New Year's Wishes

It’s 8:43 on New Year’s Eve, and the last of the fifteen-year-olds has arrived.  My twelve-year-old gratefully accepted an invitation to her friend’s home tonight, so it’s me, Elizabeth and a few of her friends here tonight.  We’ll toast midnight’s arrival with a choice of sparkling apple or grape juice.  

Don’t worry; I treated myself to some delicious wine earlier tonight.  For dinner, I roasted a chicken which was sublime in its simplicity.  It was crispy and golden brown from the butter and smashed garlic I rubbed under its skin before roasting.  In the oven, melted butter and rendered fat bathed tender little yellow potatoes I had tucked under the bird along with some sprigs of fresh thyme.  Salt and pepper completed the works.  While the house filled with intoxicating aromas, I sipped our 2007 Pinot noir and happily hummed snippets of a tune I can’t place.  

Kelby said he thought he and his family would be having beef tenderloin tonight, as that has become something of a Russell family tradition.  If we’re lucky, Kelby will post a blog explaining how he cooks the beef and what he serves with it—both in terms of side dishes and wine choices.  

Peter and I admire Kelby’s perpetual calmness, especially while he’s cooking.  On several occasions, we’ve watched him whip up a feast—hors d’oeuvres through dessert—with nary a crack in his peaceful demeanor.  It’s as though he has never contemplated the possibility that his main dish might finish cooking too far ahead of his multiple vegetable preparations, and of course, it doesn’t.  He’s as quietly passionate about marvelous food as he is about wine, and he is very generous with his cooking talents.  I’ll try to persuade him to give us his New Year’s Eve feast details.

Peter most likely had something very fresh and low on the food chain.  He’s extraordinarily adept at listening to what his body wants to eat, eating that, and nothing more.  Eating with Peter is a joyful exploration of how grains and vegetables with herbs, oils and vinegars can be simple and exotic at the same time, and how satisfying those foods can be.   

He’ll probably go to sleep before midnight.  Years ago, Peter told me that was his habit, and that he is usually the first one up on New Year’s Day.  That sounded, well, odd at first, but really nice upon reflection.  Imagine the first day of a new year, unencumbered by headaches from overindulgence in food and wine and keeping late hours.  Imagine waking up fresh and ready to tackle whatever the new day brings.  A rather great idea, don’t you think?  

I had a chance to try it for myself a few years ago.  The girls were small, and under my power then.  We toasted the new year at 8:30 and they were asleep by 9:00.  I wasn’t far behind them.  We woke up early, and went for a walk as the sun came up.  It had snowed hard during the night and the morning was muffled and still.  Unbroken snow lay all around the city; the only marks were from our boots and the sled I dragged behind me.  The girls, laughing and rosy-cheeked, took turns being pulled in the sled.  As promised, we were the only ones awake (as far as we could tell) and it felt like the whole world belonged to us.  It seemed we could feel our unseen neighbors—cozy and warm in their somnolence, they exuded a collective sleepiness that lay heavy over their houses like a woolen blanket.   It was seductive, that sleepiness, but the day belonged to my bright-eyed girls, and we were reveling in it.  

That New Year’s memory is one of my favorites.  We haven’t had another like it, though, because my girls discovered that they like to stay up late.  Veeeeerrrrry late.  

This year, we’re celebrating youth and exuberance.  Theirs, not mine.  We just went on a madcap dash to find Pop Rocks—somebody had a craving, and they were too excited to turn down.  I try to say, “Why not?” when I can.  Most stores were closed, naturally, and those that were open did not have any Pop Rocks.  The kids consoled themselves by building a fort in my living room, and playing a movie really loudly.  In a few years, this silliness will give way to sophisticated dinner parties, and we’ll celebrate that too, in its time.  

These teenagers remind me tonight of people I haven’t seen, or in some cases thought of, in over twenty years.  I wonder how they are doing, and hope their lives have turned out to be as fulfilling as mine.  

By the time you read this, December 31^st will have slipped away, and January 1^st will have quietly dawned.  

Kelby will have decorously held aloft a midnight glass of sparkling wine, and offered a toast as an ambrosial conclusion to their traditional rite.  

Peter will have slept well and risen, and greeted the day, full of renewed energy.  Perhaps he has already taken his morning walk, maybe with Max to liven up the quiet morning and to bark at all those silly people still a-bed on this first day.  

My girls and I will be among those still snoozing late into the morning.  We’ll sleep as long as the puppies will let us, and then we’ll pick up bits of fallen streamers, and wayward potato chips.  Some other New Year’s Eve, I’ll remember when my older daughter was fifteen, and she had her first New Year’s Eve party, and how they laughed all night long.  

I hope that as I’m writing this, where ever you are, and whatever form your New Year’s Eve takes, that you are surrounded by people you love, and that you are happy.  

Bonne année, meilleurs souhaits,

Tricia

Music of the Day:

• Jean Redpath, a true treasure of a performer and interpreter of traditional Scottish songs, performing live on Late Night with David Letterman (Letterman being as instantly captivated by her voice as we were):

Support Artists, buy the music you like!

What Is A "Holiday Wine"?

It was only a few weeks ago that anyone and everyone connected to Fox Run started getting bombarded with questions regarding what wines pair well with Thanksgiving Dinner.  As you could see in my post on the subject, the broad answer with a meal that diverse and with a main entree so versatile was to drink any wine that wouldn't tire you out (due to too much alcohol, tannin, etc.) and especially to make sure it was a wine you enjoyed (because that is what really matters).  Now as we approach and immerse ourselves in other major celebrations of the season, each of which marries gaiety with some form of excess, the questions of "what wine" are no less important.

To me, the most interesting part of wine pairing questions during the holidays is the larger premise behind the question: that a distinct set of wines exist that are appropriate for the holidays.  Even if we cannot place our finger on what exactly makes a wine a "Holiday Wine," we all seem to have some understanding that it deserves special attention (and capital letters).  Frankly, I'm most interested in what all of you and consumers in general think of when they approach a holiday wine selection - and hope to see some ideas in the comments below.  In the meantime, here are a few attributes that I tend to weigh and juggle for these special wines:

• Pairing Food:  The most obvious factor that might go into designating a wine as a Holiday Wine is that it pairs well with traditional foods of the season.  Thanksgiving brings to mind zinfandels for many who read American wine writers anytime after the 1980s, because it seemed appropriate at one time to serve an American wine with an American holiday and now is rooted like tradition (regardless of suitability to the meal).  For those who have a standing rib roast for Christmas or New Year's, a classic claret-style red might beg for Holiday Wine consideration.
• Pairing Mood:  No less important when it comes to wine pairing, is how the wine seems to pair with the mood of the season.  Excepting its most ardent proponents, most wine drinkers would not readily think of a crisp, dry rosé during the depths of a cold and snowy January.  On the flip side, dark and sticky port wines feel perfect by the fireplace and a sparkling wine is as de rigueur at a New Year's Eve party as the midnight kiss.  Fortunately, sparkling wines are excellent partners for the hors d'oeuvres present at most such gatherings - but regardless of that the mood fits the wine so perfectly that food pairing might be cast aside (see: Zinfandel, Thanksgiving).
• Price:  There is no way around the fact that all consumers, including everyone in the wine industry when they are out shopping, use the price of a bottle as an indicator of the quality within the bottle.  These assumptions may be entirely off base, perhaps the wine just has better marketing or an artificially low supply, but nevertheless they are still made.  And when it comes to the holidays, similar to how everything else is treated from food to spending, excess (high price) is often rewarded as being correct for a Holiday Wine.  This isn't to say that the fun gatherings this time of year do not deserve expensive bottles of wine, but neither does it mean that just because a wine is expensive it should be considered a Holiday Wine.
• Tradition:  Relatively straight forward, I suppose.  If you always have a nice Chianti Classico on Christmas Eve with a big Italian-American feast, that style of wine is always going to be a Holiday Wine for you and yours.  It may even come down to a specific producer or bottle if it has really entrenched itself.  For better or worse, when it comes to this signifier of Holiday Wines I am still in my early 20s and struck hard by wanderlust, so I'm far more prone to experimentation even within the context of tradition.
• Sensory Analysis:  This comes surprisingly far down my list, but I don't think that is inappropriate given how important the first three are in most of our decisions on wine during the holidays.  To some extent, there are simply wines that can call to mind images of the holidays simply by their aromas and flavors.  Whether these be aromas of cloves, cinnamon, red fruit, or anything else that we associate with the holidays, a wine can certainly vault itself into being a Holiday Wine if it suddenly serves as a Proustian portal to holidays (real, imagined, or idealized) gone by.
• Connection:  This word may be as nebulous as terroir is, in that giving a precise definition is as frustratingly difficult.  Instead, by way of example, here is what caused me to think of this entire topic.  While I was in New Zealand I purchased about a case-worth of wine, bottle by bottle, from small producers I was impressed by and wouldn't find elsewhere.  Now when I look at these bottles and contemplate opening them for a meal, I am drawn back to beautiful landscapes and my remarkable experiences traveling through that nation in the spring.  This may not have a direct connection to anything relating to the holidays, but to the extent that it brings me back to these special memories it feels right for the joy and reflection of this season.

So there you have it, a partial listing of categories that help make a wine become a Holiday Wine.  As I said at the beginning, I am more interested in what other people think of when they pick out wines for the holidays.  Every such bottle tends to have as fascinating a story behind it as the person who selects it.

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team

Music of the Day:

• Lower Dens - Twin-Hand Movement; "I Get Nervous":

Support Artists, buy the music you like!