We drank a bottle of Zinfandel the other day that reminded us why we fell in love with Zinfandel in the first place.

Too many Zinfandels today taste sweet, heavy and alcoholic, but this one made both of us smile as we recalled the Zins of our youth. It was filled with peppery, distinctive flavors, with a nice balance of acids and oak and even some hints of eucalyptus. So many wines today are trying too hard to be something. This was comfortable with what it was: an elegant, very American red wine. It was from Churon Winery in the Temecula Valley of California.

Who?

If you haven't heard of Churon Winery or even the Temecula Valley, you're hardly alone. But now is a very good time to start getting to know some of the lesser-known wine regions of the U.S.

Let's start at the beginning. We were asked to conduct an informal tasting this year at The Wall Street Journal's high-tech conference called D: All Things Digital, which is held just north of San Diego. All sorts of famous people attend the conference -- from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs, along with many up-and-coming stars. Quite a few of them are from the West Coast, and are already familiar with good wine, so it's always fun to try something that might be new to them. This year, we figured it might be interesting to serve some local wines -- wines grown close to where the conference was being held.

As it happens, Temecula (pronounced te-MEC-u-la) is less than an hour north of the conference hotel. It's home to 24 wineries that make a small amount of distinctive wine. Like so many wine regions all over the U.S., it's quite new as such things go: The first commercial vineyard was planted there less than 40 years ago and the modern industry really took off just within the past seven years or so, according to Linda Kissam, executive director of the Temecula Winegrowers Association, a group of vintners and growers. Hit hard by Pierce's disease, which killed vines, the area now is rebounding and has 1,100 acres planted to grapes. The region's total production is about a half-million cases a year (and one large, well-known winery, Callaway, which is owned by giant Allied Domecq, makes 190,000 cases of that). By way of comparison, Sutter Home sells 4.5 million cases a year of its White Zinfandel alone. Temecula is a wine tourist's dream, with most of the wineries bunched up along a single, three-mile stretch of road.

So, for our tasting, we chose six wines from Temecula -- and, we're happy to say, the crowd went wild. It was amazing how many people at the event seemed to know every inch of Sonoma and Napa but had never heard of Temecula. "They grow grapes all the way down here?" we were asked over and over. Indeed, Temecula has warm, dry days and cool nights, with Pacific breezes, which makes the climate good for growing grapes, though vintners are still experimenting to find the best fit.

The great thing about small, lesser-known wineries is that winemakers follow their hearts. We taste so many expensive, well-known wines that seem to be made with more concern for the market and for critics than for the winemaker's own passion. They may taste good, but they often lack real personality and a sense of place. Indeed, in response to a column we wrote recently about wines on vacation, we received this note from Chuck Head of Keystone Heights, Fla.: "My wife accompanied me on a business trip to San Diego and afterward we traveled to Temecula to visit some of the wineries in the area. We had never heard of Temecula before our trip was scheduled. It was interesting to taste the differences in these wines compared to the wines we normally see in Florida from Sonoma and Napa. Even though from the same state, the tastes were quite a bit different."

As the Heads noticed, wines from places like Temecula are different -- sometimes really different. Have you ever tasted an American Cortese? If that grape doesn't sound familiar, it's no surprise. Cortese is a white grape grown in the Piedmont area of Italy and used to make the delightful white wine called Gavi. Very little of it is made in the United States, but Temecula's Mount Palomar Winery has been making it for more than a decade. Why? The winemaker, Etienne Cowper, first ran across Cortese growing in the U.S. in New Mexico -- yep, New Mexico -- and got some cuttings. The winery has less than two acres of Cortese and makes only about 200 to 300 cases, most of which is sold at the winery. Mount Palomar's Cortese is riper and richer than Gavi. When we mentioned that to the winemaker, he said the long growing season in Temecula is perfect for the grape. "It likes to be able to ripen slowly," he said. "It doesn't get those rich flavors until a kind of magical point. There aren't stages. It just suddenly happens."

The star of our tasting at the D Conference was Cabernet Sauvignon from Hart Winery, which had a combination of power, elegance and super-ripe fruit that had attendees coming back for more. It cost $42 -- and that brings us to one of the hurdles faced by winemakers in little-known regions. We generally find that wines from newer, smaller wine regions tend to have higher prices than many people are used to paying, probably as a result of factors such as the amount of personal attention, land prices and the higher costs of smaller production. That said, however, as in this case, you can sometimes get a lot of wine for that $42, which is quite reasonable compared with what some larger, better-known wineries charge for their not-as-special Cabernets. Joe Hart made only 100 cases of this wine.

Another problem faced by wineries in little-known regions is distribution, which is why now is a good time to be writing about this. According to the Temecula wine association, half of the wineries there distribute no wine outside of California and, with the exception of Callaway, the rest distribute very little outside of the state. This isn't unusual: The vast majority of wineries do not have national distribution. About half of California's 1,300 wineries are small -- less than 5,000 cases a year -- according to the Wine Institute, a trade group. Wineries all over the U.S. are equally small. In fact, the 50 biggest wineries produce about 90 percent of all U.S. wine, according to the Wine Institute.

In other words, there is a great deal of interesting, distinctive wine out there, but you're not likely to see most of it in your local store on the way home tonight. That's where the recent Supreme Court ruling on direct shipping from wineries comes into play. Before too long, wherever you live, you might be able to order wine from the Temecula Valley, or maybe Virginia, or New York. We're excited about this because we believe it's part of the general loosening of wine laws. But we also realize that it will be a long time before most wine consumers really care. Consider: Even before the Supreme Court ruling, 27 states already permitted at least some direct shipping, but just 1 percent to 2 percent of all U.S. wine was bought that way, according to the Wine Institute -- and that small percentage even includes wines bought in tasting rooms.

Direct shipping, rather than helping small family wineries, might primarily help larger operations that already have extensive mailing lists and cult wineries that will be able to ship their wines to more of their fans in more states. We also imagine that when a critic writes about a smaller winery like Churon or Hart, it will suddenly be deluged with orders from around the country. The irony there, though, is that the very thing that makes wines like these so special -- small production and personal care -- means they won't be available to most people who want them after they're written about.

So here's our advice: Go online and, if it's possible where you live, get some wine from a smaller winery that you've never heard of -- and do it before it's discovered. Just search for "wineries of Virginia" or "wineries of New Mexico," find one that sounds interesting and see if you can order a mixed case. As anyone who has visited a tasting room knows, there is something very special about tasting several different wines from the same small winery. Often the wines, though white and red and made from many different varietals, have a certain similarity in their style, like a personality trait that runs through a family. We love that. We bought our Churon Zinfandel ($24.95), along with several other Churon wines, during a visit to the winery (anonymously, of course) while attending the D Conference. Tasting them later, we were struck by the consistency of their fruity yet restrained, food-friendly, earthy tastes. The winery produces about 6,000 cases each year, including just 300 cases of this Zinfandel, says winemaker Marshall Stuart, whose family-owned winery, Stuart Cellars, also makes awesome Zinfandels that are distributed in about 10 states. He says he expects the ruling on shipping to add to his wine-club membership, which stands now at 3,000 people across the country.

We first bought wines from Temecula several years ago and this seemed like a good time to open one up. So we made a brisket and tried a 1997 Petite Sirah from Cilurzo Vineyard & Winery, which, the association said, was one of two wineries to plant Temecula's first commercial vineyards in 1968 (it has since been bought and now is Bella Vista Cilurzo Vineyard & Winery). We had no idea how an eight-year-old Petite Sirah from a small, unknown winery might taste, but all we can say is "wow." The wine had great structure -- surprising for a Petite Sirah -- terrific fruit and not a hint of old age. It was filled with mint and chocolate at first, then some black olives as it opened. The wine had the earthiness, relaxed elegance and comforting tastes of a fine Italian wine. As Dottie said about so many of these wines, "They don't taste manipulated. They taste like fruit and earth."

Wines with real personality still exist. It's worth a little extra effort to find them.