This is one of my favorite times working in the wine department. Thanksgiving week. It’s probably one of the biggest food and wine holidays of the year. It’s a time when I can put to use my wine and food pairing skills. Turkey dinner is, of course, the standard. However, many people have gone off the traditional train and now cook just about anything they want for Thanksgiving. It’s not the majority, but there are more every year in this group. I like that as well because it is a challenge to pair up a wine with the different choices people are making. I’ve already had lamb thrown my way and I recommended a Grenache from Spain. I try to stick to the axiom…If it grows together, it goes together.
I’ve published two YouTube episodes featuring wines I believe will match up nicely with the Thanksgiving meal. The first featured reds and the second, which goes out there this morning, features an interesting sparkling Gamay, a Roussanne from one of my favorite Rhone Valley producers and a recently discovered Riesling from Washington State. Make sure you check them out, they may help you make your wine-purchasing decision. Speaking of YouTube, I’m getting dangerously close to one thousand subscribers. Once I hit that number, YouTube will start paying me. They already advertise on my channel, especially the episodes that get a lot of views. It would be nice to reap some reward for the effort, although I really enjoy what I’m doing. It’s hard for me to even wrap my brain around the idea that one of my episodes has garnered over nine thousand views. Wow!
I’m starting to work on my list of “Top Twenty Wines Under Twenty Bucks,” which I hope to publish sometime at the beginning of December. It used to be a top forty list, but I found that to be not only a difficult task but really unnecessary. Forty is superfluous, twenty is plenty. I know what my number one wine is, which I am very excited about. It rolls in at fifteen bones, which is a steal for this wine. I will go over all my wine-tasting notes as well as my recent YouTube episodes to fill in the rest of the list. I skipped announcing my winery of the year last year, but I think I will get back at it in 2024. I haven’t decided what winery that will be yet, but I have a feeling that won’t take me long. Look for that near the end of December.
Pacific NW Magazine writer Erik Lacitis wrote up a nice article about small Washington wineries that have struggled to establish themselves amongst the over one thousand wineries in our state. One is a start-up winery from our very own San Juan Islands. He also interviewed me, which is a short piece in the article. It’s in the November 5th, 2023, Seattle Times Pacific NW insert. It was kind of exciting to see my name in print and he also mentioned that I have a YouTube channel. I’m not sure if it helped me, but it seemed as if I got a few more subscribers in a short period of time. In the article he quotes me on my opinion about wine labels, which got me thinking. Should I start a wine label consulting business? Food for thought.
Cheers!
Stan The Wine Man
