We sit mere days away from Thanksgiving. It ranks as our favorite holiday. Well, probably. We say probably because in the summer, we herald the Fourth of July as our favorite but in the winter, we declare it to be Thanksgiving. Whatever. Each is a great American celebration. You’d be unpatriotic if you made us choose between the two.
On Thanksgiving, we act as consummate freeloaders. We attend three separate, full-fledged family celebrations. Each has turkey and green bean casserole and stuffing and mashed potatoes and pie. On our family’s Italian side, they even have meatballs and pasta.
We feast. We show up—having neither prepared a thing nor helped a bit—and we gorge ourselves. Then, we collapse onto the couch and alternate between watching football and napping until the time comes to move to the next house for the next meal. What a glorious holiday it is.
So many people put so much effort into the meal. You might expect them to resent our laziness. They’d be justified to see us as parasites. But they don’t. First, as family, they are obligated to love us. Second, more importantly, we bring wine—lots of wine.
Everyone knows that you can’t have Thanksgiving without turkey. Sorry, not sorry, vegans. In our family, you can’t truly celebrate Thanksgiving without wine. It eases stress. It stimulates conversation. It inspires revelry.
On Saturday, we attended our first-ever Friendsgiving. Our buddy fried a turkey. His wife made a delicious spread of appetizers and fixings. She even whipped her own cream topping for the pumpkin pie. We brought a couple bottles of wine, including a 2012 Tintara McLaren Vale Shiraz.
Dark purple, almost black, in color, the shiraz tastes of plums and berries. It drinks effortlessly. At under $20, it offers two of our favorite attributes: quality and value.
That night, we ate and ate. By some miracle, there were leftovers. No leftover wine, however, remained.
