The Wine Cellar presents astrology and top shelf wines

Sherry Wallis You don’t typically get to sip “the good stuff” at wine tastings. You know, the stuff that costs $40 or more a bottle.

So Sherry Wallis decided to mix things up. Two years ago she threw a luxury wine tasting event that became so popular that now she does it every year at her store, the Wine Cellar.

This year’s event, from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, pushes the envelope of wine tastings even further: You can sip and have local astrologer Owen DeLong tell you what the stars hold for you.

(Or maybe he can match your astrological sign to a wine. Pisces, you’re Pinot Noir. Virgo, you’re Chardonnay. Sorry, Leo, — it’s Bud Light for you.)

“A couple of years ago when I did a girls’ night out tasting, I had Owen come to that, and it went over extremely well,” says Wallis, a Sagittarius sommelier. “It was amazing how many people lined up to talk to him.”

She says this wine tasting, which costs $25, isn’t like those where people go to drink themselves into a free buzz. “The people who come to this tasting come either because they like wine or they want to like wine better,” she says.

But you don’t have to know a lot about wine to attend. “A lot of the people who are coming are people in our wine club, and those people are really in the novice category,” she says.

Four of her distributors will be on hand “and they’ll be talking about these wines nonstop,” she says. “It’s not an event where we’ll pour the wine and ask you, ‘What do you think?’ These people will be talking about where the wines come from, how they started out in life, what to pair them with. It’s going to be very informative.”

She’s putting out some of her best for Friday’s event. Guests will sample ’06 Burgundies — described by reviewers as fleshy, ripe whites and supple, fruity reds — that are every bit as good as the Burgundies of 2005, said to be the best in the last generation, she says.

“We are also doing some of the Argentinean upper-level wines from Catena,” she says.

And what’s a party without Champagne? She’ll be offering sips of Moet & Chandon White Star, for sure one of the nicer bubblies you could buy for New Year’s Eve.

If sipping on Champagne and fine wines doesn’t seem good form, or even practical, as the economy sinks into depression, Wallis would have us reconsider.

“Especially during these hard times when we might not be able to go out to dinner or the clubs or bars, and now you’re cooking meals at home, it really makes sense to accent it with a fabulous bottle of wine,” she says.

We’ll drink to that.