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© St. Petersburg Times, published November 24, 2002
You can have your cornucopia. Give me a bunch of grapes, nature's symbol of an abundant harvest.
Does anything say plenty better than a bulging cluster of grapes with its shapely shoulders and a hundred little globes, each sphere of sweet flesh and juice threatening to burst its skin?
Not to mention that grapes give this abundance freely. They still seem relatively wild, vines that grew and fruited on their own year after year not so long ago that the French call some of them them savage, or sauvignon.
In a world of year-round tomatoes and hydroponic lettuce, grapes remain something of a once-a-year crop. That has always made the annual harvest something to celebrate -- and worth putting in a bottle.
Grapes have been eaten happily right off the plant, but since ancient times, humanity has kept the crop useful and enjoyable, preserved, canned, dried into raisins, even frozen, pressed into grapeseed oil, vinegar and, of course, wine.
Besides grapes, most wines preserve the harvest itself. Port, sherry, Champagne and some jug wines blend young and old wines, but most bottles preserve grapes that flowered and bore fruit in the spring of a certain year, ripened that summer, were picked in September and October, crushed and fermented.
Some young wines get bottled that fall: fresh Italian whites, Beaujolais nouveau and a few other light reds. Most will wait in tanks and barrels until the next spring or beyond until they are placed in a bottle with the date, and memory, of the year of their harvest.
Thanksgiving dinner is not the time to fret or brag about specific vintages. Food and fellowship come first at the holiday table, so any bottle of a wine that suits your pocketbook and family palate will do. Wine will still be a strong connection to the farming process.
A wine is a product of a particular plant, a place and a season. The merlot vines and the village of St. Emilion will stay the same from year to year; the weather will not. In any vineyard in a given year, the weather may not be warm enough for the grapes to ripen fully, and the rains may come too early, too late or too long.
Shoppers don't make a big deal out of annual variations in other crops, but they do occur, and farmers and brokers know them well. Early cold snaps can sweeten citrus, and a cloudy season means less sugars in strawberries. Usually we notice only quantity, when hail wipes out cherries or lettuce hits $3; changes in quality are averaged out over long growing seasons.
Still, "any one of us who's been eating fruit all our lives knows sometimes they're not so good and other times, wow, that's something special," says Craig Chandler, Ph.D., who has studied strawberries at the state experimental farm in Dover for 16 years.
With wine, however, that knowledge of each year in each place is carefully chronicled, often too much so.
In most years, wines, like the weather, vary widely. Take 2002, for instance. Rains hurt a southern wine belt from Bordeaux to northern Italy. But Sicily and Sardinia look good; so do Germany and Burgundy. California's 2002 harvest was almost too good, high quality and so much quantity that some will be left on the vines.
In rare years, a convergence of good weather can produce fine wines almost everywhere; 1995 made for good drinking in most of the world. Only Oregon and parts of Italy look bleak on the vintage charts.
But much of the wine world had had good luck in the past decade, with a lot of good years and some distinct wows. Many are good for holiday duty, if you must.
The 2000 Bordeaux, arriving in the market now, has been touted as the vintage of the decade, century and the millennium (but which?). Top-growth 2000s are for the cellar and their own holidays. Under-$20 Bordeauxs, especially those from the merlot-happy right bank, may be good with turkey right now.
Likewise, 1997 was one of California's great years. Most of the '97 cabernets are gone, but merlots and other reds are still available, as is the 1999 vintage, which is almost as good.
If your tastes are Italian, look for 1997. In Tuscany and the Piedmont, wines were exceptional. Barolos and high-end super Tuscans may be too much for Thanksgiving, but lighter reds are perfect.
For a spicier feast, say a bird with a Southwestern stuffing, the best Rhones came from 1998 in the south and '99 in the north.
Ultimately pinot noir may be the best red wine for turkey. For Burgundys at their best, look for 1999 and 1995. California's 1995 pinots are hard to find, but Oregon's 1999s may still be on the shelves.
In white wines, France's best is from 2000, whether you want a crisp riesling from Alsace or elegant chardonnay from Burgundy. For German whites, 1999 was the biggest star since 1990.
For California chardonnay, 1997 was as good as it was for the states' red wines. But that was the third great year in a row in a decade full of fine California chards.
Indeed, you don't need to worry about vintages in most of what we buy, not just the chardonnay. Sunny weather in California, Australia, southern France and Italy provide ample, enjoyable wines for $10 or less every year: spicy gewurztraminer, crisp pinot grigio, peppery zinfandels and shiraz, soft merlots and easy chardonnays, all good companions for turkey and dressing.
During this holiday season, you don't need to sweat a vintage. Just remember that there was one. And give thanks for the year of flowers and fruit, harvest and ferment, when people grew and picked those grapes and made that wine.
-- Chris Sherman, who writes about food and wine for the St. Petersburg Times, is the author of The Buzz on Wine (Lebhar-Friedman Books, $16.95).