"We get very sophisticated customers - they want to discuss wines with their waiter," says Catherine Moon, who with her husband, Doyle, owns three California restaurants.

Their eagerness to explain different cuts of meat and discuss wines is in marked contrast to the haughty neglect that passes for service in many steakhouses.

The clerk might be bursting to discuss $10 wines with you, but not on Christmas Eve when faced with a small horde of testy people demanding cases of scotch.

This week, members of the panel discuss wines from the Adriatic coast.

"But I don't talk about it in public," Mr. Haspel said, pointing out that peanut butter and jelly on crackers is "not like discussing French wines."

This week, members of the panel discuss wines from the northern Rhone.

"It was weird," Mr. Stiller said yesterday, recalling how the concept of "two idiots, two nudnicks" discussing wines about which they knew absolutely nothing arose.

Two weeks ago I discussed white wines in this space; this week it's the reds.

Picard took a sip, and during the next hour he found himself discussing wines with the two women.