Buy The Bottle!
What wine lovers really want for the holidays...

By Jonathon Alsop
December 1, 2004

Wine lovers couldn't be any easier to shop for around the holidays. Here's a little secret: we want wine! When you think to yourself, "My friend loves wine... what should I get for a gift?" the answer is not a coaster, carafe, cork or anything you're supposed to wear while drinking wine. Yet another expensive corkscrew is always more grist for the corkscrew drawer, so I don't recommend that as a gift unless you know the person really needs one.

Wine is the answer, so simple and transparent that people miss it. Of course, the only thing more anxiety provoking than buying pricey wine for yourself is buying it for someone you think is a connoisseur. Will it be the right thing, or too much, or too little?

To undo this anxiety, I recommend focusing on putting together two or three medium-priced bottles of wine that match rather than searching out one expensive, nerve-wracking cellar selection.

Instead of a legendary Chateauneuf-du-Pape at $75, go for a somewhat bigger, easier-to-hit target. Put a good Cotes-du-Rhone, a good Gigondas, and a nice bottle of dessert wine from Beaumes-de-Venise in a gift basket with a piece of delicious raw-milk blue cheese. It still adds up to $75, it's still the same approximate southern French idea, but it's more certain to please.

Holiday shopping begins officially the day after Thanksgiving, but for the wine lover on your list, it's best to wait until after December 1 when wine shops usually mark everything down 20 percent.

Three Winter Whites

2003 Neil Ellis "Sincerely" Sauvignon Blanc (about $10, imported by Vineyard Brands, 205-980-8802)
Sincere comes from two Latin words: sine (without) and cera (wax). Ancient Roman potters filled cracks with wax, so they divided their wares into two piles. Those that were complete and whole were marked sine cera, and the figurative meaning lives on. This South African white comes with a prim and proper label, but the wine inside is bright, zippy, vivacious and alive. Perfect with a plate of oysters on a snowy night.

2003 Biegler Pinot Blanc (about $10, imported by Ideal Wine, 781-395-3300)
As the EU expands, central and eastern European wines are going to be huge internationally. 2003 was unusually hot in Europe, and the new Austrian wines like Biegler are presenting with very appealing, soft, forward fruit. This pinot blanc is very creamy, round and smooth. In cold years, I bet it is tart and citrusy, but for not, put it with a nice mushroom cream sauce over anything.

2003 Cline Red Truck White (about $10, available almost everywhere)
A little sweet, but nice and tangy too, this yummy white is blended from four grapes: sauvignon blanc, viognier, marsanne and roussanne. Red Truck Red is very tasty as well. The ride is smooth, the handling responsive.

One Man, One Wine

Robert Mondavi's genius couldn't be equaled by the combined work of 100 sons, much less the two who tried succeeding him when he retired. After hard work and bouts with sabbaticals, the boys are out and the winery is sold to giant Constellation Brands for nearly $2 billion, thus ending an era in a flurry of cash.

Although Mondavi didn't invent the new world wine convention that gives the wine maker's name top billing over practically everything else on the label, he surely benefited first and foremost by it. His was the first name many wine lovers learned, and it became shorthand for quality.

No matter how many bags of money the new owner has, the essential problem that brought us to this point persists. Mondavi -- the name, the brand, and the wine -- just isn't the same without Mondavi. He was too brilliant, and now it's hard finding a new genius to make the wine.

Full Court Press

The US Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments December 7 -- yes, Pearl Harbor Day -- to decide whether wineries can sell and ship wine directly to consumers, so keep your fingers crossed. If the so-called "three-tier system" of government-mandated producer-distributor-retailer chains is broken, wine in America will be free from the last big legalistic legacy of Prohibition.

Not to extend any military imagery, but I think all this talk about medical marijuana has sort of softened up the beach for our boy Kenneth Starr. First thing on my interstate shipping wish list would be the wines of Doug McCrea -- www.mccreacellars.com -- from Washington state. He makes tremendous Rhone-style wines in tiny quantities that will never be available in our hometowns.