Serve Up the Bubblies and Magnums

Wine complements any holiday meal, potentially elevating the excellent to the spectacular. The right food-and-wine pairing depends upon context, often affected as much by climate as cuisine. Wines that would complement a Thanksgiving dinner may not work quite as well at an Easter brunch, and would likely be out of place at a July Fourth picnic. In short, the right wines for an occasion can vary as widely as the appropriate attire.

Given the caveat that no set of recommendations will always be appropriate for every festive occasion, there are two guidelines that have served me well, from baptisms to bacchanalias—big bottles and bubblies.

All That Sparkles

Bubblies (or "sparkling wines," as they are also called) are a delightful way to begin any gathering. As festive as champagne is, rosé champagne is just a bit more so. It is sometimes pink because champagne can be made from both white grapes and red. Its color and clarity when made from red grapes is achieved by pressing the clear juice away from the skins and pulp before their pigments color the juice. "Blanc de noirs" champagne literally means "white of black"—a reference to the ability to make white wine from red grapes. In theory, all red grapes can produce white and rosé wines in this manner, with blush cabernet or merlot rosé no more difficult an achievement than white zinfandel.

Rosé champagne is made in two ways: leaving the juice on the skins for just long enough to pick up a lovely salmon color or through the addition of small amounts of still red wine. In either case, the same factors that have extracted color have also extracted some of the flavors from the red skins and pulp, yielding champagne that is fruitier, colorful and, well, more fun.

An alternative that puts a seasonal twist on sparkling aperitifs involves the Italian sparkling wine Prosecco. The finest examples of this wine hail from the hills of Valdobbiadene near Venice. Prosecco di Valdobbiadene is the base for seasonal Venetian apéritifs—bellinis, tizianos, rossinis and tintorettos.

Along with beef carpaccio, the creation of the bellini and the tiziano is credited to Arrigo Cipriani of Harry’s Bar in Venice. In each case, seasonal fruit juice is combined with Prosecco—the juice of white peaches in a bellini during the summer, and fresh red grape juice in a tiziano in the fall. Over the years, bartenders have recognized the equation that fresh fruit juice + Prosecco + Venetian artist = cocktail and created the rossini (strawberry juice—perfect for springtime) and the tintoretto (pomegranate juice—seems wintery to me).

While having a large family is a blessing 363 days of the year, it can be a challenging endeavor on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Seating arrangements typically involve proposals such as placing our furniture in storage or floating the kids’ table in the pool. At least once a year, I wonder if I could have bought an Escher house and placed tables on the walls.

An additional problem created by family gatherings—indeed any large dinner party—is that of the "special bottle." At some point, to commemorate the occasion, the special bottle or its decanter is brought to the table, along with the requisite pomp and circumstance. Usually it is a rare or expensive bottle that has been saved for precisely this type of event. As it wends its way around the table, someone takes a flagrant fill of "the good stuff" and, as a result, the bottle arrives empty before completing a single circuit. If it arrives empty at the seat of the person who brought the special bottle, especially if that person has patiently cellared the wine for years, it is more than a bit awkward.

While it is tempting to call out the offending party, a more delicate approach is to spring for a big bottle. Magnums, at 1.5 liters, are double the size of a normal wine bottle and double magnums (from the Latin, meaning "party in a bottle") equate to four. Not only do they ensure that the bottle returns to the host with plenty of wine left in it, the presentation of a big bottle at mealtime creates a most memorable impression.

Both magnums and double magnums are available in Florida, but are not often found on store shelves. However, just about any fine wine retailer can special order oversize bottles. Often, a fine wine such as Paul Hobbs cabernet may be sold out in the standard 750-milliliter format, but is still available from its distributor in magnums.

Another option for big bottles is the Internet and, in Southwest Florida, the best bet is B-21 (www.b-21.com). Located in Tarpon Springs, B-21 ships to much of the state. Shipping is free, other than a nominal packing charge, for purchases more than $150. A recent online search showed 17 different double magnums (including several wines from Angelo Gaja) and more than 70 different wines in magnums, ranging from $18.99 for the 2003 Guigal Côtes-du-Rhône to $799 for a 1990 Gaja single vineyard Barbaresco from the Sori San Lorenzo vineyard. At around $100 per magnum were several attractive choices that should drink well currently, including the 1998 Léoville-Poyferré from St. Julien (if you’re cooking French) and the 1997 Fèlsina Chianti Classico Riserva Rància (if you’re cooking Italian).

One particularly interesting magnum in that price range is the 2003 Numanthia. This Spanish wine from the up-and-coming region of Toro is fashioned from a low-yielding Tempranillo clone. Numanthia also makes an ultra-reserve wine named Termanthia, which retails for about $200. In the remarkably ripe 2003 vintage, both Numanthia and Termanthia received identical 96-point reviews from Robert Parker. As the Termanthia takes several years before it begins to open up—and costs four times as much as the Numanthia—I can’t think of a better reason to brush up on tapas recipes than a couple of magnums of Numanthia.