Every January, food magazines and newspaper food sections come out with stories about “new,” healthier, sustainable, non-grease-bomb snacks for nibbling while watching two Super Bowl football teams destroy each other in mud, blood and gore on large-screen televisions. But come on, guys, we all know what you’re going to be scarfing down: fiery-hot fried chicken wings with vats of blue cheese dressing; nachos dripping with melted cheese and sour cream studded with ground beef, refried beans and sliced jalapeno peppers; slabs of barbecue ribs slathered with spicy sauce; tortilla chips dipped into mouth-searing salsas; pigs-in-blankets, fer gawd’s sake!

In keeping with the kick-ass tradition of Super Bowl snack food, I offer a roster of kick-ass red wines that will nestle in there amongst your manliness and man the barricades of Guydom Snack Food.

Let’s start with the Penley Estate Hyland Shiraz 2006, Coonawarra, a smoking depth-charge of a wine that smells and tastes like roasted meat, bacon fat, wet dog, black pepper and intensely rich and ripe black and red currants and plums. To give you some idea of this wine’s bragging rights, we drank it last night with flank steak tacos; I slathered the meat with chili powder, chipotle powder, ground cumin, adobo seasoning (onion, garlic, pepper, Mexican oregano, cumin, cayenne pepper) and mapuche spice from Chile, a mixture of cacho de cabra chilies and coriander seeds, let it meditate on its worthiness for four hours and then seared it in a cast-iron skillet. Woo-hoo! The alcohol level is 15 percent, but you can handle it. Excellent. About $19 to $21.
Imported by Old Bridge Cellars, Napa, Cal.

Or to stay in the Antipodes, try the Kilikanoon Killerman’s Run Shiraz Grenache 2007, South Australia, a Platonic model of gravel-like minerality, smoke, gritty tannins and pumped-up black and red currants with a rooty, feral tang. Don’t let that touch of rose petals in the bouquet bother you. The blend is 67 percent shiraz, 33 percent grenache. Excellent. About $19 to $21.
Imported by Old Bridge Cellars, Napa Cal.

Also from the Southern Hemisphere, but from the opposite side of the wide Pacific, comes the Trapiche Broquel Bonarda 2006, made from 100 percent bonarda grapes grown in Argentina’s Mendoza region. This intriguing wine, which ages a year in new French and American oak, is dark, dry, spicy and a little exotic, a little black leathery; its compelling black and red cherry and black currant flavors wrap cozily around a core of sassafras and orange rind, smoked ancho chilies and bittersweet mocha with a poignant fillip of fresh cracked pepper. Zowie! Very Good+. About $16.
Imported by Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York.

Shifting briefly to Europe, we have the Cusumano Nero d’Avola 2007, from Sicily. Boy, this is one smoky, spicy, tarry, exotic and robust red wine for drinking with full-flavored, hearty food. Flavors of ripe red and black currants and plums are bolstered by cloves and bitter chocolate, by some rooty, earthy tea-like element, by notes of wild berry and slightly shaggy tannins. The wine is so engaging and lively that it practically vibrates in the glass. Very Good+, and a Great Bargain at $13 to $15.
Imported by Vin Divino, Chicago.

The rest of these, to set your patriotic minds at rest, were made in the U.S.A., that is, if you consider California part of the country.

“Robust” scarcely begins to describe the rustic, bumptious Seven Artisans Petite Sirah 2007, from California’s Suisun Valley. This is a dusty, dusky wine whose grainy tannic nature is matched blow by blow with ripe, juicy black fruit flavors and resonant acidity. Smoke and ash circulate in the depths, along with hints of lead pencil of granite-like intensity, dried porcini, crushed ancho chilies and a touch of dried cranberries. Potent and sort of charming in its muscularity. Very Good+ About $18.

No, bullshit, readers, the Turnbull “Old Bull” 2006, Oakville, Napa Valley, is as solid as a lineman’s biceps and as
supple as a quarterback’s thighs. It took a buffet of grapes to get the job done here — merlot (44%), tempranillo (18%), sangiovese (16%), cabernet sauvignon (9%), barbera (6%), cabernet franc (5%) and syrah (2%). The wine is packed with dusty tannins, dusty spice, dusty macerated black fruit and dusty minerals; yep, it’s a dusty wine, all right, which is a reflection of its profound earthy character and fathomless structure. The fruit holds up, though, and in addition to the wine’s emphasis on structure, it’s downright lip-smackin’ delicious. Very Good+. I paid $24 for this wine, but the suggested price is $20.

We drank the X Winery Cabernet Sauvignon 2007, Napa Valley, with pork chops smacked with chili powder and cumin, seared in olive oil with garlic, and then baked for about 10 minutes, so you understand its potential for standing up to a tray of chicken wings. Boy, this is one dense and chewy cabernet — with 10 percent merlot and 2 percent petit verdot — that flaunts intense and concentrated black currant and black cherry flavors permeated by smoky potpourri, cedar and tobacco, a woodsy, autumnal dried moss element and immense reserves of dusty tannins and gravel-like minerals. Lots of character for the price. 672 cases. Excellent. About $25.

The Real Bargain of these eight wines is the St. Francis Red 2006, Sonoma County, a blend of merlot (48%), cabernet sauvignon (28%), syrah (10%), zinfandel (3%) and the mysterious category of “mixed blacks” for 6%. There are truckloads of personality in this hearty, dark, boldly spiced and flavorful wine that partakes of fleshy roasted elements, macerated black currants, black cherries and plums and enough dusty, earthy tannins for whole pallets of wine. Nothing complicated here, but an engaging, slightly rock-ribbed quaff to buy by the case. Very Good+. About $10.

Except for the Turnbull “Old Bull” 2006, these were sample wines submitted for review.

Thanks to these sources of images:
Football: msg.com
Nachos: utopiankitchen.com
Barbecue ribs: bbq-ribs.com
Pigs in Blankets: girlofwords.com
Chicken wings: eldoradobbq.com

Yes, readers, BiggerThanYourHead.net debuted three years ago this week, December 2006. This brief retrospective glance chalks up as Post No. 554.

Who knew I had so much to say? (He said, disingenuously.)

I don’t know how many wines I have reviewed in three years; forgive me if I don’t go back and count each one. A lot, anyway.

What’s gratifying, besides the responses and the give-and-take of opinion that blogs afford, is the readership that has steadily grown since the beginning. In January 2007, the first full month of record-keeping, my counter program, from Bluehost.com, recorded 6,800 visitors; in November 2009, the last full month, the number of visitors was 35,739. (The best month was October ‘09, with 36,496 visitors.) Anyway, the increase has been about 80 percent. Total number of visits, from the start? 836,418. So close to a million!

I dwell on these statistical matters because I still harbor the illusion that with enough readership, this blog will draw advertising and provide a modicum of income, so that while I am spending hours writing posts, reviewing wine and expressing my opinion about issues in various aspects of the wine industry, I could feel that I am not too grievously neglecting other writing work that actually pays. Or perhaps every reader who visits BTYH could click on a bunch of those little Google ads, which so far bring me about $100 a year. Woo-hoo! Yeah, I’m feeling pretty mercenary; tomorrow is my birthday, and I could use a boost.

Anyway, thanks to all you readers for coming to BTYH and finding something valuable here, whether they’re reviews, commentary, opinion, food and wine matching or the expression of a personality. And thanks to the wineries and estates, the importers and the local wholesalers that send me wine or call and say, “We’re tasting such-and-such today, come on over.” Obviously, I couldn’t do this job without wine samples or tastings and such, and, as the FTC now demands, such debt must be acknowledged.

Thanks also to all the readers and voters that helped BTYH win the “Best Wine Blog Reviews” prize from the American Blog Awards this year. That was a tremendous thrill and also a reminder of the standards that I must maintain, so I’ll keep truckin’ along from this side and try to make the whole shebang fun for everybody, combining experience, knowledge and imagination with a love of wine and food and sharing all of it with you.

Third anniversary image from wrongwroks.com

One of the traditions maintained by “Big John” Grisanti was that the first time a guest visited his wine cellar at home, he or she could pick a bottle of wine to take with them. The task could be overwhelming, so on the occasion of my first visit, struck dumb by the choices, I allowed Grisanti to choose for me, at which prompting he handed me a bottle of Chateau Haut Brion 1975, a First Growth red wine from the Bordeaux region of Graves. I, in turn, gave the bottle to my (former) father-in-law as a housewarming present; he and my mother-in-law had just moved into a new house in East Memphis. (Now a widower, he still lives there, in his mid-90s every bit the gentleman he was raised to be.) He opened the wine for us to enjoy at the Thanksgiving dinner in November 1984.

Records of vines being cultivated at the estate of Haut Brion go back to 1423. The Pontac family built the chateau depicted on the label in 1550. In his diary entry for April 10, 1663, Samuel Pepys mentions a visit to the Royal Oak Tavern in London where “I drank a sort of French wine called Ho-Bryan which hath a good and most particular taste which I never before encountered…..” The estate went through several changes of ownership in the 18th and 19th centuries, and after a period of decline was purchased by the Dillon family in 1935.

Haut Brion was listed as a First Growth in the 1855 Classification of the wines of the Medoc. Whatever variations of quality and fortune it endured through the 20th Century, the estate has performed at the highest level of quality and consistency since 1975. The vineyards at Haut Brion are planted with 45 percent cabernet sauvignon, 37 percent merlot and 18 percent cabernet franc; the proportion of grapes in each wine differs according to vintage conditions. The “second” wine of Haut Brion is Bahans Haut Brion. The estate also produces one of the region’s greatest white wines. Production of Chateau Haut Brion is about 11,000 cases annually; Bahans Haut Brion is about 7,300 cases and the blanc is 650 cases.

In Michael Broadbent’s Vintage Wine (Harcourt, 2002), the British auctioneer and writer gives 1975 a four star rating (out of five stars), though he calls the year “irregular” and “certainly interesting, not to say challenging.” His notes on Haut Brion 1975 are ambivalent, though he rather grudgingly comes around to liking the wine by 1995. Robert M. Parker Jr. calls the year “tricky,” with “the overall quality level … distressingly uneven and the number of failures … too numerous to ignore.” Yikes! Haut Brion 1975, however, Parker rates as “a great wine and one of the top dozen or so wines of the vintage.”

My impression of Haut Brion ‘75, on Thanksgiving 1984? Here are my original notes: “A great wine. Surprising color, deep brown, like mahogany. Cedar nose, lead pencil, fruity, quite tannic, emerging fruit, exotic, dry but with an underlying core of succulent sweetness. Years to go.”

At the time, in Memphis, the Haut Brion ‘75 sold for $100 to $110.

Well, today we don’t have a Bordeaux First Growth to grace the Thanksgiving board. Instead, there are three bottles of my standard Thanksgiving wine, the Ridge Three Valleys, Sonoma County, this from 2007. For this vintage, the blend is zinfandel (75%), petite sirah (8%), syrah (7%), grenache (6%) and carignane (3%). I also have a bottle of Trefethen Riesling 2007, Napa Valley, because I do like a riesling with the Thanksgiving feast. Some bottles of pinot noir — Morgan, Terlato, Sokol Blosser — await in case our guests’ tastes incline that way. All American wines, yes, because this is, after all, a great American celebration.

On the menu: Clementine-Salted Turkey with Redeye Gravy (a Matt and Ted Lee recipe); Sweet Potato Stuffing with Bacon and Thyme; Wild Mushroom-Collard Green Bundles; green beans, roasted carrots and bacon-topped cornbread. There’s a pumpkin pie for dessert, and a pear crisp with candied ginger. If anyone wants a dessert wine, I have a couple of vintages of Dolce and Beringer Nightingale on hand.

All of that should get the job done.

I hope that all of my readers partake of excellent food and excellent wine today, blessed with family and friends, and remember, while you’re at it, all of those who have neither food nor wine, family nor friends, and let us help them at all times of the year.

The account in The New York Times this morning of Barach and Michelle Obama’s first state dinner makes it sound glorious. Hey, we voted for the guy! Where was our invitation? My intent here, however, is to praise the wine choices for the meatless menu — in honor of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India — prepared by guest chef Marcus Samuelsson of Aquavit. I don’t know who manages the White House wine cellar and oversees the wine served there, whether for the First Family or their guests, but in this case he or she did a great job.

Here is the menu with the wines:

>Potato and Eggplant Salad, White House Arugula with Onion Seed Vinaigrette. The wine: Modus Operandi Sauvignon Blanc 2008, Napa Valley.

>Red Lentil Soup with Fresh Cheese. The wine: Brooks “Ara” Riesling 2006, Willamette Valley.

>Roasted Potato Dumplings with Tomato Chutney, Chick Peas and Okra or Green Curry Prawns, Caramelized Salsify with Smoked Collard Greens and Coconut Aged Basmati. The wine: Beckmen Vineyards Grenache 2007, Santa Ynez.

>Pumpkin Pie Tart, Pear Tatin, Whipper Cream and Caramel Sauce. The wine: Thibaut Janisson Brut, Sparkling Chardonnay, Monticello.

Notice that the dinner is a weaving of culinary threads from Indian, African and the American South. Samuelsson took a bold step in including Indian ingredients and techniques; generally, it is considered undiplomatic and competitive to serve Indian cuisine to Indian statesman outside of their country.

Notice, too, the eclectic nature of the wines served at the dinner. Two are from different growing regions of California, one is from Oregon, and one is from Virginia, not far from the White House. The wineries are all small and family-owned; there’s nothing corporate or global here, just a reliance on artisan standards of production and quality. And perhaps the choice of a riesling for the lentil soup — how interesting is that? — will spur sales of that versatile but neglected variety. Certainly the wineries will benefit from the publicity.

Well, Readers, I frequently haul out the fact that I have been writing about wine for 25 years, which, of course, when the year ticks away, will change to 26 years, but it occurred to me that in this very month, that is the month of July, now almost over, that is, 25 years ago in July 1984, my first newspaper wine column appeared in The Commercial Appeal. I was teaching college English at the time and still learning a lot about wine through reading and tasting (and I’m still learning). The feature editor of the newspaper then, Mary Alice Quinn, agreed that the city needed a local wine column, and so the thing was launched on July 11, 1984. Two years later, she offered me a full-time job, and in August 1986, I made the leap from academia to journalism.

Anyway, I went down to the newspaper (where I no longer work; I have to get a visitor’s badge from security) today and searched for my first wine column on microfilm. You know, it’s not bad, a little naive and overenthusiastic, perhaps, but certainly a great fledgling effort. I won’t reproduce the whole column for you, but I will tell you what I wrote about.

First comes a group of Bordeaux red wines from 1981 that I had recently tried at a blind tasting. My recommendations for accessible examples at decent prices were — check these figures! — Chateau Lynch-Moussas ($10 to $13) and Chateau Branaire-Ducru (about $20).

Then I provided notes on a miscellaneous range of wines: Silverado Sauvignon Blanc 1982 (about $9), a terrific quaff; the fabulous Mount Veeder Late Harvest Zinfandel 1980 (about $10 for a half-bottle); the Coteaux du Tricastin Vin de Syrah 1981 from Domaine de la Tour d’Elyssas (great value at about $5); another wine from Coteaux du Tricastin, this one a 1979 bottled by the Union des Vignerons de l’Enclave des Pape, which I said was old, tired and worn out and hence to be avoided (about $3.50); the lovely Simi Cabernet Sauvignon 1979 (about $9.50); and two sparkling wines from Shadow Creek, the Brut Cuvee No. 1, which won my hearty approval (about $10) and the “disappointing” Brut Cuvee 1981.

The column ran once a month into the Fall and then went to every two weeks and within six months was running every week. In 1989, it was picked up by the Scripps Howard News Service and distributed to newspapers around the country. The rest, as they say, is history; well, actually, that column itself is history, as they say.

I’m not going to wax nostalgic or philosophical on this occasion. I’ll just say that I concluded that first column, 25 years ago, by saying, “Well, that was fun,” and damnit, it still is.

Insanely celebratory image from graphicshunt.com

Valentine’s Day this year coincided with Pizza-and-Movie Night, which we would not forgo, of course, and besides, we learned long ago never, ever to dine out on Valentine’s, because restaurants are over-crowded and rushed and never at their best. Still, we had to have some champagne to celebrate, so I hightailed it to our neighborhood retail store and bought a bottle of the A.R. Lenoble Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Brut 1996. Only the best for LL and me!

Blanc des Blancs means that the champagne is made only from chardonnay grapes; most champagnes are a blend of chardonnay, pinot meunier and pinot noir. Grand Cru means that the grapes came only from the highest rated vineyards in the region. Vintage 1996 in Champagne is usually described as “extraordinary” and “superb.”

The A.R. Lenoble Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Brut 1996 is a highly individual wine. The color is a radiant medium gold with a faint green tinge; the froth of tiny bubbles swirls tempest-like up the glass to break at the surface. The bouquet offers guava and quince with a hint of pineapple backed by roasted hazelnuts, almond skin and fresh biscuits. Twelve years have added substance to this champagne without rendering it heavy or ponderous; think of it as dignity and gravitas buoyed by a sense of fleetness and delicacy. Acidity is citrus-clean and apple-bright, paving the way for a scintillating limestone element. The finish brings in buttered toast, roasted pears and cloves. This champagne should continue to deepen and darken its spicy, toasty hues through 2012 to 2015 or ‘16. Excellent. I paid $68; prices around the country range from about $55 to $75, a bargain for the quality and considering that it’s champagne..

Opici Import Co., Glen Rock, N.J.

Wine is often brought into the realm of charitable events to up the ante because of its (supposed) glamor, allure and sophistication. Sometimes wine is used primarily to attract people to receptions or dinners, and sometimes it becomes the object of veneration itself, auctioned to bidders who pay extravagant sums for great vintages or special bottlings because the money goes to worthy causes. Other times, it’s the so-called wine lifestyle that invokes the generosity of bidders who are promised lunches and dinners at prominent wineries in California with accommodations in winery guest-houses with “the best view of the Napa Valley.”

No harm done, of course; nonprofit organizations and foundations have to raise money some way, and if their fund-raising events provide flash and fun as well as the opportunity to drop wads of dough on the needy and those who help them, well, bless their bones. Such an effort, for example, is the well-known Napa Valley Wine Auction, held every June and a lollapalooza of a blow-out event if ever there was one, which raises millions of dollars for healthcare, affordable housing and youth services in the Valley.

I have noticed, however, that even when wine is employed as a lure to get the well-heeled and beneficent in the door, the product itself often takes a secondary role. This is no big deal, of course; the object is to raise money. I couldn’t help noticing this phenomenon, though, Friday night when I attended a dinner on the second night of the “Wine, Women and Shoes” fantasia that benefitted Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center in Memphis. “Wine, Women and Shoes” was created spontaneously by Elaine Honig, founder of Napa Valley’s Honig Vineyard and Winery, as a gimmick that might attract women (and their husbands and boyfriends) to charitable functions. Now the movement has grown to he point that 20 “Wine, Women and Shoes” events around the country have raised $2.5 million for women’s and children’s causes. Honig left the winery in January 2008 to devote herself full-time to the organization.

Anyway, I found myself in pretty heady (not to mention sleek and well-turned out) company Friday night at the Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar about 15 minutes from my house. (This is a national chain that mounts an ambitious wine program.) In fact, a longtime acquaintance in the local wine trade said to me, “Who are these people? I’ve never seen them at wine tastings?” I replied, “These aren’t wine people. These are rich people.”

The program was simple: A four-course dinner accompanied by wines (two each; 22 altogether) from Oakville Ranch, Cornerstone Cellars, Domaine Carneros, Grgich Hills, Chateau St. Jean, Peju Province, Reynolds Family, St. Supery, Titus, Garbrielle Collection and Patz & Hall. Representatives from the wineries — many of them owners or winemakers — were on hand to talk about their products. About the time the third course was served, an auction began of wine and winery visits and travel packages.

Now let’s be honest. Most of the people present Friday night weren’t particularly interested in either the dinner or the wines. Their purpose was to shine amongst their well-dressed peers, to engage in hugs, kisses and general hilarity and to join enthusiastically in the game of out-bidding each other in displays of fiduciary prowess — all to benefit Le Bonheur.

My purpose, on the other hand, was to suck up juice. (Yes, I was a charity-case, myself, having been invited as a guest.) I’m familiar with these wineries and had already tasted some of the wines, but I was happy of the opportunity to try a few that had not made their way to me or that I hadn’t tasted in a while.

The dinner, I’m sorry to say, was no great shakes. The best course was the second, Peppered Scottish Salmon on a Napa Cabbage Slaw with Sweet Pepper Emulsion. Also good was the Roasted Butternut Squash and Caramelized Shallot Bisque, though, in a trite device, served in a large cocktail glass. (I understand that the kitchen then has to wash only one vessel, not a charger and soup bowl.) Beef Tenderloin on a Roasted Garlic Hash brown with a Grilled Red Onion Demi Glace, however, was an exercise in meat and potato banality that could have been turned out in any kitchen (not mine!); one expects more of Fleming’s, which tends to do a great job with meat. Worst of all was a small plate of three uninteresting “artisan” cheeses plopped down on each table with no explanation from waiters as to what they were and no bread or toasts on which to eat them, though, oddly, served with olives and strawberries.

So much for that.

The scheme was that waiters would pour wines for the room, which was sort of divided into thirds, and alternate, so that each table would get to try each wine. That system broke down within about 10 minutes, and it was every man (as it were) for himself. The result was that I wasn’t able to taste all the wines I wanted, though I was happy with what I did manage to snag.

Picture this: Table-hopping, laughter, back-slapping, announcements, a surprise belly dancer for someone’s birthday, and a general mounting of the levels of noise and joie de vivre, the auction increasing in excitement, with bids (by the time I left) going up to $15,000; and then me, taking pictures of food, tasting wine, chatting with my attractive and eloquent table-mates (these were wine people), elbowing waiters to say, “Hey, pour me some of that, please.” Sure, it was fun.

Here’s what I tasted:

From Chateau St. Jean, the nicely balanced and tasty Chardonnay 2007, Sonoma County (Very Good+, about $14, an incredible bargain).

From Domaine Carneros, the delightful Brut 2005 to start the festivities (Very Good+, about $26); and the lovely, rich, warm, spicy and delicately structured Pinot Noir 2006 (Excellent, about $35).

From Oakville Ranch, their Chardonnay 2007, Napa Valley, always one of my favorite Napa chardonnays, this version boldly rich but exquisitely balanced (Excellent, about $46); and the Robert’s Blend 2005, a powerful, deeply earthy and minerally, wild and warm expression of the cabernet franc grape (Excellent, about $90).

From Cornerstone cellars, the superb Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon 2004, so solid, forceful and deep, yet beautifully balanced (Excellent, about $85).

From Patz & Hall, the Jenkins Ranch Pinot Noir 2007 (Exceptional, about $55), of which my first note is “lord have mercy!” One could not ask for a more perfect model of the grape’s potential sumptuousness and strength wedded to classic lightness and clarity. And it was terrific with the salmon.

From The Gabrielle Collection, the Equilateral Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 (Very Good+, about $40), deep and dense, smooth and harmonious. This producer also makes the Vertex Just Red, a terrific $15-quaffer.

And the Grgich Hills Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 (Excellent, about $65), the essential Napa Bordeaux-style cabernet, gorgeous but broadly fleshed out with earth and minerals and a foundation of austerity. This needs from 2010 or ‘11 through 2015 or ‘18.

There you have it. You can see from these wines how generous the wineries were with their donations, and of course Fleming’s was generous in turning over most of the restaurant on a busy Friday night.

No, I didn’t pony up big bucks for the evening’s charitable cause; we ink-stained wretches have little more to contribute than our wit and charm.

Ah, Charity! Ah, Life!

Image of the Napa Valley Wine Auction from napavalleyregister.com.

Numerous people, perhaps millions, will rush out tonight in a mad abandoned attempt to bring a dismal year to a close and welcome a year that has so many expectations attached to it that if it had any sense it would stay in its cave and never come out. If ever a year was required to be All Things to All People, 2009 is it. So good luck.

New Year’s Eve requires bubbles, and assuming that you’re not going to go out and get so drunk in your search for oblivion that you don’t give a good goddamn about what you slosh into your mouth, here are some recommendations.
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Say you’re hosting a party the size of which would accommodate the complete cast of The Wire (including Snoop, Chris and Omar), what you want is something decent, tasty and affordable to purchase by the case. Turn to the non-vintage Domaine Laurier Brut which, despite its French name, is from California and one of the better products of Fred Franzia’s Bronco Wine Corp. This sparkling wine, made in the traditional champagne method, is a medium gold color and offers a consistent and satisfying up-rush of tiny bubbles. Aromas of wheatmeal, lime and almond blossom presage a wine that is spare, clean, lively, citrusy and close to elegant. Very Good and a bargain at about $12. That’s the suggested retail price, but you find this sparkler discounted as low as $9.
Image from insidebayarea.com.
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Looking for more character at a higher but still reasonable price? Try the delightful “metodo classico” non-vintage Rotari Rosé, a blend of 75 percent pinot noir and 25 percent chardonnay from Italy’s northeastern Trento region. The color is an entrancing pale copper-salmon; the bubbles insist on pin-point persistence. The wine is unexpectedly (for the price) rich, meaty and earthy, with a bouquet of spiced apple, melon, blood orange and almond skin. The effervescence is giddy; the acidity clean and crisp; flavors tend toward fresh bread, lime and limestone, with the stony aspect increasing on the finish. Very Good+ and a Great Bargain at about $14.
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O.K., well, let’s forget all the freaking fiscal austerity and pretend that, as the old song from the Depression goes (you know, the other Depression), we’re in the money, and that maybe tonight’s festivity is aimed at a small group or even just two. It would be fitting, then, to open a bottle of the Taittinger Brut Millésimé 2002, a cool, elegant Champagne — half and half pinot noir and chardonnay –that will leave you feeling optimistic and (fleetingly) wealthy. The color is pale gold with a shimmer of silver; the bubbles are classically tiny, like seething flecks of celestial ore. Aromas of warm bread, dried spice, lemon pie and meadow honey draw you in. The texture is exquisitely poised between crisp nervosity and creamy lushness, with flavors packing hints of baked apple, lemon curd, crystallized ginger and orange rind wrapped in toasty bread, all of this subdued to the resonance of liquid limestone. A Champagne of tremendous breeding and finesse. Excellent. About $90.
Imported by Kobrand Corp., Purchase, N.Y.
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Since New Year’s Eve is the biggest champagne and sparkling wine night of the year, let me append some tips on proper serving.

1. Champagne and sparkling wine should be served chilled, straight from the refrigerator.

2. They should be consumed in tall “flute” glasses, not the shallow “coupe” glasses said to have been modeled on one of Marie Antoinette’s breasts. I wonder which one.

3. Never try to open a bottle of champagne or sparkling wine with a cork-screw. Strip off the foil capsule and untwist the wire cage that surrounds the cork. With a dish towel or napkin over the bottle, grasp the cork in one hand and the bottom of the bottle in the other. Extract the cork by twisting the bottle, not the cork.

4. Now matter how plastered you are or how much hilarity you anticipate, NEVER push the cork out with your thumbs, hoping for a loud POP, a gush of foam and a cork careening about the room. The pressure inside a bottle of champagne or sparkling wine is enormous, and the cork will rush out at great speed and force, enough to damage an eye.

5. Champagne and sparkling wines are versatile enough to be served with all sorts of party foods and dinner courses, but the best beverage to go with caviar is chilled vodka.

Say you’ve been really good this year, or pretty damned good, or you tried to be good and achieved the 80th percentile. I mean, that’s not so bad. It wouldn’t get you into graduate school on the GRE, but in terms of human behavior in a wicked world, even that level of goodness deserves some reward.

Or say that this was a year of good things. You ran the race, closed the deal, finished the book, beat the rap, and you want to give something impressive (but not a boat) to your trainer, your partner, your agent, your lawyer.

Look to one (or some, what the hell) of these “Twelve Great Wines” reviewed in this Featured Article on KoeppelOnWine.com. Prices go from about $45 to $350, so there’s a wide range of choice. The regions are California; Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne and the Rhone Valley in France; Tuscany and Alto Adige in Italy; and Hungary, in case geography plays any part in your selection. I’ve included two labesl here as a hint about the kinds of wines these “Twelve Great Wines” are.

What makes these wines great?

Well, the fact that they are unique, pure and intense expressions of a place and a grape (or grapes); that they embody every principle of balance and harmony and completeness along with some wild eloquence, some extra element of personality and character; the fact that they are downright delicious as well as profound, and it’s true that some of them won’t really be ready to consume for another five to eight years.

So go for it! Reward yourself! Make someone else happy! Isn’t it about time?

And on Friday will come, on this blog, a case of wine for Christmas giving or getting or drinking, 12 bottles each under 20 dollars. I’m working on that now.

For Ken & Terry.

So, finally we’re having seasonable weather in Memphis, after a horrendous August and a hotter-than-usual September. It’s a beautiful, clear, slightly warm Sunday afternoon, and we’re still on the screened porch, reading The New York Times and watching the dogs gambol about the backyard or collapse on the grass, as if fallen from an airplane, to snooze in the sun. Maybe a little lunch would be appropriate, not really lunch, but something halfway between lunch and a snack.

So I go into the kitchen and start putting things together. When we were in New York last month, we went to Buon Italiano in Chelsea Market and stocked up on meats and cheeses (and a jar of ravishing lime blossom honey). I slice some sopressata, some speck and some coppa, slice a baguette, put some nicoise olives and roasted red pepper on the platter. Pour some olive oil — the bright, rich Prato Lungo from Long Meadow Ranch Winery in Napa Valley — in a little bowl.

We need wine, of course, so I open a bottle of the Castello di Volpaia Chianti Classico 2004 (about $23).

This is pretty damned perfect. That’s the east side of our backyard, seen from the porch, with three tall, pale, slender sycamore trees that we love.

The salumi are wonderful, probably the best we’ve ever had. The speck is dense, almost lush in texture, like prosciutto in flavor but darker and more intense. The sopressata is hard, nutty, spicy; it’s great on pizza. The coppa is smoky, ripely meaty and earthy.

The Volpaia Chianti Classico 2004 is indeed classic, a delicious melange of vivid black currant, black raspberry and plum flavors with spiced tea, potpourri, lively acid and grainy, chewy tannins. The wine sees no new oak or small barrels, aging 14 months in Slovenian casks for subtle wood notes and a robust structure.

Back in June, I gave LL a birdfeeder for her birthday, which I set up near the west side of our screened porch. Watching the birds come to the feeder, observing their habits and manners and colors and the playing out of status — they’re like dogs that way — have given us hours of amusement and pleasure. We have house finches, cow-birds, red-bellied and downy woodpeckers, tufted titmice, Carolina chickadees, blue jays (the court jesters), mourning doves and so on. About the third week of September, though, most of the birds vanished. What’s up with that? I mean, they’re already south. How far south do they have to go?

We still had our two pairs of cardinals, though, the brash crimson males with their black masks and conical hats, the kings of our yard, and the softer, more muted females. They are monogamous and non-migratory.

Anyway, so here we are, a brilliant Sunday afternoon, a nice snack and wine, the newspapers.

Then there’s a commotion, over to our left, in some shrubbery. Four of the dogs — Tessa, the fifth dog, has to stay in her own yard because she and the boss-dog, Grace Slick, have terrible fights — are circling around, jumping back and forth, barking. Suddenly, LL cries, “Rosie, no!” and there’s Rose, the small black chow, running around, shaking something that looks like a limp red rag in her mouth. We rush out of the porch and run to where the dogs are watching Rose, who leaps back and forth shaking what is, of course, one of the male cardinals. Too late for the bird. I get a shovel from the garage, shoo Rose away — she doesn’t want to give up her prize — scoop up what is hardly recognizable as a bird now, and drop him in the trash bin.

Well, this is really sad. Now there’s a cardinal widow; what will she do? Somehow, considering this day, I can’t help thinking about Dutch still-life paintings from the 17th century, those intricate marvels of bountiful hedonism, overflowing with fruit and vegetables, meat, fish and seafood, carafes of wine, silver platters and goblets, heaps of flowers, unalloyed tributes to the pleasures of the body. But there’s always a tiny detail that gives us pause: A moldy lemon on the fruit tray; a fly, rendered in such exquisite detail that you can almost hear it buzz; a few wilted flowers in the bouquet, all serving to remind us that in the midst of life’s generous offerings and pleasures, decay, dissolution and death still reign supreme, that everything organic, living, material comes to the same end, including dogs, birds and us.

Still, until all the food is eaten and all the wine consumed, until all the lovely Sunday afternoons vanish, and dogs and cats and birds are forgotten, and music is silent and poems are unread, and we ourselves have vanished and are forgotten — until that day, we’ll keep on exactly as we are.

Castello di Volpaia wines are imported by Wilson-Daniels, St. Helena, Ca.
The website for the olive oil is longmeadowranch.com.