Not Another Boring Thanksgiving Wine Pairing Article
Chapter Nine, Part Four.
On Thanksgiving my family comes together, shares some wine, enjoys a harvest feast, and watches football, football, and more football. It’s an afternoon filled with aggressive, smash-mouth offence and bold defensive maneuvers. Then we turn on the TV and watch the game.
Cooking a Thanksgiving meal for 20 people can be a lot of work and very stressful for everyone involved, by which I mean my wife. Of course I help out in a big way as I’m in charge of the wine and stay far from the kitchen. That probably doesn’t sound like much help to you, but then you haven’t been at my house when the wine locusts arrive. The eighth plague was nothing compared to what happens when my people are thirsty.
My wine selection process is simple. I sit on the front porch and sample wine before the guests arrive. Last year the first wine I tasted was so good that I drank the whole bottle. I wasn’t alone mind you, there were lots of people driving by.
Don’t get the wrong idea. I have a lovely family. In fact I love my wife’s brother like a brother-in-law. We gather around the table and I take a heart-warming look at the family, my Uncle Ralph, the turkey, and then my wife brings in the bird. No casual attire at this table. No sir, even the greens are collard.
Read MoreCh Ch Ch Changes to the 1855 Bordeaux Wine Classification
Chapter Sixteen, Part Four.
“Every time I thought I’d got it made, it seemed the taste was not so sweet.” David Bowie
The authors of the Official Bordeaux Wine Classification made an unusual entry on the original handwritten document drawn up in 1855. Cantemerle (now known as Chateau Cantemerle) appears to have been written on the bottom of the historic list in a different hand than the other entries. It is squeezed into a narrow space below the Fifth Growth ranked Croizet-Bages (formerly the bottommost entry) and looks like an afterthought on the part of the authors. Cantemerle was also left off the map of estates that was displayed at the 1855 exposition, although it has appeared on every subsequent map since 1856.
Bordeaux Has Class
Chapter Sixteen, Part Three.
People are always asking me to explain the term Classified Bordeaux. I might be in the emergency room and the attending physician will say, “Can you explain Classified Bordeaux, and by the way this thing has got to come out,” or I’ll be buying a bottle of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild and the cashier will say, “What exactly is a Classified Bordeaux and that will be $18,000 please.” Since the Bordeaux Classification rarely changes, my answer is always the same; “I can tell you but then I’ll have to kill you because it’s classified!”
On the other hand, regular readers of WineSnark have already died a thousand deaths by sitting through countless recycled jokes like that one so you deserve to know how Bordeaux got its class.
Back in 1855 when I was just a toddler, Emperor Napoleon III requested an official classification of the Bordeaux wines that were to be presented at the Exposition Universelle de Paris.
Read MoreA Look At French Wine Laws
Chapter Sixteen, Part Two.
France has hundreds of wine appellations that are broken down into three quality levels; Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AC or AOC), Vin de Pays (VdP), and Vin de Table (VdT). These designations are controlled by the Minister of Agriculture, under the auspices of the Institut National de l’Origine et de la Qualité. Rather than adopt the logical acronym INOQ, the organization retained an earlier acronym INAO (for Institut National des Appellations d’Origine) so they wouldn’t have to replace the stationary.
Wine Regulations, Also Known As Acronymphomania
Chapter Fifteen, Part Two.
Laws regulating wine end when your blood alcohol level drops below 0.08%, but they start in the vineyard, even before grapes turn into alcohol. Inspired by European appellation wine laws, American wine grape-growing regions fall within demarcated geographic boundaries established by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). Before the creation of American Viticultural Area’s (AVA) wine regions were simply designated by county or state. Surprisingly the first AVA, established in 1980, was not in Napa Valley. It was in the Mecca of fine wine production, Augusta, Missouri.
