2011 Château d'Orschwihr Crémant d'Alsace Rosé Extra Brut

Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Thanksgiving, 11/3/2017

  (Chateau dOrschwihr Cremant dAlsace Extra Brut Rose) Hello friends. It happens every year. One day you’re walking down the street and you notice a single leaf has turned vibrant orange when suddenly—Wham! You have a 22-pound turkey to roast and need enough wine to keep everyone happy (or reasonably so) for the marathon day that is Thanksgiving. Oh Thanksgiving: take one part thoughtful occasion to step back with friends and family and give thanks for all we hold dear; one part excuse to drink heavily in the company of loved ones; a dash of 3am Black Friday shopping; add a pinch of salt and a half cup of heavy whipping cream; stir. In my household, Thanksgiving was always an excuse for my dad to open magnums of California Cabernet and my mom to gleefully force every guest to go around the table and share (in-length) what they were thankful for. While I still follow my family’s examples for expertly crafted turkey and slight emotional coercion, the wine list has changed drastically. You will not find many beefy red wines on my Thanksgiving table. On a holiday that can last from dawn until well after dusk, you need affable wines. Thanksgiving calls for wines that will help you thrive for 12 hours in the face of well-meaning family members, that will pair well with the parsnips and help wash down the dreaded ambrosia salad—you need wines that are your friends. So, we have a Thanksgiving six pack of obliging friends for you this year. All of these wines follow three simple rules to ensure a successful dinner: 1. Moderate alcohol. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You want to be buzzed enough to hear Uncle Bruce’s opinions about the Mueller investigation without losing your mind, but you don’t want to be passed out before the cranberry sauce slithers out of the can. 2. High acid. One look at the smorgasbord that is the Thanksgiving table is enough to make a trained wine professional turn to beer. Or whiskey. But no! Said trained wine professional will then remember that the hallmark of a versatile wine is acidity, and if high versatility is needed on Thanksgiving, then high acid is needed on Thanksgiving, enough acid to cleanse that battered palate and prepare it for the next round of culinary abominations. 3. Moderate price. Thanksgiving is, statistically speaking, the most likely day of the year to host someone who will drop an ice cube (or two) into their wine, someone who will mix their wine with Sprite, and/or someone who will mix their red and white to make “moonshine rosé.” This is not the day to bust out the Grand Cru Burgundy; this is the day to seek out values. You won’t see a TPU price above $20 today. Given all that, here is this year’s six-pack of Thanksgiving wines; ready and willing to take you all the way from turkey roasting to pie cutting. Our goal is to have all these wines in the warehouse by next Thursday (Nov 9).“Stupid” is not typically a term you’ll see when reading reviews of wine—but it is one of my favorite utterings from the mouths of wine professionals everywhere when the right bottle strikes. A stupid bottle of wine is one that shocks; a bottle that is so good, and so inexpensive, that you can hardly believe it truly exists. It’s a bottle that takes the words right out of you mouth and leaves you with only this: it is stupid how good this wine is. This bottle of six-year-old vintage Cremant d’Alsace is one such bottle. 100% Pinot Noir sourced from 50 year-old vines, this wine is aged for 36 months on the lees. The listed alcohol is 12.5% and it opens with tons of leesy croissant, salty-sweet brioche, marcona almonds, earthy leaves, and ripe red apple. On the palate, it’s quite dry and wonderfully savory. There’s a backbone of salinity that complements flavors of beeswax, red apples, almonds, and bright minerals. This is a bottle you can plan to drink before, during, and after the Thanksgiving feast.