Pair’s with: Making a large meal and grazing on appetizers

• Luis Seabra Xisto Ilimitado Branco 2022

Whether you’re spending all day cooking a Thanksgiving or Christmas meal, or perhaps just providing moral support for someone who is, a crisp, refreshing white wine is exactly the right thing to pour. This bottling is quite special, as it represents an innovative awakening in the underappreciated Douro valley of Portugal. For the last two decades winemaker, Luis Seabra, has been making low intervention wines utilizing old vines and native grape varietals to show how influential individual soil types are in the final composition of a wine. This bottling is a blend of four native grape varietals (60% Rabigato, 15% Gouveio, 15% Códega, 10% Viosinho) from 40 year old vines all planted on the same soil type, mica schist, at an elevation of 1500 ft. The dramatic shift in temperatures from day to night gives the wine a bright acidity, balancing the orchard fruit from the grapes, under which sits a complex minerality contributed by the soil. 

Pairs with: Thanksgiving Dinner

• Punta Crena Rossese 2022

The eternal challenge of pairing wine with Thanksgiving is that you need something that holds up to brussels sprouts and cranberry sauce but doesn’t overwhelm turkey and mashed potatoes. Walking that fine line perfectly is this Italian red blend from Punta Crena. The wine itself has enough herbal fruit to withstand the bolder elements of the meal, but a round salinity that supports rather than suppresses the beiger elements on the plate. Punta Crena is a family owned and run winery that has been making wine for over 500 years.They eschew labels like organic or “natural” because their traditional approach to winemaking predates those terms by a few hundred years. Their vineyards are set on steep, terraced hillsides that jut out of the Mediterranean in Liguria, and are planted to ancient local grape varietals, many of which are the last remaining representations in the world. The varietal in this bottling is Rossese, a rare red grape that produces a medium bodied wine with balanced acidity and expresses terroir exceptionally well, which in this case is red clay, rounding out the wine’s sharper edges. 

Pair’s with: A gloomy day

• Troon Estate Syrah 2021

There’s a lyric from the Winnepeg based indie rock band, The Weakerthans, that describes the winter sky in a way we know all too well: “Late afternoon, another day is nearly done / A darker grey is breaking through a lighter one.” On days when you can only describe the sky in different intensities of pallid, what you need from a wine is a comfort that comes nowhere near mundanity. The savory spice, tannic bite, and vivid acidity of the Troon 2021 Estate Syrah fits the bill perfectly. Grown biodynamically in the Applegate Valley in Southern Oregon, Troon’s Syrah is immediately delicious and refreshingly interesting and exciting. There’s enough going on in the glass that just maybe you won’t mind so much when the sun sets at 4:30. 

Pairs with: Using the word “postprandial” more often

• Broadbent 10yr Tawny Port NV

Of the many insufferable things about being a person that has read the entirety of the book, Infinite Jest, is that—along with needing to mention that fact whenever it shares even a hemisphere of relevance to the topic at hand—certain obscure words that are used regularly in the novel imbed themselves into the reader’s vocabulary and then for the next 15 years I’m the kind of person that asks if anyone would like a postprandial beverage. It sucks having to choose between saying a big word and having friends and as far as I can tell there are only two ways to fix this. 1). Stop saying “postprandial” and instead say “after dinner” like a normal person. This of course is ridiculous and not fun and won’t be happening. Which then leads us to option 2). Get other people to start saying postprandial too so as to spread the shame around equally around the population and dilute the amount that I personally feel. That’s the plan here. So what I need from everyone here is to open this bottle of Broadbent 10 year Tawny Port and ask your guests, with a straight face and no further explanation, if they’d like a postprandial pour of port. Please and thank you. 

Pairs with: A Christmas Roast

• Produttori del Barbaresco 2020

Up until 1894, the Nebbiolo grown in the Barbaresco was sold off to Barolo producers or bottled as table wine. But things changed when the headmaster of the local oenological school, Domizio Cavazza, gathered nine local producers together to make a collective wine, naming it Barbaresco after their village. The collective of Barbaresco producers proceeded until, well, fascism. In 1954, a young priest name Don Fiorino Marengo gathered 19 producers of wine together to restart the original collective, believing that unifying the farmers could help them emerge from the devastating poverty left in the wake of, well, fascism. Luckily, unlike fascism, it worked. To this day, the co-op makes some of the most consistently exceptional Nebbiolos in the world. With a deep, floral aroma and flavors of cherry, baking spice and moderate tannins, the 2020 Produttori del Barbaresco is the perfect bottle to pair with a wide range of roasts, making it an exceptional Christmas dinner bottle.  

Pairs with: Ringing in the New Year

• Benoit Marguet Shaman Grand Cru 19

You know that scene in When Harry Met Sally when Harry realizes he loves Sally and runs through the streets of New York in order to profess said love just as the countdown to the new year is happening? Well, replace Harry with you and Sally with Benoit Marguet Shaman Grand Cru and that’s exactly what your NYE is going to be like. What I’m saying is, you’re going to love this Champagne. Marguet was early to the growing movement of biodynamic farming and natural wine production in Champagne. Sourced from estate vineyards in the grand cru village of Ambonnay, Shaman is a blend of 2/3 pinot noir and 1/3 chardonnay which was fermented with natural yeast in barrel before aging en tirage for three years and finally bottled with zero dosage. It achieves an exceptionally difficult balance of precision and depth, and, well, people around you are going to want what you’re having.