Perhaps this has already happened to you. If not, consider it inevitable. Your glass holds an unexpected style of wine, one that comes from a place you might not know makes wine. The flavors will be mysterious but alluring. But you will not be drinking Cabernet or another grape that has joined the brotherhood of the super-extracted or the legion of the profoundly oaky. The bottles most coveted since wine's revival in the 1980s are now so overpriced that only old-timers with family fortunes and youngsters with tech start-ups have the means to drink them. All the grandiose cru red Burgundies, polished-to-a-spit-shine California Cabernets, haughty-as-hell red Bordeaux, and Montrachets that glow like pirates' gold, while still the pinnacle of collectability, are no longer for the rational, only for the rich. They are to this century what Fabergé eggs were to the last: playthings of the privileged. If you've never had them and wonder what you're missing, they're tasty enough but oddly similar.

Wine critic Robert Parker, whose rise to power catalyzed wine's comeback and whose 100-point scoring system became its backbone, isn't entirely to blame for what he wrought—an unhealthy worldwide devotion to bombastic wines selling at monumental prices. At the beginning, he was an impassioned reformer whose critiques rescued a faltering industry. He was adamant that winemaking standards had to improve, steadfastly stood up for the consumer, and introduced important winemakers to the public. The end of his usefulness occurred not long ago, about the time his scoring system stopped making sense, new-oak aging became a bore, wines started to lose their soul, and prices rose absurdly. These days the most sought-after vineyards are often bought and run by people who understand how to make fortunes, not wines.

There's hope: A new and admirable era is upon us. It's not about an upstart wine country such as Argentina or South Africa, its winemakers eager to join the existing wine community, gaining entry by producing an alternative to Bordeaux or a cheaper Merlot. Such producers weren't rebels; they merely embraced the status quo. It's different now. The old world of wine was about elegance and prosperity. The emerging wine pioneers are eccentric, idealistic, and passionate. Some are admirably poor.

They wear T-shirts faded by the sun and bearing the logo of an agricultural fair they attended years ago. They are sinewy, a consequence of working the fields and having no interest in hosting three-star luncheons. If they have an extra $500, they spend it on farm equipment, not haircuts. They exude personal authenticity. Their philosophy of wine and life is taking hold in scattered regions of the world, particularly in Europe.

You'll find them in Jura, an overlooked département of France best known for cheese; in Macedonia, a northerly region of Greece that was Alexander the Great's old stomping ground; on Corsica, an island that belongs to France but owes much of its past to Italy; and even in the forgotten farmlands of Sicily.

Arianna Occhipinti swirls a decanter of Albanello-a grape that was once popular in Sicily but has fallen out of favor for difficult to grow and late to ripen.

These winemakers depend, for the most part, on unknown native grapes you've never heard of: Poulsard, Xinomavro, and Frappato, to mention a few. They tend to live in the countryside, near or in their vineyards, which are often organic (no artificial fertilizers or pesticides in the vineyard; limited preservatives in the wine) and sometimes biodynamic (organic plus holistic benefits). They seek to work the land patiently and strive to understand hilly, sometimes even shaggy, vineyards that some of these winemakers have planted themselves. They are enamored with odd pieces of ancient equipment, like wooden de-stemmers that date from the seventeenth century.

They're not obsessed with new oak, the holy grail of twentieth-century wine. They do not rely on consultants—well-paid enologists who jet in to upgrade wine production and, some say, make all wines taste distressingly alike. They are restoring randomness to wine, rejecting the cloning that takes place in nurseries and severely limits genetic diversity. Instead, they are grafting in vineyards, embracing untamed vines. These upstart winemakers are forever changing their blends, their grapes, their styles, whenever inspiration strikes, rather than striving for sameness in perpetuity. What emerges from their bottles is fresh, juicy, spicy, energetic, often a touch rustic, sometimes twinkling in the mouth. Rarely are their wines made to be aged. These wines do one thing, for certain: They plant new ideas in your head.