Brace yourself, we're about to talk a bit out of school here. Because we're going to talk about the art of the second bottle of wine.

Volumes have been written about best-wine this and best-taste that, but always the focus on the first bottle. It's as though we're gonna drink a single bottle and that's that, off to drive Buffy home and laugh our way through that spot-check DUI enforcement roadblock. But some of us ain't going home. Or we drink at home. And  we're going to have that second bottle of wine, oh yeah, and maybe more. Thus the desperate need for our new occasional feature: The Tao of the Second Bottle.

It should be a serious study. Who among us had not noticed the guzzle-reflex as we pour the later rounds of the good stuff ... who among us has not wondered, in passing, what would happen if we just poured that under-sink magnum of Woodbridge (for cooking!) into the sweet little Cotes du Rhone bottle?

But it's not just a financial call. It's about stepping it up. It's about layering flavors.

Personally, as an example, I like to follow some decent Pino Noir with a moderately decadent Rioja, finding the intensity of the Spanish can ignore the fact that I've sipped something else earlier in the evening, if you follow my analogy.

There's more, but we have gone on too long for a simple introduction. We'll soon be discussing layering with a zeal usually reserved for mid-winter Aspen backcountry skiing. And, frankly, there might be some Woodbridge in the mix.