Spring has left us, summer is gone, fall is leaving and the winter draws on. That bit of humorous wisdom came from Harry McNaughton, on an old radio show called "It Pays To Be Ignorant."
That poem from pre-TV broadcasting does lead us into an interesting topic - wines for winter. Like women's fashion switches from white boots to black after Labor Day, it is also the time that wine devotees traditionally switch from white wines to red.
That is not to say that red wines should replace all of the white wines after Labor Day, but it is the time in Europe when the weather turns cold and red wines seem to induce a warmer feeling.
It is also the time when we begin to think about the upcoming Thanksgiving season, and since the television is ablaze with all sorts of goodies for that feast, we thought that we might offer our readers some money-saving suggestions to get a head start on the season.
Whenever get-togethers are involved, there is always someone showing up with the inevitable bottle of Champagne or sparkling wine. To really impress someone, there is nothing like a bottle of Champagne.
Champagne is both elegant and costly, but it is the apex of all the sparkling wines. Our suggestion is Pommery Brut Royal ($33), which is fairly inexpensive for a really fine French Champagne. However, if the Pommery is a bit of a stretch on the pocketbook, take a look at the Barefoot Cellars Bubbly Pinot Grigio ($9.99).
The French Beaujolais nouveau, the first wine from the current French vintage year to be released, is traditionally targeted for sale on the third Thursday of November, which usually coincides with our Thanksgiving.
Warning! This is not a good wine for the Thanksgiving table. While the wine will do well where a dry, fruity red wine is called for, the Thanksgiving feast has just too many sweet foods associated with it, from glazed ham or turkey to candied sweet potatoes and myriad sweet desserts. A Beaujolais nouveau will clash very badly with these dishes.
We speak from personal experience. One Thanksgiving at our house was almost totally ruined by a Beaujolais nouveau. The wine was just too new, too fruity and too dry.
Our suggestion would be a riesling or a gewurztraminer for the glazed ham and a chardonnay or a viognier for the turkey. Do try a viognier; it is an exceptional white wine which very few know about, and it will definitely stir dinner table conversation.
Then there is port, a wine that tends to be associated with fat men smoking cigars in overstuffed leather chairs, high living, and of course, gout. The gout part has been disproven long ago, but the others remain.
Port got a bad rap in this country during the post-Prohibition period when every cheap, high-alcohol, sweet red wine was called port.
Real port is a blended wine from Portugal that has had its fermentation halted halfway through the process by the addition of brandy to kill the yeast. The brandy is what increases the alcohol content and leaves the wine with unfermented, very sweet grape juice.
There is a certain magic about a Portuguese port, and it is the perfect ending to a meal as an accompaniment with or for dessert.
There are also some sparkling wines that fit the dessert bill, among which are the Italian Asti wines and their American counterpart, the sparkling moscatos, which range from pale yellow to delightful pink and are all delightfully sweet.
We hope that these suggestions were of some help in taking the pressure off of some of you holiday planning. The wrong choice of wine could have an effect on your Christmas gift.
Nixa resident Bennet Bodenstein is a wine columnist and helps manage ArticlesOnWine.com with his wife, Sheila. He can be reached at frojhe@suddenlink.net.[[In-content Ad]]
