Facing down hundreds of bottles of wine in a wine shop while attempting to pick just the right one can be a daunting task for even the most experienced wine aficionados.

At a recent wine tasting at Stew Leonard's Wines in Norwalk, Heather Munden, Artisan Winemaker for St. Francis Winery in Santa Rosa, Calif., not only treated customers to hand-crafted wines from the vineyard, but offered a tutorial in winemaking.

As customers sipped, she discussed the winemaking process and, in particular, the increasingly popular artisan wines and "old vine" wines.

The term "artisan wines" means different things to different people, but it typically refers to wines made in smaller vineyards.

Many new ones have sprung up in California's wine country in recent years, in what some have referred to as the Golden Age of Artisan Wines. The smaller vineyards usually use a hand-harvesting method for their grapes.

Mechanical harvesting versus hand harvesting the grapes has been open to debate, with strong advocates for hand-harvesting. Its proponents point to the ability to sort fruit by hand and eye, thereby excluding rotted fruit and leaves. Additionally, grapes, juice and wine are moved as gently and as little as possible.

Munden discussed the hand-harvesting of St. Fran-cis' wines. "Typically grapes are harvested during the day in temperatures of 75 degrees and up," she said. "Our grapes are harvested after midnight when the temperatures are about 45 degrees. With the grapes being cooler, the fruit flavor is preserved."

For more than 35 years, St. Francis Winery in Sonoma has hand-crafted fruit-forward wines from mountain and valley vineyards in Sonoma County. While most renowned for its red varietals, including its "Old Vines" Zinfandel (all old vines 60 to 110 years old), Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, St. Francis also produces a Chardonnay.

Of the Old Vine Zinfandel, Munden says, "This is a wine with a sense of history. Imagine that many of these vines have been around before Prohibition."

The older vines produce much less fruit than newer vines. The difference in production can be a half ton per acre for the old, compared to six tons per acre for the new.

"There is much more concentration of flavor in the older vine fruit," Munden said.

"The old vines have been lovingly tended to by three, four or five generations of winemaking families."

At the tasting, Munden sampled a selection of St. Francis wines and described the flavors and pairings of each one. The Chardonnay "has a citrus taste; you can taste the lemon peel and it can be paired with fish and pastas with a cream sauce," she said.

The Merlot, she said, "is 99.9 percent estate fruit; you can taste the smoothness of the fruit and it has a chocolate silky finish." She says, "It reminds one of women with pretty dresses and nice shoes. It's feminine and refined. This is a wonderful cocktail wine, but it can be paired with brick oven pizza or an elegant dinner."

Of the Cabernet, she said, "The Cabernet has a rich, chewy mixture of blackberry, black current, cedar, vanilla flavor with a supple round tannis at the finish. The Old Vine Zinfandel has deep aromas of ripe black cherry and licorice with toasty oak notes that carry it into a long luscious finish."