OK wine lovers, listen up. Thanksgiving approaches, and in this country that means for the past few weeks every wine columnist in the world has been talking about what wines go with the big dinner. Well you’re not going to get that from me, for reasons previously stated.

But I do want to talk about the whole affair of serving wine with the Thanksgiving feast. More specifically, I want to talk about the usually treacherous emotional landscape of choosing which wines to serve to your guests.

I woke up this morning to find that my friend Lettie Teague had kindly covered one half of the conundrum of wine for the holidays: figuring out what wine to bring to someone else’s house for dinner.

But I want to talk about the other side of the equation: choosing which wines you want to open and serve to the family and friends that may be eating at your house. And I’m not talking about what grape varieties you think will go with Aunt Maud’s special orange and cucumber aspic.

I’m talking about figuring out whether your guests are worth opening some of your really good shit.

Yes, you know what I’m talking about. That inner monologue you have with yourself, or perhaps that conspiring monologue you have with your partner that goes something like, “Well I could open that bottle, but no one is really going to appreciate it. Uncle Bob is just going to pour himself an entire pint of it and gulp it down with his salad.”

In short, the holidays always bring up the wine lover’s fear of casting pearls before swine. We cherish the wines we have collected, especially those that we think are really good. And the last thing we want is for them to not be appreciated.

Actually the last thing we want is to open them for our guests and have them drunk so quickly by a lot of people who don’t appreciate them that we don’t even get a chance to taste them ourselves.

Well, I’m taking a stand to say that we need to just get over it. We gotta open the damn bottles and pour fabulous wine down the gullets of the people we care for even if they can’t tell the difference between our 1999 F. Cotat Monts Damnés Sancerre and a $5 bottle of YellowTail.

Why? Because it’s Thanksgiving, because we love our families and friends (yes, even annoying Uncle Bob), because good wine is meant to be shared, and because we need to break the obsessive compulsive cycle of waiting to open those good bottles on the “right occasion.”

Now I’m not saying that if you’ve got one, or even three truly treasured bottles that Thanksgiving is the time to break out your ultimate, best wines. Frankly, it’s definitely not. Don’t bust open the best of the best unless you and your guests will really get to savor them in the way that great wines (or greatly valued wines — only you get to judge) should be.

But I am suggesting that we need to check our tendency to avoid opening good wine in the face of the hustle, bustle, and smorgasbord of the Thanksgiving feast. If you can afford it, and I mean that in every possible way, financial and otherwise, it can be a great joy to watch people you love consume really good wine, even unknowingly. I have wonderful memories of watching the faces of some folks (whose wine preferences can usually be described using a single color) light up as they taste a really nice wine while others at the end of the table pour Sprite into theirs.

Yes, it’s a matter of faith, and you have to take the bad with the good. There will be some people who definitely won’t appreciate your wine. But if there are just a few that stop in their tracks and want to know “What they hell that was that they just drank because it was really fuckin’ good, then you’re making the world a better place.

And yes, even if you have to sit in the corner and watch everyone drink a great bottle out of their paper cups while forking green beans and stuffing and gravy and cranberry relish into their mouths in a single bite, it’s worth it to know that they’re drinking good stuff instead of swill, and that it’s your fault.

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Visitors to Napa Valley, even those on their first trip, have a hard time missing the Grgich Hills winery, which sits prominently on the west side of Highway 29, its flower beds almost pushed right up against the edge of the blacktop.

Of course, when the winery was established in the late 1970s there was a lot less traffic on that same highway, and founder Miljenko “Mike” Grgich was a young man. But despite his youth, this Croatian-born immigrant did not lack for experience or acclaim. Indeed, it was partly based on his success as the winemaker for the 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay which performed so well at the famous 1976 Paris Tasting that Grgich and his sister chose to begin what has become one of Napa’s most frequented wineries.

Grgich Hills attracts a lot of visitors by virtue of its location on the beaten path, so to speak, but even if it were tucked away in some cranny of the valley, there would likely be a steady stream of traffic to its doors simply for its reputation as a consistent producer of well-priced wines of good to excellent quality.

Increasingly the winery draws traffic for another reason: its recent move to 100% estate grown, biodynamic fruit, processed in a facility run 100% on solar power. Grgich, who is now in his 80’s but still makes every wine and oversees operations at the winery, along with his nephew Ivo Jeramaz, who most actively manages the vineyards, were some of Napa’s earliest converts to Biodynamics, the increasingly popular farming regimen which is based on the teachings of Rudolph Steiner. Though the initial move to Biodynamics was simply a decision based on the assessment that it produced higher quality fruit, Grgich Hills has embraced its emphasis on sustainability, a move which pays dividends of many kinds, including the ability to market themselves as such, to the pleasure of a growing population eco-conscious consumers.

Like many proponents of Biodynamics, Jeramaz and Grgich maintain with incontestable conviction that they are making better wine as a result, and that’s pretty hard to argue with, no matter what misgivings I have about some aspects of the regimen. These guys, along with other prominent Biodynamic winemakers, certainly know “better” wine when they see it.

Now in its 30th year, Grgich Hills makes a well known and widely regarded Chardonnay, a Merlot,, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, this Sauvignon Blanc, and in some vintages, a dessert wine that blends Chardonnay and Riesling. Total production currently sits at slightly less than 70,000 cases, of which this wine, which is called Fumé Blanc in the tradition established by Robert Mondavi, makes up about 12,000 cases.

In an interesting side note, in recent years Grgich has also started a winery back in Croatia, which forms a base for his prominent role in helping to promote the quality and long tradition of the region’s winemaking.

Despite being produced in substantial quantities, this wine is made in very old-school fashion, and quite differently than most Sauvignon Blancs in Napa. The fruit comes from the estate’s cool-climate, Biodynamically-farmed vineyards in Carneros and American Canyon. After sorting and destemming, the fruit is fermented in a combination of neutral French oak barrels, and huge 900 liter French oak tanks. After fermentation it is transferred to neutral oak barrels where it ages for about 8 months before bottling.

The results of both excellent fruit sources as well as fermentation and aging in neutral oak make this wine a wonderful balance between the crisp qualities that make Sauvignon Blanc so wonderful, along with some deeper substance that makes the wine command some attention. I’ve had many, many vintages of this wine, and I believe this to be the best I’ve tasted.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Light gold in the glass with hints of chartreuse, this wine smells of tart unripe apples and citrus zest. In the mouth it is explosively zingy, with crackling acidity and bright pink grapefruit, lemon zest, and unripe apple flavors that linger in a nice finish. Dynamic and refreshing. One of the better examples of the form from Napa.

Food Pairing:
A great food wine! I’d love to drink this wine with steamed mussels in a garlic, bacon, shallot and white wine broth.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $25

This wine would ordinarily have been released by now, but with the economy as it is, it hasn’t hit the shelves yet. The winery is no doubt waiting to let some of the remaining 2007s sell. Keep an eye out for it.

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One Berry
The first time I tasted a Cabernet grape I was surprised at how unlike Cabernet wine it tasted. Some of the flavor lies in that bright leathery surface that Andy captures here so well in vivid blue. Grape skins hold many different volatile aroma compounds (some of which are also found in the juicy flesh of the berry) that contribute to the flavors of the wine. Just biting into a ripe berry isn’t quite the same as tasting that same berry in a bottle three years later. They still taste pretty damn good, though. — Alder Yarrow

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