www.fruitfoward.com

The mile-long shelves at your local wine shop can be intimidating, especially if you've invited a connoisseur to your dinner party. Fruit Forward selects two bottles from new wine regions and small wineries and mails them to you each month. Included with the deliveries are suggestions for food-and-wine pairings and useful tasting notes for the wine novice. Though the default shipment is one bottle of red and one of white, you can choose to receive two reds or two whites, if you prefer.

RS received: A 2002 Cheyanna Zinfandel and a 2003 Raywood Vineyards Chardonnay.

Cost: $20 monthly, plus shipping.

Take Note: A free insulated wine tote is included in the first shipment. Because of individual state liquor laws, Fruit Forward now ships to only 27 states, though it expects to expand the list shortly.

Why we love Tricia and Charles Smith

Because when life gave them lemons, they made sauvignon blanc. . . sort of. In 2002, after Tricia, a graphic designer, and Charles, a lawyer, lost their dot-com jobs, the couple didn't abandon their Bay Area haunts but relied on local resources, namely vino, to start anew. "We turned to value wines," says Tricia, "both to drown our sorrows and to cut back on spending." They soon realized that their taste for the grape could turn into a business. Five months of planning, and many tipsy tastings later, the duo launched Fruit Forward, an online wine-of-the-month club named for a term that describes a particularly fruity vintage.

Because they're bringing, cheap quality wine to the masses. For $20 a month, the site's subscribers receive two handpicked bottles; both white, both red, or one of each. What began as a 30-or-so member club has since grown to 300 devotees. And along the way, by offering small vintners' wares on the Web, the Smiths have aided winemakers who couldn't find wide distribution.

Because it's not just about selling. With each month's shipment, members receive jargon-free tasting notes with the wines' histories and ideas for food pairings. Next up: Fruit Forward parties meant to hawk wine a la Tupperware and educate budding oenophiles. Ambitious, but in the end, Charles says, "we're really just trying to take the snootiness out of wine." We'll drink to that! - Mark J. Miller