Over the holidays we did a good business in grab-and-go gift box sets, especially our Old World/New World sets. For the Chardonnay pack, I paired a classic rich, buttery California version of the grape with a more minerally, subtle example from the Macon region of Burgundy. The Malbec set paired a juicy, fruity Argentine version with an earthy, structured version from Cahor, the grape’s original home in France.
Now there’s a certain part of the wine world that would say this is ridiculous – that it’s not about the grapes. It’s about the place. Chardonnay grown in Burgundy isn’t “Chardonnay” – it’s Burgundy. And yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it.
But I’m not in the business of defending any particular philosophy of place or grape type or winemaking method. I’m in the business of selling people good wine that they’ll enjoy, helping them understand why they enjoy it (and why it’s good), and hopefully convincing them to explore a bit beyond what they already know.
And pointing out that California Chardonnay and a Macon are both made from the same grape (even if the bottle doesn’t say this) is a good way to start that process. Even better – getting them to taste both side by side, which is the main point of these packs.
So….if you’ve already burned through your first set of New Year’s Resolutions (like exercise every day. Or give up carbs….or Facebook and blogs) why not make a resolution to learn more about wine? I would be happy to help.
Since Suggestion #6 involved a wine I couldn’t even sell, these next suggestions center on wines exclusively available at Frankly Wines. OK, the wines aren’t exclusive to my store, but I dare you to find all these ones at any one place…other than Frankly Wines!
All horn tooting aside, last year, it became very clear that many customers really don’t want to think too much about what they’re serving for Thanksgiving. Sure, there are plenty of customers that do want to discuss the intricacies of their various side dishes or the specific ingredients in their stuffing, but they’ve generally not doing their shopping the day before Thanksgiving. For those last minute shoppers, I’ve put together three different 3-Packs. Each includes a red, white, and rose, all boxed up and ready to grab and go.
Here they are:
THANKSGIVING WINE 101 All three of these wines were Frankly Wines best sellers. They’re all tasty, easy-drinking crowd pleasers that won’t offend your turkey (or your crazy aunt.)
Sebastiani Chardonnay 2007 (Sonoma, California): Creamy Chardonnay goodness balanced by a crisp citrus edge. This is even a hit with those who “don’t like Chardonnay”
Mark West Pinot Noir 2008 (California): Bright, pure fruit with a hint of spice. Not too heavy, not too light – it’s the ideal accompaniment to a table full of Thanksgiving treats.
Crios Rosé of Malbec 2009 (Mendoza, Argentina): Made from the Malbec grape, this is a rose with a kick. Big fruit, big spice – it’s a red wine that just happens to be pink.
PRICING:$36.99 (regular price $40.97)
TURKEY DAY UPGRADE Show your bird a little love and upgrade the liquid portion of your dinner These grape varieties are just one or two steps removed from the usual suspects – without being weird or wine geeky.
Markus Fries Bernkasteler Schlossberg Kabinett 2007 (Mosel, Germany): Almost-dry Riesling from a tiny producer. Despite fears to the contrary, that tiny bit of sweetness is what makes this a perfect paring for nearly anything.
Noëlla Morantin Mon Cher Gamay 2008 (Loire Valley, France): Think of Gamay as Pinot Noir’s vibrant country cousin. This one is made by a young winemaker from fruit sourced from the culty Clos Roche Blanche vineyards.
Nigl Zweigelt Rose 2008 (Kremstal, Austria): Nigl is a tip top producer in Austria. Zweigelt is a red grape rarely (ever?) seen outside of Austria. And this rosé is a smashing blend of fresh berry fruit and a white pepper kick.
PRICING:$49.99 (regular price $57.97)
THANKSGIVING ADVENTURE PACK Face it – turkey day food can be a little boring. But you can bring an a little adventure to your table with this 3-Pack. Yes, these wines are at the bleeding edge of wine geek coolness, but they also happen to be pretty tasty. Don’t be scared….
Bornard Arbois Pupillin Melon Le Rouge Queue 2006 (Arbois, Jura, France): In the Jura region, Chardonnay is called “Melon.” But the taste is totally different. Pure, clean fruit with a slightly sherry-like tang. Weird but good.
Cos Cerasuolo Vittoria Classico 2007 (Sicily, Italy): A blend of Nero d’Avola and Frappato from Sicily. You can taste the Sicilian sunshine, but not in a cooked way. It’s all bright cherries, fresh earth and a whiff of spice.
Lopez de Heredia Todonia Rosado 1998 (Rioja, Spain): From one of the last 100% old school producers in Rioja, this is not your typical rosé. A perfect balance of sherry-like tang, exotic spices and ghosts of fruit. PRICING:$74.99 (regular price $97.97)
So I was planning to write a post bemoaning how this year, it’s been the height of wine-writing fashion to bash the Beaujolais Nouveau. I was going to say that just like any wine, there is good Nouveau and bad Nouveau. And to cast an entire type of wine as gimmicky and over-produced is an oversimplification.
I was going to say that finding a good Nouveau can be as easy as choosing one from a producer who makes a good non-Nouveau. And that many of these producers don’t airlift anymore – they bring it over on a boat, which is even more fuel effective than trucking wine over from California. And that while I would happily drink a local version of Nouveau (say if Shinn Winery had one for sale), I haven’t yet found one.
I was going to say that despite the current lack of wine geek love, Beaujolais Nouveau is still a perfect pairing to Thanksgiving. What could be more appropriate than the first wine of the harvest paired with a meal meant to celebrate the harvest? And its fresh fruity (even grapey) notes, tempered with a bit of earthiness, make it a good counterbalance to the heaviness of the Thanksgiving meal.
That’s what I was planning to do. Unfortunately, as of about 4.28pm on Sunday, I had sold through my entire shipment of Domaine de La Madone Beaujolais Nouveau 2009 save for one lonely bottle.
So you say you don’t like Zinfandel? Too big. Too rich. Too much alcohol. Too much fruit and spice and everything nice. You think even the venerable Ridge wines are a bit too much for your taste.
But yet…
You know Zinfandel is the quintessential American grape. And you can’t help yourself from serving it on this most quintessential of American holidays. (A good cliché never hurt anyone.) But it kills you to have something on your table that you don’t want to drink.
What to do? What to do?
Easy. Find yourself some Dashe l’Enfant Terrible. Michael Dashe, who spent some time making those venerable Ridge wines, makes this Zinfandel using natural winemaking techniques. Indigenous yeast, no fining, no filtering. No overripe fruit. No slathering of new oak. The result is really “essence of Zinfandel” with the fruit and the spice, but none of the weight. It’s a lovely pale ruby red that doesn’t exactly scream “ZINFANDEL.” Most shocking? Alcohol is 13.8%. For a Zin, that’s practically non-alcoholic!
Every year, the New York Times does a round up of wine suggestions for Thanksgiving. This year, one of the suggestions was the Il Frappato from Valle dell’Acate. We’ve carried this wine before and agree with Eric Asimov’s description that it’s a “kind of Sicilian Beaujolias.” It’s intensely aromatic, with floral notes and bright berries and a lovely pale ruby color that’s one or two steps darker than a rose.
I like the Il Frappato very much…..but….on the perpetual quest for something new, I was eager to get in the Frappato’s kissing cousin, a Lacrima di Morro d’Alba.
Honestly, Frappato and Lacrima di Morro d’Alba aren’t related at all. Frappato is grown in Sicily, in the south. Lacrima di Morro is a grape grown in a tiny wine region located in the Marche, on the east coast, a bit north of the middle of the back of the boot. But to my nose, they’re both “weird but good” in a similar way. Light- to medium-bodied but bursting with aromatic intensity – fresh flower gardens and bright berries. The Frappato is more red berry, while the Lacrima is a little more blue berry and the flowers are more purple, like violets and lavendar. The (three) Lacrimas that I’ve tasted also seem to have a little more earthiness to them, which is why I wanted to swap one in for the Frappato as the weather gets cooler.
But that’s sort of splitting hairs. Both grapes make for fresh, lively, yummy wines that are great for the long, heavy meal that can be Thanksgiving. And both should cost just under $20.
So pick up the Frappato, as mentioned in the New York Times.
——————- P.S. If you do check this wine out on the Frankly Wines web site, you’ll see that we list Alba, Piedmont as the region. Ignore!! This wine has nothing to do with the Piedmont, although obviously, as you can see from my very own website, that’s not an uncommon mistake!
A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Yes, every time I see a bottle of this rosado on this blog, I will do my old person thing and scream at the clouds about how it used to be readily available… like five-cases-at-a-time available. So just deal with it!
Originally published on November 15, 2009.
This post is a re-run. But I thought it was pretty perfect when I wrote it last year. And I still think it’s pretty perfect. The wine in question is the Lopez de Heredia Rosado. Last year, the 1997 was in stock. This year, it’s the 1998, which is a touch rounder, a touch more tropical. But tropical for Lopez isn’t exactly Hawaiian tropics. I say it every time I talk about this wine – the fruit isn’t the primary note, which is unexpected for a rose. Unexpected enough that we stuck a warning label on the wine. But if you trust my pairing recommendations – and you’re up for a little adventure – a little Lopez Rosado could be just the thing to perk up your Thanksgiving spread. On to the re-run:
Lopez de Heredia Todonia Rosado 1998 (Rioja, Spain) Imagine Thanksgiving dinner (the food, not your crazy uncle or your tispy cousin-three-times-removed.
The cranberry sauce, the turkey, the yams, the turkey, the stuffing, the turkey. It’s a wine-pairing nightmare. But this is the wine that can handle it all. Delicate enough to handle the turkey (which let’s face it, is pretty bland), a little fruit to deal with the cranberries and exotic enough to stand up to the stuffing, yams, and even pumpkin pie. It’s perfect.
But it’s not exactly your typical rosé – it has some of the tangy-ness you’ll find in a good fino sherry, only a hint of fruit, and lovely exotic spices like cardamom and ginger.
So if you’re intrigued and looking for a little adventure, track down a bottle and include it in your turkey day wine spread. You should be able to find it for under $30 which may be a lot for a typical rosé, but not this rosé.
Yes, Pinot Noir goes with Thanksgiving. But honestly, almost everything goes with Thanksgiving.
Sure, there is certainly a near perfect match for the specific meat dish you’re preparing. And another for the stuffing. And another for the sides. And probably even one for the pie. But let’s just assume you want to spend more time cooking than sitting with me at the wine store, picking apart your recipes and making wine recommendations*. So assuming that’s the case, Pinot Noir is a great option.
Especially the Otto’s Shrunken Head Pinot Noir from Marlborough, New Zealand. Alright, the wine is technically named OCD Pinot Noir, but we know the name of the head on the label is Otto. And he does look a little shrunken. And although the juice in the bottles is indeed a fresh, zippy Pinot with enough acidity to keep your taste buds coming back for more, we really wanted a reason to link to this video of Otto and Turkey.
So go watch it – think of it as a preview…of a wine and turkey coming soon, to a table near you.
* I will happily sit with your at the store for as long as you like, picking apart your recipes and making painfully specific wine recommendations. Just say the word.
Last year, in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, I realized that a lot of people don’t really like their relatives and are making their wine choices with that in mind. “Lots of wine and cheap, because I really don’t like who I’m dining with,” was not an uncommon request.
The perfect solution?
Box wine. Good box wine.
A three-liter box = 4 bottles in one container, complete with a handy tap. One for the table and one for the kitchen and you’re set to deal with even the peskiest relatives.
Last year I had one on offer, a Cote du Rhone, and it was a huge hit. This year, I’ve expanded the options to include a cru Beaujolais, a Chardonnay and a Riesling. Equivilized bottle prices range from just over $6/bottle for the whites to $14 for the cur Beaujolais (which also comes in a very cute wooden box.)
Quality and quantity. Let’s all give thanks for box wine. Good box wine.
Some people just decide to skip it altogether because they feel there’s nothing new to say. That’s true (there really ISN’T anything new to say), but it’s not really fair to the wine buying public. Yes, the meal is more or less the same every year. No, some new wine pairing hasn’t been invented over the last year that will suddenly revolutionize the Thanksgiving table. But still, just because wine people have been writing the same basic stuff year after year doesn’t mean that the same people are actually reading it year after year.
Let’s take Mr. Smith, my hypothetical neighbor:
Last year, he just told his guests to bring a bottle of “whatever.” But this year, for whatever reason, he’s decided he wants to put some thought into the wine and give some real consideration to what he serves. But….this is the year every wine writer on the planet has decided, finally, to not write another Thanksgiving piece. And the bloggers (which are really just a subset of writers) have decided to write nothing but snarky posts about why Thanksgiving posts are useless. And every retailer has decided there’s no reason to make any Thanksgiving recommendations, because they’ve been making the same ones for the last 10 years and there’s no reason to repeat themselves yet again. Too bad for Mr. Smith. He should have gotten the wine bug last year, before everything had already been said.
So while wine people may think they’re repeating themselves, there’s a very good chance many of their readers or customers are giving the Turkey/Wine Pairing Challenge real consideration for the very first time. And they deserve some good advice too.
Long way of saying….at Frankly Wines, we’ll still be talking turkey (gobble gobble), lamb (baa baa), turducken (gobblequackbwack) or whatever language you speak (yam?).
Watch this spot every day (or nearly every day) for practical, adventurous, and the occasional just plain odd Thanksgiving pairing suggestions.
A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: This was when the Tissot wines were at Frederick Wildman and they just… sort of… sat there. Somehow I realized they were there, or Rachel, my first Wildman sales rep knew I would dig them and brought me a sample. However it happened, once I was on to them we bought as much as we could. And they were so, so, so much fun to sell. Around this time, over about six months, Wildman wound up going through three, maybe even four vintages of the Poulsard as it started to catch on and buyers started to realize it was there, buried in the Wildman book. The Tissot whites were also starting to move as well, but the Poulsard was definitely the easier sell, so it FLEW!!!!
Originally published on November 12, 2009.
Within two years, Camillie Riviere, who had been a major force in getting the Tissot wines out of the warehouse and onto shelves and menus, would start her own importing company with the Tissot wines as a key part of the founding portfolio. Those were crazy days – she would come into town with a magic bag literally stuffed with more bottles than a human should be able to carry. An appointment with her was always as close to a party as you could get, without actually being a party. The idea was work like hell to sell the wines as soon as they came in, and then get back to France to find more wines.
What does any of this have to do with the Mom Test? Nothing really. I just like to take an occasional walk down memory lane and recall the days when I really did spend most of my time behind the counter, when regions like the Jura were still new and mind-blowing and not just another notch on the coolness belt. It reminds me that for most wine drinkers, the Jura is still as obscure as it was when I was writing these posts over ten years ago, waiting to blow people’s minds. Sure, the wines are more expensive now then they used to be, (a spate of small yield vintages haven’t helped) but there are still ways in. Time to sign myself back up for Jura Duty and go find those ways.
I’m down to my last bottle of Tissot Poulsard 2006, the obscure red wine from the Jura region of France. We’ve sold quite a lot of this obscure little wine over the last couple months, possibly due to the following reasons:
An enthusiastic, well-trained staff that likes the wine nearly as much as I do
A recent article in the New York Times Dining & Wine section.
My fabulous 3-Pack (that’s really a 2-Pack)
A hand-written bottle tag noting that Poulsard is a surprisingly good match with steak (people can’t resist the word ‘steak,’ especially when they see it in print)
Flying colors on the Mom Test
The Mom Test?
Yes, the Mom Test. My mom likes wine, but she doesn’t exactly qualify as a wine geek. So if I sit her down at a meal with one of my more esoteric choices and she enjoys it, than there’s a good chance that most of my customers will enjoy it. It’s a good test because if she likes it, it’s just because she likes it. Not because it’s the newest, coolest thing. Not because it scored big points. And certainly not because she’s SUPPOSED to like it.
So when I tell customers that the Tissot Poulsard is beloved by wine geeks AND my mom….well, it works better than steak.
——————————————————– P.S. If high scores on the Mom Test have you hankering for a Tissot Poulsard, never fear. My last bottle of 2006 should be joined by some 2004 this week and soon after that, some 2007. Don’t wait too long to get some….my mom may just buy it all.
