Around the holiday months we are inundated with a fine-tuned onslaught of wine-suggestions for seemingly difficult meals, difficult dishes, difficult pairings and difficult relatives. The vast majority of these directives include grandiose reasoning toward selecting acidic white wines, rosé, Gamay, light Pinot Noir or whatever variety is trendy that month because these wines allegedly *go* with holiday dinners. These articles range from well-meaning somm-inspired nearly-mathematical diatribes to full-on advertisorial spreads populated with whatever bottles are buying the most space.

The wines in these articles are NOT the wines I serve with holiday meals. Never have and never will. And despite the near-solidarity of the above-mentioned writers’ choices, I often hear people expressing discomfort with serving the recommended *versatile* or *light* wines at these grandiose events. What do I serve at Thanksgiving and Christmas? Big nasty disgusting ripe beautiful Cabernets, Merlots, Pinots and Syrahs! Oft-times they are quite old! These are…