Elin McCoy

Freud struggled to find an answer to the question “What does a woman want?” Ninety-odd years later, some in the wine industry think they know.

In the dusty crypt of a 12th- century abbey, where monks once prayed, I’m rolling a few drops of 1860 Cognac on my tongue.

At 10 o’clock on a sunny Bordeaux Monday morning, tall, slim Christian Moueix places his palms prayerfully together as he intones the tale of 2011’s difficult weather in a smooth baritone.

Sipping samples of Louis Jadot’s superb 2010 Burgundies downstairs at New York’s Bar Boulud, I breathe a sigh of relief. It looks like I can still afford to buy a few of the region’s seductive bottles at reasonable prices.

David Hirsch, pinot noir pioneer of the “true” Sonoma coast, owes his success to the San Andreas Fault. Its earthquakes pushed up the remote, high ridges that are home to his eponymous vineyard, one of California’s pinot “grand crus.”

Jon Rimmerman, aka the Garagiste, is late. He’s sending out his daily online wine offer from his BlackBerry in his room at New York’s new Hotel Americano.

On a glass coffee table in his Hong Kong high-rise apartment, Peter V. Kwok eagerly unrolls an aerial photograph of the wine estate he bought in November. His Chateau Tour Saint-Christophe grows merlot and cabernet franc grapes in the St.-Emilion appellation of Bordeaux. With his finger, he traces the outline of its 17 hectares of old vines -- and then points out a dark-green slope.

As my boots crunch through snow, Pierre-Marie Luneau hands me a chunk of serpentinite rock in his vineyard on La Butte de la Roche. Like all the best Muscadet producers, Luneau is obsessed with how soil affects a wine’s quality.

Karl Lagerfeld provoked both boos and cheers for his rustic sketch of Chateau Rauzan-Segla on the 2009 label of the Bordeaux estate, celebrating its 350th anniversary. The wine inside, though, is no dashed-off impression.

At Christie’s International’s first New York wine sale of the year on Jan. 25, Krug Grande Cuvee champagne will flow in the presence of Old Master paintings to inspire buyers to bid big, or so the auction house hopes.

Locked away in his garage just over a year ago, Mendocino winemaker Mark Beaman spent hours soaking up the vibe of the Grateful Dead album “Steal Your Face.” Then he set about creating a red wine that “interprets” the album’s music and uses the cover art on its label.

No aspect of popular culture achieves real acceptance until it’s been incorporated into one of Lady Gaga’s outfits, so I was gratified to see her decked out as a wine bottle with cork hat and wineglass gloves on Saturday Night Live’s spring season finale.