When Waitrose interviewed me for their Food and Drink Christmas catalogue in 2016, I told them about the year the two of us drank almost nothing but old German Riesling. The best part was the hunt beforehand, going from shop to shop around town looking for older vintages tucked away at the back.
That kind of drinking is easy when there are only two of you. A big gathering, with varying degrees of tolerance for wine geekery, calls for something everyone will enjoy without a lecture, yet with enough sense of occasion to feel like Christmas.
There are two ways to approach Christmas wine. You can stick to the tried and traditional, or you can do your own riff on the standard hymn sheet. My favourite Christmases are the ones where we tear up the hymn sheet altogether, as the Riesling year shows, but I’m also painfully aware of my tendency to go a bit over the top. So when Waitrose Magazine asked me to choose two Christmas wines from their list, I picked a classic Oregon Pinot Noir and a sweet Italian sparkling wine, both easy for a mixed table to enjoy.
The 2013 Domaine Drouhin Oregon Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley should suit nearly everyone around the table. The Drouhins are a Burgundian family, and Robert Drouhin first saw Oregon’s potential on a visit in the early 1960s. The family went on to found their Oregon estate in 1987 and became one of the pioneers of the style there. The wine has good structure and a good depth of red fruit without being demanding. It’s Burgundian in style, though without Burgundy’s high highs or its low lows, in taste or in price, and for a big group that steadiness is a good thing.
The other wine isn’t a traditional Christmas choice, though I think it ought to be. The 2015 G.D. Vajra Moscato d’Asti is a gently frizzante sweet wine with just 5.5% alcohol, and it smells of rose petals and stone fruit with an icing-sugar lightness. It’s less heady than Champagne, and the sweetness makes it feel like a treat. In its home in Piedmont it’s traditionally served with fresh fruit, but it would also go well with Christmas biscuits, gingerbread or, to keep things Italian, a slice of panettone.
As for what we would drink that year, I hadn’t decided at the time of writing. Half the fun is in the choosing, and if past form was anything to go by, there was a fair chance I’d end up walking around town again, peering at the back shelves for an old Riesling.
The wines (at the time of writing)
2013 Domaine Drouhin Oregon Pinot Noir
Variety: Pinot Noir
Region: Willamette Valley, Oregon
2015 G.D. Vajra Moscato d’Asti
Variety: Moscato
Region: Piedmont, Italy
Archive note: first published in November 2016.
Image: Koloman Moser
Leave a comment