Call us contrarians at ilovenapa.com because we seem to be heading up a river that has been motored downstream by big boats driven by many established wine writers. And they've left quite a wake for us to navigate.

We respect our wine writer colleagues and their palates immensely and, for the most part, often buy wines they rate and suggest. But now that we are also in the 100-point rating game, we find things about the rating game worth sharing.

1. To evaluate wines for ilovenapa.com, we don't taste them blind or taste wines in large numbers at a time.
Often, when wine writers taste dozens, sometimes hundreds, of wines blind at a time, the ones that naturally stand out, head and shoulders above the others - and get the higher scores - are the hotter, higher alcohol, more heavily wooded wines. That's just the way it works when you taste dozens of wines in succession.
To minimize this effect, when we're looking for small production wines to feature on ilovenapa.com, we approach a single producer and only taste a few of his, or her, wines at a time. And we often aim to taste our wines early in the day when our palate is fresh, not fatigued from cups of coffee or a heavy lunch.
We're looking for pretty wines, balanced wines, delicious wines, not high alcohol wines. We do not enjoy wines that are so over-oaked that they taste as though they have been passed through the kidneys of a beaver.

2. Wine is a beverage to be enjoyed WITH food.
15%, 16% and even 17% should be the percentages of adult Americans who we convince to enjoy wine nightly with their dinner - NOT the percentages of alcohol of top-scoring wines.
We try to find pretty, balanced wines for the ilovenapa.com program. Do we think we are onto something? I can only relate this Truth: When I am with many Bay-area wine merchants, or local wine writer friends, they confide that THEY DO NOT ENJOY MANY OF THE OVER-OAKED, HIGH ALCOHOL WINES THAT THEY SELL, OR WRITE ABOUT! They admit that they prefer gentler wines, food-friendly wines - the kind of wines that we select for ilovenapa.com.

3. It is time to retrain the American palate to appreciate the nuances of wine.
In private, when we ask some of the most respected winemakers in our valley why they impart so much wood to their fruited whites like Chardonnay or Chenin Blanc, they reply that "that is what we've taught the American public to drink; they expect a lot of wood in the wine."
We say, Nonsense. We believe it is time to stand up for balanced wine, food-friendly wine. In short, it is time to un-learn the American public about what constitutes flavorful, food-friendly, balanced wine. White wines in particular should taste like the variety of fruit they have been made from. Chardonnay shouldn't taste like butterscotch toffee and Chenin Blanc shouldn't taste like badly made Chardonnay.

4. Price DOES Matter.
There is a component to the generally accepted 100-point rating system that says Price Doesn't Matter. Wines are rated blind on their own merit and scored according to flavor, mouthfeel and length of finish without consideration of price.
We think this is utter nonsense. Why should wine be different than any other product? Price DOES matter. Buying wine is not only a question of aesthetics or mouthfeel. How much a wine costs needs to be factored into its score. If we find a brilliant $40 Cabernet that has the robe of a King, a voluptuous middle palate and is more pleasing than many $100-plus Cabernets, we are very likely to score this artisan-made wine with an extra point or two, just because it is making a statement: Some Great Wine doesn't cost a Great Sum.

That's pretty much our Contrarian Model, or Manifesto, at ilovenapa.com. Not exactly earth-shattering, but you'd be surprised at how many eyebrows are raised when we share these perceptions. And you can almost hear the imaginary palms thwacking the forehead of these listeners with whom we share these wine beliefs, as they mutter to themselves, "It's so bloody simple…. Why didn't I think of that?"