At the Thanksgiving table that is!
I’m the wine guy in the family, and every Thanksgiving I take a bus from the Port Authority (really a horror) to Jersey to see the extended family (always a kick). Schlepping two bags (6-7 bottles with ice packs) on the #2 train, then on the Martz line is the yearly drill.
Some years I do better than others. I never play it safe. This year I batted almost 500 and hit one home run and three triples.
Big holiday wine learning this year: Don’t wait to introduce the wine at the table!
Start informally (I did at the kitchen counter), uncorking everything, pouring and telling stories for each bottle with the group pre dinner. Everyone found their favorite and proceeded to the table glass in hand. Great format.
The hands down popular favorite of the evening:
7 Fuentes Suertes Del Marques 2010!
Mostly Listan Negro with a smidgen of Tintilla, this luscious bottle is from the Island of Tenerife, the largest of the seven Canary Islands off the coast of Spain.
The organic grapes for this bottle are grown in tiny craters to protect them from the wind and aid evaporation from the sea air. This wine piques the imagination and just dances in the glass. Pungent, silky, replete with minerality. A slightly sweet aroma and an almost unnaturally long finish.
Surrounded by nieces and nephews, doctors-to-be, teachers and business people, this caused heads to nod, glasses to get refilled and conversation to flow.
Taste. Vitality. Friendly and pure. This is a wine with everything we love about it for every type of wine lover. And with a turkey dinner…perfection!
From Chambers Street Wines for $22.99.
Three way tie for runner up: Descombes, Tissot and Broc!
Georges Descombes Regnie 2010
I’m an unabashed Gamay fanatic. Descombes is the first Beaujolais I ever drank and one of the original “Morgan Gang of Five” that turned the world, and myself, on to the wonderfully easy and always interesting organic Beaujolais.
All flavor. This bottle was ripe, but, to me, brighter than the 2009. Great acidity to carry the flavor and make it oh-so-friendly with food.
Quaffable with some real life in the mouth. This is unfined, unfiltered, miniscule amounts of sulfur at bottling—Gamay as natural as it can be.
I love this bottle. $21.99 at Chambers Street Wines.
Tissot Arbois Trousseau Singulier 2010
I’m a long-term fan (really a fanatic) of Stephane Tissot and the Jura. I have repeatedly ignored all warnings that serving Trousseau (or Poulsard) to the non geek is a non starter.
I continually do so and am continually proven right. This wine dances between some austere structure and satisfying cherry taste. An almost perfect wine in my book and the epitome of balance. Uncannily floral. Couldn’t choose something better for sipping with roasted anything in my opinion.
$32.99 from Chambers Street Wines and others online.
Brock Valdiguie Solano County Green Valley 2011
Berkeley Winemaker Chris Brockway discovered a plot of 70-year old bush trained Valdiguie, a grape with origins in the Languedoc-Roussillon, in Solano County, California and continues to make this amazing bottle.
Fruit forward, juicy but vivid on the palate. Really lively in the glass. A happy red filled with verve.
Simply a great bottle with Turkey or, (I think), even roasted fish.
New-to- me bottle and winemaker. At $21.95 from Frankly Wines, this is an easy one for holiday gifts.
Belluard NV Ayse Vin de Savoie Méthode Traditionnelle
The big disconnect of the evening between the family’s taste and my palate.
I discovered that the family was neither white grape nor sparkling inclined.
While this bottle was a dull thud with the family, it was a celebration and a marvel for me! I finished this open bottle mostly on my own happily throughout the evening.
Rumor has it that Belluard is the only one in Savoie (or anywhere) who cultivates the Savoie native Gringet grape. The first fermentation of this tradiionally made bubbly is done with native yeast; the second with Champagne yeast. Non dosage. Over an evening of sipping this it was wacky…sometimes all tart apple, almost layered. Other times with a spicy tang. Beautiful refined bubbles.
Maybe not a family favorite but at $19.99 a bottle for natural white sparkling, I’m stocking up! From Chambers Street Wines.
Sandy Skerk 2009 Vitovska
I didn’t open this bottle (sigh!). The reaction to the Ayse and the crowds rush to the reds found this, one of my favorite wines from a hero of mine that I visited in Carso Fruili, taking the bus home with me.
It’s open now, being sipped as I write this.
I truly love this bottle of wine. I can’t sip it and taste its weighty balance, its layered acidity, and its insanely long and rich mineral finish without thinking of the Carso and my morning at Skerk Vineyard. An amazing place, back to the Alps, front to the Adriatic, all limestone and iron ore and wonder.
Available only at 67 Wine in New York for $34.99.
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NOTE: Half of my Thanksgiving wines were discovered at wine tastings put on by New York wine shops that are part of theLocalSip wine marketplace that I founded. All the wines are available online through these shops.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!
