What wines are best with Thanksgiving dinner? Plan-ahead advice

If you're the one in charge of planning -- and producing -- a holiday meal, you've probably already given your menu some thought. (That is, unless you do the same thing year after year, which is easier, but boring, IMHO.) I'm clipping recipes from magazines and haven't decided on much of anything yet. However, here are a few items we can check off our lists.
First of all is wine. If you don't have a well-stocked cellar that you can just dip into at whim, you might want to look at the list of easy-to-find, holiday-worthy wines that Food & Wine magazine published last month. They've selected a few TG-meal-compatible choices from national grocery stores such as Trader Joe's (my favorite), Whole Foods, Costco and Target. None are expensive, and each one should complement turkey with the trimmings quite adequately.
A few highlights are below, or click here to read the Food & Wine article.
FROM TRADER JOE'S: three sparkling wines, including NV Gloria Ferrer Brut and an affordable Champagne from Piper-Heidseick.
FROM TARGET: their own label sauvignon blanc in a "wine cube" -- yes, a box. F & W says it's pretty good, and only $18 for 3 liters.
FROM WHOLE FOODS: a bargain Spanish temperanillo/malbec blend for just $10.

As with the rest of my meal, I haven't decided completely on what wine to serve, but I'm leaning toward a spicy Gewertztraminer for white and perhaps a cru Beaujolais or Chinon as a red (I've become so enamored of out-of-the-way French reds of late -- they are eminently food friendly and delicious).
One other note: I can't see any reason to pour expensive wine on this particular holiday. The focus of the Thanksgiving meal is family, friends and togetherness, plus an array of traditional dishes and ingredients that aren't the best combo of flavors to showcase your best bottles. Save that stuff for Christmas -- and New Year's.

Luscious French Wine for less: Food-Friendly Cru Beaujolais

The shoulder season between the dog days of summer and the nip of full-on autumn is a perfect time to explore lighter red wines such as pinot noir, sangiovese or (a rediscovered delight) cru Beaujolais.

The Beaujolais area of France lies between two more widely known wine regions, Burgundy and the Rhone Valley. Almost all of the red wine produced in this 30 mile-long valley comes from the gamay grape. And the best wines carry the "cru" designation, meaning they each hail from one of ten villages (a list of which I'll post below). In these small towns and rural areas, winemakers turn out carefully crafted table wines that often achieve a pretty balance between fruitiness and depth. I've found that they pair wonderfully well with anything from shrimp cocktail to turkey or bison burgers, roast chicken, or a hearty vegetarian stew heavy on winter squash or mushrooms.


The ten names to look for in the French wine section of a moderately well stocked wine shop, listed north to south, are:

St.Amour: pretty, delicate wines
Juliènas: like St.Amour, but slightly beefier
Chénas: often keenly acidic, with notable minerality and fine tannin
Moulin-à-Vent: a top cru, very complex and muscular
Fleurie: aromatic, pungent wines of medium length
Chiroubles: at their best, these are raw, gamey, and delectable
Morgon: another top cru; powerfully ripe fruit, amazing depth
Regnié: fresh, clean wines; generous, not terribly complex
Brouilly: dark wines, with notable bouillon flavors and strong tannin
Côte de Brouilly: a top cru: intense minerals & richness on the palate

Note: the word "Beaujolais" is not required to be placed on the label of these wines.

Reliable top crus, year after year, are Morgon and Moulin-a-Vent, but any town of origin is worth a try.
 
Georges DuBouef is the beaujolais producer with the longest reach into the American market, and it's not hard to find their Morgon, Julienas or St. Amour, among others. Louis Jadot is another major producer with cru beaujolais distributed widely in the U.S.

In addition to these wines' versatility at the table and their pleasing mouth-feel, they tend to be moderate in alcohol content (around 12 or 12.5 percent) and inexpensive for the quality level.
You should be able to find a cru beaujolais you'll love for anywhere from $13 to $20, with some highly rated (by the wine press) Morgons inching toward $30.
The 2009 vintage was spectacular, so look for that. Because beaujolais tend to be underappreciated, your wine shop might have a couple of dusty bottles on the shelf.  That vintage produced wines with enough depth and structure to improve for a couple more years, although they're terrific now as well.
2010s should be widely available, and it too got good reviews, although these tend to be fresh and fruity -- at least compared to the 2009 wines -- and ready to pour with dinner tonight.

Affordable Chardonnay Worth Drinking

As most wine drinkers know, there's way too much inspipid, overpriced and/or just plain bad chardonnay out there. But luckily, Ray Isle (of Food & Wine) has done the hard work for the rest of us of trying a veritable ocean of value chardonnays to come up with this list of good ones in an affordable price range.
If you're a chardonnay fan, check these out!

Chardonnay Wine: 10 Winning Whites


2009 Bogle ($9) Bogle's juicy, easy-drinking '09 vintage gets its pineapple and mango accents from the warm weather in Clarksburg, California, where the winery's vineyards are located. (Note: this is my brother's go-to everyday chardonnay, although he says the 2008 was a lot better.)

2009 Sebastiani Sonoma County ($10) Roughly half of this wine is fermented in oak barrels, which helps account for its caramel-scented aroma and rich texture. A touch of Roussanne adds a spicy note. (adding a little Roussanne is a great idea!)

2008 Louis Latour Ardèche Chardonnay ($11) This lime-accented, lively Chardonnay comes from the Ardèche region, in southeastern France.
 
2010 Bodini ($13) A portion of the sales of this clean, citrusy Argentine Chardonnay goes to a scholarship foundation for winery workers' families.


2009 Boomtown ($13) Boomtown, a less-pricey label of Walla Walla's Dusted Valley vintners, makes impressive Washington state wines. This pear-scented white is among its best bottlings.

2009 Four Vines Naked ($13) No oak (hence, "naked") gets in the way of this wine's bright, pineappley flavors.
 
2009 Concha y Toro Casillero del Diablo Reserva ($14) Cool breezes off the Pacific Ocean in Chile's Casablanca Valley help give this appley white its refreshingly brisk character. (Great values abound in Chilean wine, and this chardonnay is worth seeking out.)


2010 De Morgenzon DMZ Chardonnay ($15) De Morgenzon makes one of South Africa's greatest Chenin Blancs, and some stellar bargains under its DMZ label. This oaky, lively Chardonnay is a top pick.

2009 Foxglove ($12) The '07 vintage of this apricot-inflected, graceful white from California's Central Coast won the 2009 F&W American Wine Award for Best Chardonnay Under $20. The delicious '09 is a worthy follow-up.

2009 Patianna ($17) This peach-inflected Chardonnay from California's Anderson Valley was above my $15 cutoff, but too good to exclude. Plus, the winery farms all of its vineyards organically, with resident chickens taking care of any pests among the vine rows.

Boxed Wines Have Improved -- Try These

Boxed Wines Can be Pleasant

I've only recently even tried drinking wine from a box, and so far haven't found any that I'd serve to dinner guests with the meal. But for more casual occasions, they can suffice. There's no doubt that wine stays fresher inside these containers than it ever can in an open bottle, so as long as winemakers continue to improve the quality of what they're putting in the boxes, I am open to finding the good ones.

Here are recommendations by Ray Isle, Food & Wine's knowledgeable wine writer. Also recently the New York Times wine column did a tasting of boxed wines and flagged some of the same ones that Isle does. I'll include in my culling of these the ones that made both lists.

(I'm particularly interested in the Wineberry offerings...)

2009 Bota Box Chardonnay

This lightly oaked, appley Chardonnay from California comes in boxes made from recycled cardboard printed with eco- friendly soy inks.

2009 Wineberry Château du Chatelard Bourgogne Blanc

It's unusual to find good white Burgundy in a box (much less a cool wooden box). This sleek white justifies its higher price.

2008 Bandit Cabernet Sauvignon California

Bandit's medium-bodied, curranty Cabernet has a licorice hint on the finish. It's packaged in lightweight, recyclable Tetra Paks.

2010 Domaine le Garrigon Côtes-du-Rhône

Importer Wineberry packages several of its wines in attractive wooden boxes, among them this meaty, spicy, Grenache-based red from the Rhône valley.

 NV Pepperwood Grove The Big Green Box

People who like big, dense California Chardonnays will love this one for its caramel-vanilla notes and super rich texture

Summer Wines and Other Light, Refreshing (and inexpensive) Quaffs

What makes a "summer wine?" It should taste better chilled than cellar (or room) temperature, have a lower alcohol content (12.5 percent or less), be widely available, and not set you back a lot at the checkout counter.

With that in mind, here are some suggestions from one of my favorite wine writers, Food & Wine's Ray Isle.

Vin Gris from Pinot Noir grapes

A lovely rose (pictured):

Cool breezes from the San Pablo Bay, off Napa's Carneros district, help give the 2010 Sean Minor Four Bears Vin Gris ($15) a bright, crisp acidity to go with its strawberry-inflected fruit. (Vin gris is an old French term for rosé that more and more California wineries are adopting.) Minor's bottling is 100 percent Pinot Noir.

More options:

2010 Skouras Moscofilero ($15) With its aromas of honeysuckle and tangerine, this brisk white from one of Greece's top wineries smells as though it might be sweet. Instead, it's bone-dry and crisp, an ideal match for oysters on the half shell.

2010 Waterbrook Sangiovese Rosé ($11) Washington's Columbia Valley isn't known for the Sangiovese grape variety, nor for rosés. As a result, Waterbrook's lightly floral bottling is a nice surprise.

2009 Martinshof Zweigelt ($12) For this spicy Austrian red, wine importer Carlo Huber blends the local Zweigelt variety with a small amount of Pinot Noir to "soften the edges," he says.

2009 Georges Duboeuf Juliénas ($13) In the great '09 vintage, all of Duboeuf's cru bottlings (those labeled from the 10 major towns of Beaujolais) are good. But this fragrant red is the best.

And how about light beers? Food & Wine did a blind taste test of many widely distributed light beers, and here was the clear winner:

Sam Adams Light "Light hoppy note; good, lasting flavor. A real beer."

Best American Wines Under $20

Here's a list of affordable, delicious wines that recently won acclaim from Food & Wine magazine. I've tried and enjoyed several of them -- the Honig, the Elk Cove and the Columbia Crest, for instance, and will seek out the others.
More good news: they should be widely available in almost any large metro area in the U.S.

Whites

Sauvignon Blanc

2008 Honig ($16)
Winemaker Kristin Belair innovates with different winemaking methods on different parcels of grapes, allowing her, for instance, to emphasize the grapefruity character of a specific lot. The Napa winery itself is innovative, too: All energy needed for production, cooling and bottling is solar-generated.

Chardonnay

2008 Mount Eden Vineyards Wolff Vineyard ($20)
In 2008, bad weather in California's Edna Valley drastically cut the amount of fruit from Wolff Vineyard but packed flavor into the grapes. Jeffrey Patterson makes this wine exactly the same way he makes Mount Eden's pricier estate Chardonnays, producing a white with vivid flavors of pear, peach and lime.

Pinot Gris

2008 Elk Cove ($19)
Elk Cove benefited from the fine 2008 vintage in Oregon's Willamette Valley, where it's been producing top Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris since the 1970s. A cool summer and sunny fall meant ideal grapes, and winemaker Adam Campbell accented their brightness by fermenting this lemon-zesty wine in stainless steel tanks.

Reds

Pinot Noir

2008 Wallace Brook ($19)
This Oregon red offers the lively, aromatic appeal of Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs costing twice as much. An affordable secondary brand made by the Willamette Valley's Adelsheim Vineyard, one of the pioneering producers of Oregon Pinot Noir, this Wallace Brook shows the ripeness of the great 2008 vintage.

Merlot

2007 Columbia Crest H3 ($15)
This widely available Merlot comes from Washington's Horse Heaven Hills (hence H3), a promising region for complex, full-bodied reds. Its ripe blackberry fruit keeps some needed restraint thanks to the skill of winemaker Ray Einberger.

Zinfandel

2007 Four Vines, Old Vine Cuvée ($14)
Founder-winemaker Christian Tietje scoured vineyards from California's top Zinfandel counties—from Amador to Paso Robles—to assemble the fruit for this streamlined red. It's sumptuous in style, full of blackberry and blueberry fruit.

Syrah

2008 Red Car, Boxcar ($20)
Winemaker Carroll Kemp started Red Car back in 2000 in his Los Angeles driveway with two barrels of Syrah. His output has grown since then, but Syrah remains the focus, as in this highly polished red's array of classic, cool-climate Syrah flavors: plum, dark berries and black pepper.

Cabernet Sauvignon

2007 Louis M. Martini, Sonoma County ($17)
Michael Martini's winemaking team used vineyards around the county for a straightforward red that also has considerable finesse. That deft touch isn't surprising, as Michael himself has been making wine for more than 30 years, and his family for more than 100.

Courtesy Food & Wine Magazine, by Richard Nalley