Wine struggles with its ubiquity. “The trouble is, everywhere seems to make it these days,” remarked a Canadian friend of mine who couldn’t believe the number of stories she had read about countries planting vineyards. “Every day you pick up the paper and see another country is giving it a go. Pretty soon they will be making wine everywhere.” I had to agree.

Of course in commercial terms, Europe still dominates the wine-producing map, but a quick flick through the latest edition of “The World Atlas of Wine” shows that India, China, Japan, Uruguay, Malta, Luxembourg and even Canada, a country one associates with vast prairies, soaring mountain ranges and cold winters, all produce wine.

A flick through the latest edition of “The World Atlas of Wine” shows that wine is being produced in far-flung places such as India, China, Japan, Uruguay, Malta, Luxembourg and even Scotland. WSJ’s Will Lyons discusses. Photo courtesy: Chanson Rouge

For the record, Canada produces some excellent wine. Along the Niagara Peninsula, geography and climate combine to produce conditions suitable for the vine. I’ve tasted great Pinot Noir from Pelee Island, and wonderful Riesling and world-class ice wine from Niagara.

China, too, has a burgeoning wine industry. Domaines Barons de Rothschild, owner of Château Lafite Rothschild, is among a swathe of overseas investors busy planting vines in Shandong province. How do they taste? “It’s too early to say,” Lafite’s head winemaker, Charles Chevallier, said at a recent tasting in London. But I have tasted a Cabernet Sauvignon blend from a producer in the landlocked Ningxia region and it wasn’t bad. I wouldn’t bet against China producing some pretty drinkable wine in a few decades.

Within “The World Atlas of Wine” list, the U.K. is categorized as a whole, but even on its northern shores, on the Firth of Forth, in the home of Scotch whisky, hopeful vignerons have been planting vines. As to whether the grapes will make drinkable wine, we’ll have to wait a few years yet.

With all these new plantings, I thought it would be an opportune time to taste some wines not from the outer fringes of the wine world, but from its heart, the countries where it all began. In “I Drink Therefore I Am,” the philosopher Roger Scruton notes that archaeologists point to the area south of the Black Sea, in what is today made up of Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Israel and North Africa, as an area that has cultivated the vine since at least 6000 B.C. A drink known as Irp was served at the court of the pharaohs. This was followed by the ancient Greeks, who introduced vineyards to southern Italy. They also drank wine from the Phoenician city of Byblos on the Levantine coast, which today sits in Lebanon and continues to produce wine. Indeed, wine estates such as Massaya and Château Musar in the Bekaa Valley make richly scented, spicy red wines.

Modern Greece is often overlooked in winemaking terms. As well as its more immediate economic concerns, there is also its hot, arid summer weather, which could be seen as an obstacle. But sea breezes and high mountains make viticulture possible. The wild and herbaceous Retsina is one of its most famous white exports. In Naoussa, in the northern extremities of the country, red wines are produced with an attractive, light texture and full-throttle, deep bouquet. On Santorini, the white wines made from the Assyrtiko grape variety are as dry as they come, with a faint herbal character, while the island of Samos in the eastern Aegean makes luscious, honeyed pudding wine.

Israel has maintained a healthy export market with kosher wine, produced by large cooperatives such as Carmel. Many of its indigenous grape varieties were uprooted during the Muslim conquest of the seventh century, but in the late 1970s, a range of new plantings helped to create a thriving local wine industry. This was led by the Golan Heights winery, whose plantings 400 meters above sea level inspired others to follow. Today, it is forging a reputation on wines made from French varieties, while the Judean Mountains, the hills that surround Jerusalem, are peppered with promising small, boutique wineries. In fact, there has never been a better time to explore the ancient world of winemaking.

Write to Will Lyons at william.lyons@wsj.com

By LETTIE TEAGUE

There aren’t many vestiges left of New York in the ’70s, but among them none may be more beloved than the nine bar cars on Metro-North Railroad’s New Haven line.

The battered, faux-wood-paneled cars (“café cars” in MTA parlance) have been in continuous action since 1970, when martinis were served in multiples at lunch and Cheeveresque men consumed a few more on their way home to the suburbs. Today, the most popular drink on the bar car is probably Bud Lite, according to Metro North bartender Dan Wickline, who has been traveling the 41 miles of track between New York and New Canaan for nearly 12 years.

Mr. Wickline is one of seven full-time bartenders who are still working the New Haven line trains (bar cars were eliminated on the Harlem and Hudson lines back in the ’80s), and he is clearly much beloved by his customers, many of whom time their commutes home according to his schedule. In fact, Mr. Wickline has a list of some 80 regulars to whom he tweets his daily whereabouts. That’s because the bar cars aren’t a fixed amenity—their schedules vary according to the needs of the railroad. (Sometimes, the bar cars are put into service as regular passenger cars.)

There is also a website, Wheresthebarcar, that the faithful can consult: Car times are posted in the late morning to early afternoon, though the day that I traveled the schedule was blank. (I found the bar car’s time through the MTA; apparently, the anonymous citizen who tends the website took the day off.)

The 6:08 is one of the usual trains, according to the bar car denizens I met during my time aboard. The 5:48 is also a solid bet—as are the 8:07 and 9:07 trains to New Haven, though the late-night passengers are a different sort than those who ride the bar car during rush hours, according to Ryan from Stamford. (Most bar car patrons would only give me their first names.) “They’re quieter—more depressed,” Ryan said.

Ryan confessed that he is “fairly new” to the bar car scene—he’s been traveling in the car only for the past year or so. I asked if that why he was standing in the middle of the car. I’d been told by Tom, a programmer from New Cannan, that there were three bar car zones: the middle, the rear and the front, each carrying passengers of different personality types. (I found Tom in the front.) Ryan supposed that it was, though he confessed he hadn’t quite figured out the zones. And yet even factionless, Ryan still felt part of the crowd. And it made him think of his father, a bar car regular on the Hudson line back in the day. Did he mind that he was traveling in a car from his father’s time that looked, frankly, worse for the wear? “I think it’s fabulous,” Ryan said. It was a word I heard several times more from the faithful when describing their shabby cars.

There is a limit to how much a passengers may drink once aboard; no one is served more than two drinks, said Mr. Wickline. How could he tell when riders are buying one another rounds of drinks? I asked, watching Tom buy his group in the front the first round as the train left the station. “I know what everyone is drinking at all times,” Mr. Wickline replied, pouring me a tiny bottle of Gallo Cabernet into a plastic “adult sippy cup” complete with straw and delivering his signature phrase: “Happy Days!”

What about the white wine, I asked, choking back a sip of the soft, insipid red. I’d been told by MTA spokeswoman Marjorie Anders, that the white was the most popular wine (100,000 bottles vs. 45,000 reds sold in 2011; more than 1 million bottles of beer were sold in the same time). “Trust me, you don’t want to drink the white wine,” Mr. Wickline replied. In fact, Debbie, whom I found drinking wine in the back of the car, confessed that the white wine was so terrible that she had to add lots of ice just to get it down. She doesn’t drink beer or liquor. “But why not bring your own wine?” I asked. (This is technically permissible on Metro-North trains.) “I wouldn’t be helping Dan,” she replied.

Debbie was one of several patrons who invoked the bartender’s name when asked to explain what they loved best about the bar car, or why they were buying a can of beer, or a bag of chips. “I buy a seltzer or chips to support Dan,” said Beth from New Canaan. The only topic that invoked more passion among bar car riders than their bartender was the future of their cars. The Connecticut Department of Transportation is gradually replacing the ancient cars, but whether the new trains will include bar cars is unknown.

I called the Connecticut DOT the following morning to pose the question: Would the bar cars survive? Judd Everhart in the public affairs department offered a (somewhat) reassuring reply: “We are still planning to retrofit six to eight of the new rail cars into bar cars. No worries—for now anyway.”

And if the new cars also featured a new, and better, selection of wines? As Dan the bartender would say: Happy Days.

A version of this article appeared May 11, 2012, on page A21 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: No More Three-Martini Lunches, But Metro-North Bar Cars Remain.

By LAURA MOSER

Want more precision in your baking? Revolutionize your brownie-making routine with one of these handy digital kitchen scales. We tested a dozen and picked our favorites based on precision, appearance, ease of cleaning and general user-friendliness. We weighed sugar, spinach, coffee and coins, as well as slippery liquids galore. These five winners, all of which can weigh around 11 pounds of ingredients, were the best of the bunch.

Joseph Joseph Shell

THE MODERNIST

Joseph Joseph Shell

$65 // josephjoseph.com

Plus: This was far and away the coolest-looking scale we tested, with an elegant Tiffany-bean-like measuring bowl on top that saved us from scrambling around the kitchen in search of a container to hold our ingredients.

Minus: Good design costs a bit more, and we wish the white plastic base looked as handsome as the measuring bowl.

Oxo Good Grips Food Scale With Pullout Display

THE BLUE RIBBON

Oxo Good Grips Food Scale With Pullout Display

$50 // oxo.com

Plus: This scale is chock-full of nifty features, most notably a pullout display that’s indispensable when weighing large bowls that might otherwise obscure the readout window. We also liked the dishwasher-safe removable tray.

Minus: The scale displays weights in fractions, not the more commonly used (and easier to decipher) decimals, which can be a headache for those of us who have forgotten our basic arithmetic.

Escali Primo

THE ENDURANCE ATHLETE

Escali Primo

$25 // escali.com

Plus: This mega-affordable scale has an extremely generous auto shut-off window: a solid four minutes, or enough time to measure everything we needed for a whole cake. Others with shorter timeouts had the irritating tendency to turn off while we were still in medias measuring.

Minus: The all-plastic exterior isn’t going to win any design awards (though we did enjoy the nice selection of colors, particularly the pumpkin).

EatSmart Precision Pro Digital Kitchen Scale

THE STARTER SCALE

EatSmart Precision Pro Digital Kitchen Scale

$25 // eatsmartproducts.com

Plus: Another bargain that worked as well or better than many of the pricier scales we tested, the EatSmart uses AAA batteries, which are cheaper and easier to find than lithium batteries.

Minus: It shuts off faster than many, and with its blobby design, it’s not exactly a work of art. It doesn’t have a LCD light on the readout, which can make for some stooping and squinting.

Ozeri Zenith Digital Kitchen Scale

THE SILVER BULLET

Ozeri Zenith Digital Kitchen Scale

$60 // ozeri.com

Plus: This ultra-slim stainless-steel scale could have been designed in the atelier of Steve Jobs, and smearing its smooth surface with fingerprints is all but impossible. It has more units of measure than most of the other scales: grams, fluid ounces, ounces and milliliters.

Minus: The automatic shut-off kicked in faster than we would have liked, sometimes while we were still measuring ingredients, and accurately zeroing out the scale occasionally took some persistence.

By ANN LANDI

Agnes Martin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Taos, N.M.

The enigmatic Agnes Martin, who spent parts of her life in this small mountainous enclave and died here in 2004, gained international acclaim for her spare, luminous canvases, fields of washy color traversed by delicate hand-drawn lines, generally in the shape of a grid. These understated works can carry a big impact, producing a meditative response in viewers and inspiring reams of appreciative criticism. Like many of the Minimalist artists with whom she is often associated, Martin could extract infinite variations on a theme, producing both small drawings and huge paintings that use the grid as their underpinning.

Yet Martin—born in 1912, the same year as Jackson Pollock—did not arrive at her winning strategy until she was in her late 50s, and her earlier work is not well known. Indeed, she did her best to seek out and destroy paintings from the years when she was taking her first steps into full-blown abstraction. In honor of her centenary, the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos has tracked down a generous selection of works the artist made in her 30s and 40s. In addition to a couple of self-portraits and a few watercolor landscapes, these include biomorphic paintings made when the artist had a grant to work in Taos in the mid-1950s. They are lyrical works in subdued colors, taking on motifs from nature, like “Mid-Winter” (1954) and “The Bluebird” (1954), or hinting at grander, curiously archaic subjects (“The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden,” 1953). This last is an explosive semifigurative work, in which the doomed couple are broken into a frenzy of jagged shapes, but more typical are several untitled paintings that show hovering, vaguely geometric or oozy, lifelike forms (the “biomorphs” of biomorphism). The museum has also included three early grid paintings from 1959 and 1961 and a selection of later works on paper in the entry hall, a preamble to the Harwood’s permanent gallery of seven large paintings from 1993-94.

The show raises some intriguing issues. Why was the artist producing biomorphic abstractions almost a decade behind her peers from the New York School, like Pollock, Adolph Gottlieb and Arshile Gorky? How do these presage her later, more tough-minded work? Does Martin belong with the Abstract Expressionist or Minimalist camps in an overarching view of 20th-century art history? And what are the ethics of showing work an artist seemed determined to disown?

“Agnes was a great study,” notes Richard Tobin, an art historian and critic for The magazine in Santa Fe, who wrote a lengthy catalog essay for the show. “She was a lot like Gorky, who had a tremendous ability to absorb previous work and digest it.” During the period of biomorphic abstractions, “she’s not looking at what’s going on at the time”—which would have included Pollock’s last drip paintings or Willem de Kooning’s “Woman” series. “She was looking at what [the cutting-edge artists] were doing in the 1940s. Essentially she’s looking back and vicariously going through the same evolution.” While Martin was in Taos between 1955 and 1957, after years in New York, she would have come into contact with largely forgotten artists like Beatrice Mandelman and Louis Ribak, says Tiffany Bell, author of the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Martin’s work and co-curator of the show with the Harwood’s chief curator, Jina Brenneman. Taos at the time was an outpost for artists from New York, San Francisco and Europe, many of whom seemed to be grappling with the legacy of Surrealism and issues of nonobjective painting that had preoccupied the nascent New York School in the ’40s.

Mr. Tobin says that Martin—who was only a few years younger than Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, and a year older than her close friend Ad Reinhardt—belongs more with these founding fathers of American art than with later Minimalists like Donald Judd, Robert Ryman and Sol LeWitt. The late Lawrence Alloway, Mr. Tobin writes, “sees her hands-on technique and ‘exalted subject matter’ as characteristic of the Abstract Expressionist generation.” And her allover compositions share with those of Pollock and Rothko an impulse toward fields of pure color or paint. Mr. Tobin notes also that Gorky used a grid to enlarge his smaller works into larger paintings: “The grid is a latent factor in any good biomorphic abstraction in the first place,” he believes.

Though it’s beyond the scope of the Harwood show, the last works in the galleries hint at Martin’s rapid transition in the late ’50s. In 1957, she returned to New York and took up residence at Coenties Slip on the East River in lower Manhattan, where her neighbors included Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist and Robert Indiana. Many suggestions have been made about the influences that propelled Martin to the grid format around 1959-60: American Indian rugs and adobe architecture, weavings by her friend Lenore Tawney, Kelly’s channeling of Piet Mondrian, even memories of the bleak landscape of her native Saskatchewan. Martin herself said: “When I first made a grid I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees and then a grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, this is my vision.”

As early as 1967, Martin was looking to wipe out her earlier work. That year, Reinhardt died and the studio at Coenties Slip was slated for demolition. Martin gave up painting for a few years and traveled in a pick-up truck and camper around the West and Pacific Northwest. “Some artists are interested in the process and history of their work,” Ms. Bell says, “and some artists consider their present work or their most recent work to be the best. I think Agnes Martin fell into the latter category.” Mr. Tobin suggests that when she went into a brief exile, “she had resolved a lot of crises that had been building up since the summer of 1967 and were catalyzed by the death of Reinhardt. I think she wanted to close a chapter, which in a way she identified with that whole biomorphic transition.”

Karen Yank, a sculptor and former student, says that Martin “would not be thrilled” with the Harwood’s excavation of her first forays into a new language. “She told me close to her death that she tried to buy back every one of those paintings, and the ones she could she burned.” But when Ms. Yank pointed out to her that they show “young artists who are struggling that there’s hope,” Martin relented . . . somewhat. “After I told her why it was OK to have a few of them out there,” Ms. Yank recalls, “she said, ‘Well, it is what it is. But still if they’d sell them back to me, I’d burn them.’”

The curators, of course, believe these works belong to art history; they are the first steps of a major artist and as such invaluable in our understanding of her evolution. “The museum’s responsibility is not to the artist,” says Mr. Tobin. “The museum’s responsibility is to educate.”

Ms. Landi writes on culture and the arts.

A version of this article appeared March 14, 2012, on page D6 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Saved From the Artist’s Fire.

By JIM FUSILLI

Nashville

Merle Haggard and Buck Owens are the standard-bearers for the stream of California country known as the Bakersfield Sound. Rightfully so: The 74-year-old Mr. Haggard is a formidable singer and one of America’s greatest songwriters; and Owens—who died in 2006 at age 76—together with his band, the Buckaroos, brought international attention to Bakersfield with its loud, clean, twangy style. Between them, the two musicians have tallied some 135 Top-20 hits on Billboard’s country charts.

But as we see in the high-spirited and handsomely mounted exhibition “The Bakersfield Sound: Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and California Country” at the Country Music Hall of Fame here, the sound isn’t homogeneous, took decades to develop and is the product of many hands. To discover Bakersfield’s forgotten artists is to tap a vein of American musical gold.

The Bakersfield story begins with the Dust Bowl. From Boaz, Ala., the Maddox family was among the 70,000 migrant workers and their children who traveled west to California’s San Joaquin Valley. Soon after arriving in 1933, the Maddoxes’ four sons and daughter formed a musical act, the Maddox Brothers & Rose; by 1937 they became the region’s first stars, performing a rocking country boogie they called “hillbilly music.” Thanks to their glitzy apparel and wild stage show, they were known as “America’s Most Colorful Hillbilly Band.”

In the mid-1940s Bakersfield, by now populated with country-music fans, became a rewarding stop for touring musicians. Bob Wills, the King of Western Swing, visited in 1946 and played for a year at the Beardsley Ballroom. Ferlin Husky moved in and had a hit duet with Jean Shepard; their “A Dear John Letter” featured Tommy Collins, Fuzzy Owen, Lewis Talley and Bill Woods. Woods ran the house band at the Blackboard, the honky-tonk epicenter of the city’s music scene. It showcased a lead guitarist from Mesa, Ariz., named Buck Owens.

The Blackboard’s music was designed for dancing and good times. Guitarist Joe Maphis, who recorded with his wife, Rose Lee, was so impressed with the rollicking Blackboard that he wrote “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud, Loud Music)” in its honor.

But it wasn’t until the 1950s that Capitol Records caught on. Producer Ken Nelson brought some Bakersfield musicians to Los Angeles and, with Owens on lead guitar, Collins had a string of hits for Capitol that brought national attention to a spare, echo-free recording style featuring the bite of a Fender Telecaster guitar. But it was Owens’s similar approach as a singer and bandleader that became known as the model for the Bakersfield Sound.

It was a handy mantle for commercial reasons, but it didn’t quite capture the sound’s essence: Maphis played a custom-made double-neck Mosrite guitar, not a Telecaster, and Owens’s music wasn’t much like what the Maddox Brothers & Rose played. Still, the label stuck and Capitol thrived. Meanwhile, back in Bakersfield, Talley and Owen opened their own label and signed Merle Haggard, who was playing bass in Stewart’s band. Mr. Haggard’s own group, the Strangers, featured guitar great Roy Nichols, who had played with the Maddox Brothers & Rose.

It’s said that the Bakersfield Sound was a reaction to the sweetness of Nashville, but that’s not necessarily so. Bakersfield musicians were influenced by Western swing, hillbilly music and to some extent R&B. If Nashville country came out of the church, as Mr. Haggard notes in one of the exhibit’s videos, “Bakersfield came out of the bars.” It was a relief from working in the fields.

Another misconception is that rock ‘n’ roll was seen as a threat. In fact, many Bakersfield musicians recognized it as an opportunity. In time, the Blackboard featured it. Owens was influenced by Little Richard, calling his music “conducive to excitement.” Three years before Elvis Presley cut his version of “That’s All Right, Mama,” the Maddox Brothers & Rose reworked an African-American blues number and came up with “New Step It Up and Go,” a wild rocker that presages the Presley track.

“The Bakersfield Sound” is fortified by vintage television footage from regional programs like Herb Henson’s “Trading Post.” Artifact-filled dioramas give a sense of how a music scene born of poverty rose to glory. Owens’s beloved sideman Don Rich is given ample due, as is guitarist Billy Mize and Bonnie Owens, a sweet country singer who had been married to Buck Owens and Mr. Haggard (and dated Fuzz Owen in between). Fender Telecasters abound.

As comprehensive as it strives to be, the exhibition fails to fully credit the role of Mexican conjunto or norteño music in the development of the Bakersfield Sound. Dwight Yoakam and Chris Hillman discuss it briefly in a video, and accordionist Flaco Jiménez is saluted for his contribution to the 1988 Yoakam-Owens duet on “Streets of Bakersfield,” but elsewhere it goes without mention. Consider that a correctible oversight, and applaud the Country Music Hall of Fame for spotlighting a seminal musical movement that can still thrill and delight.

Mr. Fusilli is the Journal’s rock and pop music critic. Email him at jfusilli@wsj.com or follow him on Twitter: @wsjrock.

A version of this article appeared March 28, 2012, on page D7 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Fabulous Bakersfield Boys.

F. Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal, Styling by Anne Cardenas

Banana-infused Jameson

It started, as many things do, over shots. After a late-night drinking session with friends and a bottle of Jameson, Marc Forgione, chef of the eponymous New York restaurant, said that the Irish whiskey reminded him of peaches. Soon after, peach-infused Jameson landed on the drinks list. It was a success. But as fall came, peaches fell out of season. They needed an alternative fruit. Matthew Conway, the restaurant’s general manager and sommelier, gave the whiskey a whiff. Bananas, he thought. A batch was infused with slices of the yellow fruit, and a cult hit was born. By 5:30 on any given day, half the bar will have a rocks glass full of the stuff in hand. It even caps off the tasting menu. As one of the Michelin-starred restaurant’s best-selling items, about 18 liters of the libation is produced daily.

“It’s hard for the average person to taste a spirit without being overwhelmed,” said Mr. Conway. “This lets them decipher them in a really approachable, enjoyable way.” In other words, if you never liked Jameson, you’ll love banana-infused Jameson—the fruit softens everything about the spirit without changing the profile or delivering much sting or burn. Viscous and a tad sweet, the drink skews a bit toward the desserty side—like a liquid version of banana bread pudding—but no one’s going to scoff if you have one pre-dinner.

If you can’t make it to Mr. Forgione’s digs, it’s dead simple to make at home. While Mr. Conway keeps the exact technique a secret, he said this recipe will do. (It does.) He recommends using up the infusion within a year to avoid oxidation, though it’s doubtful you’ll have any left after a week.

Banana-Infused Jameson

3 bananas, peeled and sliced

1 750ml bottle Jameson Irish Whiskey

Place bananas and Jameson into a sealed container for three to four days. Strain out banana slices using a mesh strainer and discard. The infusion should be slightly viscous and cloudy—this gives the drink its unique texture, body and flavor. Pour infused Jameson back into container or bottle. Serve in a rocks glass with a single cube.

—Kevin Sintumuang

A version of this article appeared March 17, 2012, on page D6 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Monkeying With Whiskey.