Along with family baggage and dubious Fair Isle sweaters, the winter holidays bring a uniquely baffling array of gifting litmus tests. The good news is, wine is a viable response to quite a lot of those tests (it can sometimes send a strange message to a preschool teacher or a delivery truck driver … but certainly not always). The less good news (and also the best news) is that there truly is something for everyone.
Winter food often (not always; there’s no such thing as always here) seems to demand wines that are heavier, denser, richer and more powerful than Salad Season does. For many of us, the holidays entail certain ritual meals that manage to defy all the in-laws’ attempts to introduce a soup course and spark oddly emotional arguments if some crazy maverick decides to experiment with leaving the skin on the potatoes, to say nothing of recreating the oyster stuffing Grandma used to have as a girl. Yet palates get tired, so what to do? Changing up your pairings can be remarkably refreshing. Many seasonal favorites tend to favor red wines in the “big and bold” camp, but maybe Cabernet Sauvignon has become too ubiquitous to feel special. Change is good, and luckily you will never have tried everything. Following are a handful of multitasking problem-solvers to help get you through the season of interminable bad Christmas songs, spouse’s company holiday party outings, and that terrifying moment when you catch Uncle Jim letting the teen cousins take a hit off his vape or your college freshman comes home and announces he is now a Libertarian. Oh, you’re welcome.
Your Dilemma: You can’t please all the people all the time.
Your solution: Valpolicella
The first red wine I ever drank was a Bolla Valpolicella. It was grad-student-grade cheap and the word “Valpolicella” felt sophisticated just to say. Four different styles of Valpolicella are made, all from the same grapes (primarily fruity Corvina and flowery Rondinella), but by differing processes. The fruit throughline of all four is marasca cherries, but the variations are immense. Valpolicella Classico is bright, light, herbaceous, lean and juicy, not unlike a Beaujolais (and equally agreeable to a light chill). Valpolicella Ripasso, which is the other “drink it young” Valpolicella, is made by double-processing the juice with skins leftover from Amarone and Recioto wines, and has a moodier disposition, with the bright, juicy pie cherry flavor modulated by soft bitterness and a bit of a raisin quality. Valpolicella Recioto is dessert wine made by air-drying the grapes before pressing; the resulting wine is dense, raisiny and “chewy.” Amarone della Valpolicella is the same idea, but the dried grapes ferment completely to a dry wine rather than stopping it while there’s still abundant residual sugar. Amarone can age for years and has a hallmark bittersweet character, great structure, and a kind of grandness to it. The cherry note is deeper, darker and more dignified and banked by cocoa powder and black raspberry.
Try: Tenuta Sant’Antonio “Monte Garbi” Ripasso or “Antonio Castanedi” Amarone-or “Nanfre” Valpolicella Classico. Also, Zenato Valpollicella Ripasso, Masi “Costaserra” Amarone, Marchesi Fumanelli Amarone.
Your Dilemma: It needs to feel “Special.”
Your Solution: Brunello di Montalcino
Sangiovese is pretty much the red grape of Tuscany, and it makes a vast range of different wines, from straw-clad, ultra-rustic Chiantis to Brunello di Montalcino, a deeply elegant wine that tends to command very high prices, and not without reason. Garnet-colored with rusty edges, resinous, raisiny Brunello is more “dense” than “heavy” and tends to express violets, herbs, leather, black cherries and incense.
Try: Fattoria dei Barbi Brunello di Montalcino, Le Chiuse Brunello di Montalcino, Avignonesi, Tentute Silvio Nardi Brunello di Montalcino, Frescobladi “Castelgiocondo.”
Your Dilemma: Vieux Telegraphe is out of your budget.
Your Solution: Gigondas
Grenache is the sometimes-unsung hero of many of the most delectable wines on this earth, from the most laid-back, summery rosés to some pretty exalted heavy-hitter reds including black slate Priorat and Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Gigondas, whose name is derived from the Latin Jocunditas meaning basically “exuberance,” is a Grenache-based, terroir-forward red blend from the Rhone Valley. Gigondas wines are lively, even “exuberant,” with notes of dark cherry and raspberry, tobacco and other “leafy” notes, and sometimes pronounced marmalade or orange peel notes. It’s delicious, and while not always on the bargain shelf, it’s a lot more affordable than Chateauneuf, with very similar charms.
