Wine Recommendations for The Holidays

When you know absolutely have no idea what to give and you know the person drinks wine for the Christmas. There are a lot of reasons for this easy recommendation. First it is relatively inexpensive. Second it is a great office gift when you don’t know what else to do. Third it is thoughtful as it is for the holidays. Fourth it is a necessity item for most homes. Wine most traditionally is served with Christmas dinner.

Personally I haven’t had a glass of wine in about three years. I actually haven’t consumed any alcohol in three years. Certain lushes in my family refer to me as a Tea Toddler. I have not idea what that is but think certain elements of my family are exceptionally excessive with alcohol. So I don’t drink and I figure between their drinking and my extreme limitations on alcohol that we end up drinking as an average person. And the holidays can be less then fun with hard liquor on board so wine is an easy present.

There are a lot of wines I can recommend. After all I took four years of French. Why would anyone learn French but to eat, drink and dress very fashionable? But in all honesty I have had maybe 10 glasses of wine in the last decade. Even after the two massive hurricanes within a six week period here I still don’t drink much. And trust me even me who doesn’t drink wanted a drink after the second hurricane in 6 weeks,

So my recommendations are old. But I will tell you why I have chosen these wines in particular.

A LaTour 1957. I haven’t priced it lately but it is quite expensive. But is goes down rather smooth. I always worry about buying wines that ld as in Rome we opened some that were several hundred years old and they were vinegar. But the LaTour 1957 if you can spare the change is quite and excellent bottle of wine.

My next selection is Pouilly-Fuisse. I prefer certain brands but in general this is a very good wine. It is a bit fruit but not sweet which I absolutely adore in a wine. Again I haven’t bough a bottle of wine for my own consumption in perhaps a two decades although I give wine as gifts frequently but this wine usually runs around $35 or at least it use to and it probably varies from region to region.

My next recommendation is Chateauneuf de Pape. Again I have never consumed this wine but I have given it away and everyone loved it. I received may compliments in my taste in wine. Although I did belong to a wine tasting guild in my early twenties I grew weary of being the only person under the age of 50 in the group. And I was being hit on a lot by rich married men. I can to know about this wine in the middle of the Cleveland Clinic Pediatric Cardiac Office in Ohio. There had been a snow storm and my son had a doctor’s appointment in Cleveland. We were there but the heart doctor was very late because the roads were blocked with snow. So we had to wait several hours. They had a lot of magazines in the office that all of the doctor’s prescribed to. Most of them were gourmet magazines and wine magazines. In the few hours I had to wait I read the last 50 journals of both periodicals and I did a meta-analysis on wines. The one wine that kept popping up was Chateauneuf de Pape but not the years 1993. The rest of the years are good but 93 was a bad year at least according to the periodicals. That Christmas I gave those bottles of wine out and everyone was extremely happy.

Borealis Novum which is bought right now and goes for about $10 a bottle is the November Borealis. It is a relatively inexpensive gift to give to someone with whom you like but are not close to. I remember giving it to my 96 year old friend. She didn’t drink nor did I but it was for her to carry to her family’s Christmas dinner so she had something to contribute. A very simple $10 gift that allowed an elderly person the dignity of still being able to contribute to her family during the holidays. And it is a pretty good wine for the price.

And the final wine I have to recommend is Pinot Grigio. I use to drink this wine with other frequently in Rome. As a matter of fact as a teenager I was quite surprised that wine was served to teenagers in Rome and yet there it was at every meal and it usually cost less then the water with gas!! When I returned to American I was so pleased to see my favorite Italian wines being peddled in America for $1.21. Pinot Grigio was one of them. And so I would always buy Pinot Grigio for the Holidays and everyone thought I was such an expert. Little did they know they were getting a gift that was a bit more expensive then something bought at the dollar store. Ignorance is bliss especially at the Holidays. But I have bad news for you. People have caught on and Pinot Grigio is expensive now in the USA.

Happy Holidays!!