ANYONE WHO has visited the dog pound has seen that "Heinz 57" puppy, all tail and tongue, so darn happy to greet you he's practically coming out of his floppy skin. There are wines like that, too — mutt wines.

Mutt wines are made from whatever barrels the winemaker had left hanging around after he or she made the "real" (that is to say, expensive) wine. Winemakers generally ferment their grapes in individual batches or "lots," kept separate according to their variety, the vineyard that grew them, sometimes even by their location within a vineyard. These individual lots are then aged in barrels, tasted and re-tasted until the winemaker does the final blending.

Most expensive red wines — pinot noir being the exception — are blends of at least two different grapes. Bordeaux blends, sometimes called meritage wines, are the best known. They often are given snooty proprietary names and designer packages, and priced accordingly — $50 and up for most.

Once the top wine has been made, the winemaker will usually have a few odd barrels of this 'n' that left; wines that didn't make the cut. Some wineries have second labels (quite common in Bordeaux) for bottling the leftovers, but most in this country do not. Yet barrels that don't make it into the upscale wines aren't necessarily bad. In fact, they may be quite good. They just didn't fit. Perhaps they didn't fill the need for tannin or a particular spice; they might have had a hint of stem or leaf in the nose; or they might simply have come from younger vines that produced forward, fruity flavors less suited to cellaring.

The solution for many winemakers is to take these odd lots and shmoosh them together to make a "red table wine." Oh, they may give it a semi-fancy name (Vin du Table Rouge), but more often it's a fanciful name, because genuine mutt wines have a sense of humor. Best of all, they don't cost much. Under $20 a bottle is a fair line to draw. I think they should incorporate at least three and maybe five or six different grapes, preferably grapes that don't necessarily see each other's company very often. For example, if you take the tried-and-true blend of cabernet and merlot and toss in some syrah and a splash of sangiovese, you've got yourself a mutt.

What's also great about these wines is the sense of fun they bring to the table. Just reading their names and labels can provide a clue. Here's a classic example: a wine called Jest Red. Underneath the name is a montage of four women in togas prancing around like Isadora Duncan wannabes. "Giddy pleasure, leaping grace," the back label reads. "Crushed by the bare feet of 69 beautiful women in the wee light of dawn one misty October day. Deeply perfumed with wild dewberries, Himalayan breeding musk and horehound candy ... Sip delicately, sing with abandon." In other words, let's paaar-tay!!

Winemakers are tinkerers, so there are endless variations on the mutt concept. Each is unique, hence unpredictable, and they lack the finesse and focus of the purebreds and show blends. But they make up for it with sheer exuberance, fresh fruit flavors and (sometimes) surprising complexity.

Many are sold directly out of winery tasting rooms. They will have names like Dr. Wolfe's Family Red or Fess Parker's Frontier Red. They will follow you home. Don't even think of cellaring them. Just pop the cork and they will happily help you lick the dinner platter clean.

Check out the list below for a sampling of mutts definitely worth taking home.

No Dogs, These

Colosi 2000 Sicilia Rosso ($8). Eight bucks! Nero d'Avola and "other indigenous grapes" (we don't care where you came from, just show us the flavor). Rustic, but bursting with sweet black-cherry fruit, and plenty of fresh tobacco and tea in the tannic finish. Marietta Cellars Old Vine Red Lot #29 ($10). Consistent year in and year out, Marietta's fruit-laden field blend includes zinfandel, petit sirah, carignan, sangiovese and whatever the cat dragged in that day, and it's wonderful. The ultimate spaghetti wine. Jest Red non-vintage Red Table Wine ($11). The classic example of the mixed-breed blend. Mixes cabernet sauvignon, merlot, petit sirah, petit verdot, pinot noir, syrah and zinfandel. Dark, smooth, sweetly scented with violets and blueberries, it rolls into a satiny, lip-licking finish. Hedges 2000 CMS Red Wine ($11). CMS stands for two cabernets, merlot and syrah. This fragrant, immensely popular blend features ripe red and blue berries, tart and tangy. Don't look for oak here, just plenty of well-defined fruit flavor. Novella 2000 Synergy ($11). The second-tier brand for the EOS winery, Synergy blends sangiovese, zinfandel and a dash of petit sirah. Strawberry and red berry fruits open into a broad, lush mouthful of flavor, polished off with a hint of toasty oak.

Gundlach Bundschu "Lot #9" Bearitage ($12). The winemaker livens up the usual meritage blend of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot with some zinfandel, tempranillo and gamay. Plenty of juicy black cherry fruit along with some tannic "stuffing." Fess Parker 2000 Frontier Red ($12). The cool picture of Davy Crockett right there on the label is your assurance that this wine is a straight shooter. Ripe and raisiny, it tastes of prunes and apricots, earth and smoke. Kilt him a barrel, when he wuz only 3! Santa Barbara Winery 2000 ZCS ($14). This gold-medal-winning, zin-based blend also includes carignan and sangiovese. Bright raspberry and cherry fruit flavors punch up the flavor, balanced with tangy acids and a hint of tannin. Quivera 2000 Dry Creek Cuvée ($18). This is a real crowd-pleaser, mixing grenache, mourvèdre, syrah and zinfandel in a bold, vivid mélange of red and blueberry fruit. Bracing and food-friendly. Sean Thackrey Pleiades XI Old Vines ($20). This is right on the edge of being too expensive to be a mutt, but dang it's good. The kitchen-sink congregation includes syrah, barbera, carignan, petit sirah, zin, grenache, viognier and more. Complex, fragrant and gamey.

Paul Gregutt is the author of "Northwest Wines" and a freelance writer who regularly appears on the Wine pages of The Times' Wednesday Food section. His e-mail address is indelible@aol.com. Barry Wong is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff photographer.