The wine you invite to dinner

I’VE long had the feeling that Mother’s Day was invented by Hallmark, Valentine’s Day by See’s or FTD and Christmas by Toys R Us. But Thanksgiving -- praise the Lord and pass the yams -- has always seemed blissfully free of oppressive materialism, commercialized sentimentality and obligatory religiosity.

Thanksgiving is about things that really matter. Family. Friends. A genuine appreciation of life’s blessings. Besides, the main focus of Thanksgiving Day is the dinner table -- and not a fancy restaurant table nor even fancy food, just a table at home, filled with roast turkey, gravy, stuffing, pumpkin pie....

Even the wines for Thanksgiving tend to be simple. Oh sure, you can break out your special-occasion wines if you want, but unless you have a big cellar and an even bigger bank account, you probably don’t have enough bottles of the really good stuff to serve everyone. I sure don’t. (And you don’t want to do what former President Nixon -- a turkey if there ever was one -- used to do at White House dinner parties: Drink Chateau Lafite-Rothschild himself and pour lesser grape juice for his guests.)

There are so many different flavors competing at the Thanksgiving table that it’s one meal for which almost any wine works -- the one meal at which you should definitely follow what I think is usually the best wine advice anyway: Drink what you like.

The search starts early

Because Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, many people choose to accompany their turkey with a uniquely American wine -- Zinfandel. Others opt for Cabernet or Pinot Noir. Some drink Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc. My less chauvinistic wine-loving friends have tried everything from the reds of Burgundy, Bordeaux and Piemonte (“Barolo goes with everything,” one friend insists) to the whites of Alsace and Australia.

Whatever wine I choose in a given year, I choose early. Indeed, my Thanksgiving dinner planning actually starts with the wine discussion and selection. At least it has for the last 16 years, ever since I began celebrating Thanksgiving at my wife Lucy’s family home in the rolling Berkshire Hills of southwestern Massachusetts.

Aunts and uncles and cousins come in from New York, Connecticut, Maine, Florida, Illinois and Wisconsin -- sometimes from as far away as Italy and Greece -- and we turn Thanksgiving weekend into a four-day orgy of eating, drinking, football, bowling, eating, drinking, snowball fights, movies, eating, drinking, charades, chess, eating, drinking, trips to the baseball or basketball Hall of Fame, eating, drinking....

I have two duties on Thanksgiving weekend -- carving the turkeys (one of which, I’m told, will be deep-fried this year) and choosing, buying and serving the wine for all that eating and drinking -- lunches at our house every day, dinners at our house Wednesday and Friday, Thanksgiving dinner at Lucy’s cousin’s house nearby and the grand finale, the big, multigenerational charades party at our house on Saturday night. For Thanksgiving dinner, we have about 20 adults (and eight or 10 children).

Over the years, I’ve become friendly with Jack Cowles, who runs Nejaime’s Stockbridge Wine Cellar, an excellent shop about five minutes from our Berkshires house, and every year -- in early to mid-October -- I give Jack a call and we chat at length about that year’s wine options.

Lucy’s late mother used to like Beaujolais, so for a while, even after her death several years ago, I’d sample a few cru Beaujolais here and discuss their relative merits with Jack, and then order the one I liked best. I did that in part to honor her memory (ritual and tradition are as much a part of Thanksgiving as turkey is) and in part because the light, fruity taste of Beaujolais seemed to please everyone.

The last couple of years, I went Italian -- once with Chianti, then last year with a Falesco Vitiano from Umbria. But when I called Jack this year, he immediately suggested several Spanish wines. I bought three of them, and we did a blind tasting at home, trying those wines alongside the newest vintage of Falesco Vitiano, a cru Beaujolais (Chiroubles) and a California Zinfandel.

There was, to our surprise, no clear winner.

Serendipity strikes

Then, the next night, we went out to dinner with friends, and I mentioned our tasting to the sommelier. I told him I’d been unable to find one of the Spanish wines that another friend had recommended -- something called Tres Picos. He laughed. “We pour that here by the glass,” he said, and he hustled off to bring us a taste.

It was excellent.

The next day I called Jack and ordered a case and a half, at $10.99 a bottle. (I’ve since seen the wine at a discount shop here for $8.99, but I’m accustomed to paying a little more at Jack’s; his store is neither large nor discount nor in or near a big city, and I figure I’m also paying extra for personal service.)

The wine will be waiting in Jack’s store when I walk in next Wednesday morning. If we don’t finish the Tres Picos with Thanksgiving dinner, what’s left will give me a head start on provisioning for Saturday night’s charades game, the guest list for which -- in recent years -- has swollen past 50. It’s become one of the highlights of the fall in the Berkshires. No wonder. The participants are bright and uninhibited -- academics, artists, writers and their offspring -- and the competition can be challenging and amusing, especially after a few glasses of wine.

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a 60-year-old woman squatting on the living room floor, acting out “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin” -- or an 8-year-old boy squirming on the floor until a 75-year-old former United Nations diplomat shouts out, correctly, “Free Willy.” Over the years, I’ve seen our guests act out clues as diverse as a Latin phrase (“Deus ex machina”) and a 1950s pop tune (“Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?”), and I’ve been stuck with doing Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president; “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” the Picasso painting; and Limp Bizkit, the rock group.

Lucy makes dinner on charades night for all 60-plus guests, so I always need more wine -- and some hard liquor. Lucy’s mother was famous for her generosity at table, as elsewhere, and Lucy and I share that spirit of abbondanza -- so there’s always more than enough of everything, which means I get to bring the leftover wine back to Los Angeles.

Having only relatively recently discovered the pleasures of Spanish wines, I’m especially look forward to that fringe benefit this year. I love turkey, and I’m sometimes able to persuade Lucy to make another one the week after we get home. I expect to have at least a couple of bottles of Tres Picos to go with it this year.

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David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com.