offer recommendations for different Chiantis to try; they also tell us the wine "has undergone a renaissance over the past two decades, with the quality of the best Chiantis better than ever." Like Dottie and John said a few weeks back, Andrew and Karen recommend shopping for a Classico or a Rufina.

Eric Asimov, lucky man, was invited to a tasting of older Barolo wines (made from the nebbiolo grape) at the suburban New York City home of a couple who are wine importers and distributors. Asimov writes excitedly in his Times column about this adventure he has, calling Barolo a "wine of mystery" that's best when it's at least 10 years old; the youngest vintage he enjoys at this Barolo party is 1990, a "flamboyant vintage," he says. He speaks of fireworks and skyrockets and even a sweet caress; by the article's end, you know how people, especially collectors, feel about Barolo.

We'll pop in this Rebecca Murphy recommendation before getting to The Wall Street Journal's ode to Italy. Writing in the Dallas News, Murphy says this "Super Tuscan," a cab-sangiovese-merlot blend from the Querciabella winery, has "spicy black cherry, cassis fruit" flavors and "dusty tannins" (is this last bit a good thing?).

Saving the best for last, as we often like to do, we give you the WSJ's feel-good Tastings column about Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. It is hard not to like Dottie and John's contagious joy as they write about this wine that "Is easy to drink, easy to like -- and very easy to afford." And in this column, they put to words something that will resonate with most of you: "Even people who love wine and have plenty of money are still always looking for house wines: straightforward, inexpensive and tasty wines that require little money to buy and little effort to enjoy." Good for the mood, good for the wallet. Just good.

This isn't a new wine or a trendy one -- not in the slightest. Why? More image problems: "It's often sold in 1.5-liter sizes and segregated with the jug wines, maybe because it's inexpensive and sometimes kept on a bottom shelf, or maybe because its name invites confusion. Montepulciano d'Abruzzo is made from the Montepulciano grape in the Abruzzo region; Vino Nobile di Montepulciano is made from the Sangiovese grape around the town of Montepulciano in Tuscany. The wines are unrelated." Make no mistake, they are not telling us these are the kinds of wines you should pull out to impress snobby friends; Montepulciano is "pillow-soft," "easy," a good-time gal, and a wine like Barolo is the one you take to the symphony. D&J like the wine's ease, charm and fun -- things we all could use a dose of on a mid-January night.