As a surprised dinner guest looks on, Chad prepares
to open yet another bottle of wine.
(Photo by Cheryl Koehler.)

What wines could we serve with my grandmother's sweet potato and marshmallow medley, blanched broccoli with almonds, and a turkey big enough to have a name - when they are all on the table at the same time?

We have three choices: (1) drink a lot while we cook; (2) cry like a baby; or (3) go with the Thanksgiving flow and open a few wines at a time. While not completely denying the second option, I think the third is the most fun.

Opening a number of wines at the same time will give you and your guests lots of options for mixing and matching the wines and foods, which will happily mimic the ebb and flow of the undoubtedly lively conversation. And no matter what great and dusty bottles you haul up from the cellar, it's the company and conversation that matter most.

Start by opening a few multi-vintage Champagnes - something crisp and bright to waken the palate. Try Pierre Peters ($35) or Agrapart ($27) - they are both outstanding. But if you want something with a bit more body and zip, try the amazing 1995 L'Avizoise single-vintage bottling from Agrapart. At $53, it's a bargain. What else could we open? How about a lighter-style white Burgundy, like the 2001 Petit Chablis from Hervé Azo ($13.99) or Emile Juillot's Mercurey Blanc ($23), to swing from bubbles to Burgundy?

No sensible Thanksgiving would be complete without a few bottles of great German riesling. A Kabinett or Spätlese would be perfect. Try Josef Leitz's 2002 Rudesheimer Magdalenenkreuz Spätlese ($20) or Kerpen's 2002 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Kabinett ($19). Incredible turkey wines, both.

All of the above would be perfect wines to pass around before leaping into the splendors of pinot noir. Try something from Domaine Heresztyn, say his 2000 Chambolle-Musigny ($39) or 2000 Gevrey-Chambertin 'Vieilles Vignes' ($32). Both are wickedly silky and rich, while maintaining an elegance you get with pinot noir. In addition to the marshmallow-medley and the in-laws, the good news is that none of these wines will break the piggy's back, which is nice.

Note: We stock plenty of other great Thanksgiving wines, including pinot noirs starting at $16 and Alsatian and German whites starting at $13.99. As always, we're here to help you select the best wines for your menu and budget. We'll be open from 9:00 until 8:00 on the day before Thanksgiving, closed on Thanksgiving day, and open 10:00 until 6:00 the day after.

Holiday meals call to mind jovial people crowded around big tables groaning with plates of food and bottles of wine - in a word, celebration. And when you're celebrating, you want bubbles. Something about those millions of tiny, dancing bubbles can't help but put everyone and everything - including your palate - in a celebratory mood.

(Photo by Cheryl Koehler.)

The most famous form of bubbles, of course, is Champagne itself - sparkling wine grown and produced in the Champagne region of France, just east of Paris. Champagne is wine made from some combination of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier grapes and subjected to a secondary fermentation in the bottle. It's that fermentation - a winemaking method called méthode champenoise or méthode traditionelle - that gives Champagne its bubbles as well as its yeasty, brioche-y richness. But what really distinguishes Champagne from other sparkling wines is the cool, northern climate and the chalky soil in which the grapes are grown. These qualities produce tart, minerally grapes that give Champagne its unparalleled raciness and verve.

The Champagnes we drink most often are non-vintage Bruts - wines blended from grapes harvested in different years and fermented to less than 1.5% residual sugar (that is, very dry). As Chad has written elsewhere in this newsletter, Pierre Peters ($35) and Agrapart ($27, or $57 in magnum) make two of our favorite non-vintage Brut Champagnes. Both are blanc de blancs - in other words, 100% Chardonnay - which is the raciest, most high-toned style of Champagne. If you want a wine with more Pinot earthiness and body, try any of the Champagnes from Henri Billiot - non-vintage Brut ($38), non-vintage Brut rosé ($38), or 1996 Brut ($50). Other great Champagnes that we carry include the wines from Billecart-Salmon, Bollinger, and Krug, so stop in and ask us for a run-down.

Plenty of places other than Champagne make delicious bubbles. Crémant is wine made in France by the same method as Champagne (i.e., secondary fermentation occurs in the bottle), but outside the Champagne region. Our favorite budget, Champagne-like wines come from Limoux, a town in the southern Languedoc near the Pyrenees mountains. We carry two Crémants de Limoux by Laurens: non-vintage Brut ($11.99) and 1998 Brut ($16). The Jura region, east of Burgundy, also makes Champagne-like wines, and we recently started carrying the best from the region: André & Mireille Tissot Crémant du Jura ($18).

Northern Italy also makes some pretty captivating bubbles. Prosecco is the name of a grape and a sparkling wine made from that grape in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy. Prosecco is a little more rustic than Champagne and a little fruitier - think ripe pears. It's the perfect wine for a brunch or casual dinner. We typically stock Prosecchi from Ruggeri and Sorelle Bronca ($12.99 each) and often carry special bottlings from these producers.

Champagne, Crémant, and Prosecco by no means exhaust the bubbly possibilities at Paul Marcus Wines. For you fans of the unjustly obscure, we carry Montlouis Brut (sparkling Chenin Blanc from the Loire), Spumante Piemontese (sparkling Pinot Noir from northwestern Italy), and Sekt (sparkling Riesling from Germany). We also stock California sparkling wine and Cava from Spain.

While the holiday season always invites us to break out the bubbles, the other ten months of the year offer many equally good opportunities to enjoy sparkling wines. "Champagne is wine!" serves as one of our mantras at Paul Marcus Wines. In other words, bubbles of all kinds are delicious, food-friendly beverages that deserve a year-round place at your table. We kick off just about every dinner party with some bubbles, and frequently work them into the initial courses. Champagne is a splendid match with rich cheeses (for example, Explorateur) and most fish - especially oysters and smoked fish. It's also an excellent partner to many main courses, including pork, chicken, and game birds. And finally, demi-sec Champagne makes an elegant partner to lots of desserts.

So, yes, we're eager to help you choose some great sparkling wines for your holiday parties. But we also aim to welcome you into the ranks of the "Champagne is wine!" enthusiasts. The next time you're planning a dinner party, come in and ask us to help you include some bubbles in the fun.

I once told a roomful of strangers that snakes could eat cows, whole. It was a high school biology class. I didn't do well in biology. When the laughter finally subsided, the discussion that followed was equal parts hilarity and humiliation. It ultimately proved (I think--) to be a deeper learning experience for everyone, especially me. I haven't gotten any brighter, but I learned from my bovine interlude that simply speaking out in class had value.

A good tasting note is as vivid as the sated snake I imagined - and can be accurate or outrageous - but it must, at least, define the limb it's out on. But sometimes wines, like books, are hard to read. Images aren't always easy to come by. That's when the finer points are illuminated by discussion. Many of the students in Mrs. Fink's biology class were able to deepen their understanding by simply telling me how ridiculous I sounded.

(Photo by Cheryl Koehler.)

Writing tasting notes is like having a discussion with your palate. You have to force yourself to connect the sensations in your mind with those in your mouth. You have to use language to codify the development of your palate, but how? Make things up. Really, just begin - dare to eat the peach - chances are you'll find you know a lot more than you give yourself credit for.

I remember tasting a wine a few months ago that confused me more than usual. I didn't know where to begin. But I had to start somewhere, so I wrote fruity then sipped again, adding black. I was on my way! I wrote Tar, black raspberries & Bing cherries, adding ripe for some measure - then, my beloved; brooding. In a final frenetic flurry I wrote Doc Holliday playing Chopin's first Nocturne! I looked down at my note and said 'what the hell do I mean by that?' After a few minutes, I parsed it out. Here was a wine with playful elegance (Chopin) and a hardened world view (Doc Holliday) all at once. It was emotionally and aesthetically discordant, all over the map really, but thankfully, tasting notes allow such fickle natures to express themselves.

In the end, whatever ends up on the page will increase your understanding of the wine and get you closer to it than everything you left out. Tasting notes are extremely helpful even if you don't agree or fully understand them. And even if they're as vague or as wacky as Doc Holliday banging out a Nocturne, there is, at least, some there there.

After many years of seriously thinking and drinking, talking and listening, and reading and writing, I am thankful that there will always be another wine to open and another class to repeat. It frees me up to ask the really important questions, like 'What wine goes best with snake farcie?' I'll call Mrs. Fink in the morning.

Chianti Classico, near Fattoria Felsina.

Tuscany is for many of us the epitome of the Italian bella vita - incredible art, wonderful food, expressive people.... In all things natural and manmade, from the ancient, undulating landscape to a ragù di cinghiale served over polenta, there's a graceful, unaffected beauty that gratifies every sense and deepens the soul's bond with the world.

Sangiovese is the native wine grape of Tuscany, and it finds its way into everything from everyday vino da tavola to some of the very greatest wines of Italy. Many of the wines from across this broad spectrum are labeled "Chianti", after a set of wine-growing regions in central Tuscany. (Most Tuscan wines, like most French wines, are named after the region where the grapes are grown rather than the grape varietal.) The heart of this region is called Chianti Classico. It stretches from Florence to Siena and is the source of many of the better Chiantis. Other Chianti sub-regions also make worthy wines, such as Chianti Colli Senesi ("Chianti from the hills around Siena"), Chianti Colli Fiorentini ("Chianti from the hills around Florence"), and Chianti Rufina ("Chianti from around Rufina").

Sangiovese grown in Tuscany yields uniquely expressive aromas of sour cherries, roasted chestnuts, cedar, and sottobosco ("forest floor" - mushrooms, earth, and slightly piney underbrush). Good Tuscan Sangiovese always impresses me with its "cragginess" - the vivid peaks and valleys in its aroma and flavor profile. It's not a big, monolithic block of fruit, but a harmonious sequence of captivating impressions on the palate. As Marco Ricasoli from the Chianti Classico producer Rocca di Montegrossi once told us, in Tuscany, Sangiovese makes wines that dance across your palate.

Luca Orsini of Le Cinciole
(Photo by Marcy Newman.)

Chianti historically has been a blended wine in which Sangiovese makes up a large majority of the blend. Barone Ricasoli laid down the traditional recipe in the late 19th century: Sangiovese plus a pinch of the red wine grape Canaiolo and a dollop of white wine grapes such as Malvasia and Trebbiano.

In the 1970s, producers began experimenting in two different directions - incorporating international grape varietals such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot into the blend or making an unblended, 100% Sangiovese wine. At the time, Italian wine law didn't allow these untraditional wines to be labeled "Chianti", so producers created so-called "fantasy names" for these special bottlings, which came to be known as Super-Tuscan wines. Tignanello is the original Sangiovese-plus-Cabernet Super-Tuscan blend, while Cepparello and Fontalloro are two of the best 100% Sangiovese Super-Tuscans. (Yet another strain of Super-Tuscan wine is made entirely or mostly from Cabernet and/or Merlot. Many of these wines have fantasy names ending in "aia" - for example, Sassicaia, Ornellaia, and Lupicaia.)

In 1984, Italian wine law caught up with the less extreme forms of Super-Tuscan practice. Since then, wine labeled Chianti must be at least 75% Sangiovese, but can include up to 10% each of Canaiolo, Tuscan white wine grapes, and international varietals. Alternatively, Chianti can be 100% Sangiovese. The original Super-Tuscans have retained their fantasy names, but when you drink Chianti these days, it might be pure Sangiovese, Sangiovese blended according to Barone Ricasoli's original recipe, or Sangiovese blended with Cabernet or Merlot.

At Paul Marcus Wines, our experience is that wine made entirely from Sangiovese, perhaps with a small amount of Canaiolo, is usually the best, most vivid, and most authentic Tuscan Chianti. Canaiolo doesn't seem to alter the flavor profile of Sangiovese significantly. Some producers include it simply because of tradition, while others claim that it helps deepen the color of Chianti. The Bordeaux varietals, on the other hand, do change Sangiovese, even in small amounts. Merlot softens and rounds out that signature Sangiovese cragginess. Used judiciously, a little Merlot results in a slightly plusher, fruitier Chianti but doesn't mask its essential Sangiovese-ness. Cabernet Sauvignon is a lot more aggressive and does tend to veil Sangiovese's more subtle character.

Many Chianti producers make two levels of wine: A normale Chianti and a special riserva bottling. In Chianti Classico, a normale wine must be aged for at least a year before it's released for sale, while a riserva requires at least two years of aging by the producer. Conscientious producers, in addition to complying with the aging requirement, make riserve wines only from their best grapes and only in vintages of sufficient quality. As a result, a good Chianti riserva will be more full-bodied, complex, and ageable than a corresponding normale.