In my last post, I defended Nouveau Beaujolais as a seasonal, celebratory wine. The date for this year's Nouveau release has passed and the results were more diverse this year than in recent memory. Of our seven offerings, one was shy and tart, one was very un-nouveau and "natural wine-y", two were of standard quality and three Nouveaus I could drink quite freely and quite often. That is what I'd call a mixed review of the 2011 crop.
There wasn't the same enthusiasm for Nouveau Beaujolais this year that we had last year. There simply weren't as many people curious to try them. One Bay area colleague told me "the Nouveau thing up here has kind of gone," and some of the fun of the release may be declining with a new generation of wine enthusiasts. And you can never count out the mood of people to celebrate when our country feels so heavy-hearted these days.
Still, with Thanksgiving looming, and with it the chance to substitute what's really important for anxiety over the economy, the light-styled, vivacious Beaujolais is one of a handful of all-purpose wine choices appropriate for a meal as challenging as the sweet/savory/rich/diverse food in a traditional holiday table.
In short, we will sell out of our Nouveau Beaujolais before Christmas, just not as quickly as last year.
There are other wines we like for this purpose, too. First, there are grown-up Beaujolais, the Crus and the Villages, there are Vouvray and Montlouis, two relatively unknown white wines that sing with this kind of meal and there are my favorites, the fruity-styled German Rieslings which we featured at last Saturday's wine tasting.
We had a lineup that went from the bone dry Lietz Eins-Zwei-Dry, to the gentler off-dry Selbach Incline, to the statuesque medium-dry Donnhoff Estate Riesling to the delicious, masterful, generouly sweet Spatleses from Monchhof, Reusher-Haart, Gunderloch, Dr. F. Weins-Prum, Kunstler and Von Buhl. Rarely does one attend a wine tasting where every wine on the table is impeccable at all sweetness levels, but then, that is Riesling's genius, isn't it?
Bennett Traub, our domestic wine buyer, doesn't abide by imported wine for our American feast. He starts with Chardonnay as an aperitif, then prefers Pinot Noir and Zinfandel with his turkey (although if one wanted to argue the provenance of those grapes, one could point out their origins in Burgundy and Croatia. If he truly wanted to serve American wine, he could serve Concord grape or any of a number of indigenous American varieties. Bennett, however, isn't such a purist that he would drink lousy wine just to prove a point.)
Bennett's Thanksgiving table is savory, without the complex-wine-killing challenge of sweet salads and candied yams, so his choices stand a much better chance of providing real pleasure with his meal.
Ronnie Grant, who is Italian by marriage, may serve a Brunello or a Barolo with his meal. Sans sweet potatoes, these are intriguing choices also.
Samantha Dugan will be drinking Champagne. That is a certainty. She hasn't yet decided what else to serve, but I think I have better than 50-50 odds it will say "appellation-controlee" on the label.
Our two newest employees, Jennifer and Tim, have been exposed to wine fairly recently, but they have had a crash course in the wines of the world while attending our wine classes and tastings. I'll be curious to see what they select for their own tables after such an intense intitiation.
Walking into The Wine Country is a lot of fun these days as a bunch of new products have appeared in our wine, spirits, beer, food and gift sections. I'm particularly enthused about the McEvoy Rancholive oils from Tuscan varieties grown in Marin County.
The other enthusiasm I'm dying to tell you about is the results of our annual Wines of the Year tasting. A few winners are showing up and you might guess as to what they are by the size of the stacks. We'll reveal the winners and the finalists in our December 1st edition of The Wine Country online newsletter, and we'll offer the top wines in our final Saturday tasting before Christmas Saturday December 3rd from 1-4 p.m.
The same issue will also feature our Beers of the Year and our Spirits of the Year, so if you haven't signed up for our e-mail list, do so right away.
And I needn't remind you that our gift baskets contain goodies which you actually would buy for yourselves. No cat-food pate, no stale crackers, no waxy chocolates. If you want to give a gift that'll make everyone smile, Dale's hand-made gift baskets will succeed every time.
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