Good Neighbors,
The month of November holds for many Americans, if not all, the chance to roast, boil, broil, deep-fry, and or pan-sear? turkey turkey turkey. Grade A, Grade B, Organic, Fresh, Free-range, Egg-less, No anti-biotics, Grass-fed, Grain-fed, fertilizer-fed, Natural, infused with anti-oxidants and anti-bacterial hand-washing sanitized, sodium induced gobbler. This bird, immortalized by decades of ignorance and misunderstanding of the original “Thanks-giving” feast, has come to a liquidated cross-road in my mind: Do I drink red or white wine with my turkey? The answer of course is obvious: drink whatever you want.
That is your privilege as an American. How often does one hear a family member proclaim: “I’ll drink whatever I damn well please!” ? This statement, sometimes sited as being the right of the proclaimer thanks to people like Christopher Columbus who discovered our great country and made with his godly hands, many great and godly things, however, this right truly lies in the breast, if you will, of James Madison. Mr. Madison is the man responsible for concocting a system of government that is by the people, for the people, and something the people. That something is likely in tandem with drinking whatever you damn well please. We should really give thanks to him and the men who fought to give us a constitution that to this day allows your grandmother the right to put ice in her white and red wine, and permits me to disagree with her, but prevents me from striking her down without being judged by a jury of my peers and sent to one of our countries government-run resort/spa’s a.k.a. prison.
Okay, enough… the facts: In Burlington, VT for the holiday, I drank a Pinot Noir with my turkey. A 2008 Otto’s Constant Dream. I’ve raved about their Sauvignon Blanc, and they do well with Pinot, which I’m not admittedly a fan of. I also drank the 2008 OCD Sauvignon Blanc, so there. And to add injury to insult this was prefeced by a Schramsberg Rose called Mirabelle. Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelish. And let’s not forget about Relativity Vineyards 2007 red concoction of a very interesting story that I may or may not have correct: Orin Swift who produces this wine ran into a situation where some unscrupulous character let some distilled water into a batch of the fancy elixir, prompting Orin’s insurance company to declare the wine not up to par and forcing him to sell it to some kind folk who went and bottled it as Relativity. Whether any of this is true or not, Relativity is a good wine and a dynamic wine that tastes like several dreams I’ve had of going back to Peter Luger’s and ordering my weight in steak.
As a founder of the Connoisseur Rating System (CRS) and self-annointed Master Sommelier, I rate these wines as follows:
2008 OCD Pinot – CRS Rating: 87,990,550,434,343,211
2008 OCD Sauvignon Blanc – CRS Rating: 20 x 100 Million
2007 Relativity Quantum Reserve – CRS Rating: 89 x 120 Billion
Schramsberg Vineyards Mirabelle Brut Rose – CRS Rating: 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999 x 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999, + 3
In the end, I shall think fondly on wine and wherever there is water, I shall hope there is some genius lurking nearby, anticipating the moment when that water ought be turned into the red and sumptuous fluid that flows over the nooks and crannies of my liver. White will have its place in some vagrant and vagabond land known as: pre-dinner cocktailia. Or not. I progress…
