Hey, Lexi, Thanksgiving's coming up. Oh, yeah. Do you have favorite family traditions or anything like that? Someone always fights about the mac and cheese. I also, you know, as you maybe understand, but as a vegetarian, it's kind of the best day ever once you get over people giving you a hard time about not eating the turkey. Then everything else is okay. It's so good. As long as they don't use chicken broth in the green bean salad. I usually send a text at the beginning of the month. Hey, just reminding. One of my favorite things, of course, is the libations that go along with the meal. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to bring in product experts and they're each going to pick a starter, a main course and a dessert, and they're going to give their recommendations. Exciting. Okay, cool. All right, cool. All right, first up, beer, here we go. Who do we have on today? None other than? Hey, I'm Roger. I can give beer for Binny's. That's a relief. I turned out some other rando. I know, it's funny, because who else would it be? That's the best part. Well, okay, Chris is here too. Yeah, hey, I'm here. Are you both on beer though? Yeah, Chris is on beer. I'm a rando. I insisted on two, and Chris has actually an extensive beer, but just don't tell his other bosses that he's doing this. By an extensive beer, it's just a really large boot. He's drinking and drinking. All right. Thanksgiving, Roger. Roger's got the picks prepped, so what do we got? To start things off, I figured that everyone's traditions for Thanksgiving are a little different, especially when it comes to the appetizer, first course type things. I tried to pick a beer that I think is one of those fail-safe pairs with a wide variety of things. I'm going with a classic. This is from Brasserie Unibrew up in Canada. This is Le Fin du Monde. How many years have we been doing this podcast? Because I think that's how many times Roger has recommended Le Fin du Monde. It's a good beer. I think this is a great pick for appetizers because think about its lift, its elegance, its fine bubble. Well, don't take your word for it. Give me the sample. I'm just saying that you might want to start your Thanksgiving day with champagne, if you're a wine drinker. I think this beer fills that slot beautifully. He just called Fin du Monde the champagne of beers. I was going to say that. I mean, the Belgian brewing tradition is, I feel every bit is complex as some of the finest wines out there. The beer world always gets second fiddle to wine, and Belgian beers with their finesses, as Chris said, and the effervescence of this, the palate cleansing ability, so a lot of appetizers, if you're serving a charcuterie tray, a lot of the stuff on that is rich and fatty, be it rich cheeses like a triple cream brie or sausages like Soprasat or General Islami, you got a lot of fat. You're going to need to refresh the palate after you have that stuff. Between the spices in this, it's spiced with coriander for sure. That's the only one I know, but the ester-y Belgian yeast is kind of spicy as well. This is going to work with all sorts of different stuff. Joking aside, you always recommend Cezanne DuPont too. It's available in cans now. Would you say this is right in that same streak? Yeah. So I think in the past, I've probably recommended a Belgian triple several times, but in recent past, I know I've said things like Allagash Triple or Triple Caramelite. I don't know if I've done Lefin Dumond in a while, maybe in a previous beer buzz or something. But yeah, the complexity of these, the lift, the strength, I mean, this is a 9% alcohol beer. So. Whoa. Yeah, but can you tell? No, not at all. Delightfully elegant. It's beautifully aromatic. I don't know if I've had this in a can before, honestly, and it is smelling and drinking beautifully. I agree. I think this is one of those beers that you see on the shelf seven million times and you just keep walking past it, because no one said you try it before. Yeah. And then you try it once and you're like, wait, where has this been for this long? Or you haven't had it for a couple of years and you forget that it's kind of magical. Yeah, it's super good. I was at Hopleaf the other day and I drink about 10 Cesson du Ponce on tap, which was great. Wow. Did you have the muscles? I didn't, strangely enough. Oh. Although that would have been completely... You passed on that aioli. Aioli is a stepping dream. I was with a bunch of people and I was kind of going with the flow. Gotcha. You bring up a good point in Cesson du Ponte. I have mentioned that in the past. That's kind of Garrett Oliver is the king of food and beer pairing. We had him on the podcast at one point. You should go back and listen to that in our catalog. He called Cesson du Ponte the Swiss Army knife of food pairing, so it can literally fix any kind of issue if you're nervous at all or will this pair well. Cezanne's do and I would argue triples are right next, like you put, very adjacent style. I agree and their biggest problem over the years was being light struck. Cezanne du Ponte in particular often had a light struck problem, but now that it's in a can, I mean, let's celebrate. This one, Le Fendimande, your comparison to champagne really isn't that far off. Other than not having the vibrant acidity of that, it's light, it's fresh, it's bubbly, but it's also complex and spicy and bready too, with lemon and other citrus. And I can see this going with your cheese tray and your vegetable dish and just on its own. Oh, and with salty stuff like nuts. I think you've got it all covered. I mean, this would pair with almost anything, which is the amazing thing about it. Who doesn't like this? Cool. I'm glad you brought up vegetables. I kind of forget about that with the meat heavy thing. But yeah, like this. But crudite, like just raw vegetables with this, with the coriander, it'd be fantastic. It's called crudite. My grandpa called it rabbit food. Yeah, same. I mean crudites. I feel like I want crudite or vegetables with spinach dip and this beer. Oh yeah. Yeah. Sounds good. Roger, where's the food? I know. You failed us. It's been a busy week. Lefin Duman is available to Binny's Interu. The last thing I'll leave you with is that it is kind of sad. We've seen the Unibrew portfolio shrink over time. So I really hope that Lefin Duman hangs on, but it is unfortunately the only Unibrew that's being shipped right now from Canada. Oh, no. You're worried about Lefin Duman? Yes, I am. Oh, Lord. If you have yet to try this, it is truly one of the greatest beers in the world. I don't usually use those kind of quantifiers, but it very much is. It also is an absolute steal. We sell four packs of bottles and four packs of 16-ounce cans for $11.99. Whoa. Don't let this go away, please, people. He said it was save our beer. It's 9 percent. You can get a nap in before the main course. Speaking of. All right. Moving on to the main course. Most of the time, that's probably going to be some turkey, whether it's cooked inside or maybe smoked outside in the grill or dropped into your deep fryer. All these stunt turkeys. Please make sure your turkey is thawed if you are deep-frying it. I was going to say you need a stunt cooker if you're going to deep fry a turkey frozen. Get in there, Jim. You can handle this one. Sadly, a bunch of houses burned down every Thanksgiving, so this is our public service announcement to be very careful if you're deep-frying a turkey. The outside, far from any buildings, and yes. Okay, turkey in its many forms. This is a limited edition beer that I brought in for the Beer Buzz this year. Alaskan, I've kind of gushed about how much I love this brewery. I think it's pretty amazing what they're able to accomplish. They have to bring in all their supplies all the way to Canada by, or all the way to past Canada to Alaska by boat. They've been environmentally conscious both because they believe in it, but out of necessity. It's kind of a modern miracle that they can keep their beers as affordable as they do, and that's because of all the different efforts that they've done over the years on making things as efficient as possible, reusing waste stream of energy and Do they capture carbon dioxide too? Yeah, I believe so. That's awesome. Alaskan does these kind of, they call it the pilot series. They're their specialty one-offs, and this one this year is called Sentinel Strong Ale. It is essentially a Belgian, an homage to Belgian style quad. Again, huge believer in that if you're thinking about food and beer pairing, they've been doing that in Belgium for centuries. Other beers are so beautifully tailor-made to pair well with food. I think this beer would be beautiful, regardless of what your main course is, if it's something that's besides turkey. This has a huge wide pairing potential. It pours pretty luscious, deep amber in color with some beautiful tawny foam here. This is made with some really fancy malts from a fifth-generation Belgian maltster in Saarbruck, Belgium. It's made with special bee and aromatic malts. It's also made with a thousand pounds, I believe, some kind of astronomical amount of Belgian candy syrup. Belgian candy syrup is kind of the key lesser-known ingredient in Belgian-style quads. They're adding it not for sweetness, but for kind of complexity, color. It ferments out easily, which adds a boost in alcohol, but not in body. Sure smells like banana bread. I was going to say, it's wonderfully estuary in the banana realm, and the malts are fantastic. It's spicy too. This is really good. I've never tried this. Well, because it's a one-off that just came out a week ago. Well, I'm on top of stuff. I don't eat turkeys and things, but I could see how this would pair very nicely with that. I'm thinking just the Maillard on the crispy skin of a turkey and this. I think I could probably sit in a corner alone with that. How about all the herbaceous qualities in the stuffing? Yeah. Yum. Yeah. There's a fruitiness to this that reminds me of figs and dates and stuff that I think will go really well with the dressing. Some people put like cranberries in their stuffing too or raisins and stuff. Yeah. Nuttiness to it also would be synergistic if you put like chestnuts or any kind of nuts in there. I can even even see this working well with cornbread stuffing. Yeah. You know, that sweet corny flavor. As one of my most hated Thanksgiving dishes is the orange potatoes with the marshmallows on top. Really? Yeah. I don't like it at all. And this you could have instead of that. Yeah. Or this. Instead of. I'm glad you brought that up because yeah, this would definitely pair well with the sweet potatoes because it has kind of that brown sugar muscovado kind of dark sugar character to it. Agreed. You know, I want to hear a deep dark secret. I don't think I've ever had sweet potatoes with marshmallow on top. You've never had that? I don't think so. It ruins the sweet potatoes. My family makes just a carmelized sweet potato. Yeah, me too. That's what we do. Which is delicious. I always would prefer that texture where it's like you still have the potatoes retain their shape, but then you can they're like fork tender. Yeah, of course. And that syrupy sauce that's going to be marshmallows. This is exactly right, Roger. Okay. Anyway, deliciously fruity. What's the alcohol? It's obviously high. Got to be high. Holy cow. But it's obviously high, but it's still light and airy at the same time. Right. It's that brewer's sugar that allows that to happen. Big fan. But yeah, this would work really well with, I know some people do a ham with turkey, or sometimes they do a ham before. The honeycomb is. And again, for all the same reasons we just said, all that dark caramely brown sugar note. Yeah. This would pair great with ham too, if that's part of your Thanksgiving. Not to hand you too obvious of a segue. Or Christmas. This would go with pecan pie. Yeah, it would. It totally would. Or pumpkin. Or pumpkin. Yeah. Did you guys read his sheet? No, we just all kind of breathe the same booze stuff all the time. Easy. You look it over the shoulder and stuff. Yeah. I'm like, what the heck is going on? He's reading off the sheet. No. It's just, man. Well, no, it would pair beautifully, but I specifically picked a beer for pecan pie and pumpkin pie, which is a limited release that we usually see some years. I think they've taken a break from it, but I've lauded Central Waters countless times on the podcast and in the beer buzz. They're truly one of the greatest breweries. I would go so far not to just say the Midwest, but in the country, if not the world, their barrel age program is phenomenal and they offer incredible beers at an amazing price point. That last beer, by the way, the Allagash Sentinel Ale, make sure you stop in and grab some now. It is available in four packs for $14.99. It is vintage dated, like the finest French champagne. They by accident wrote Best Buy on there and then just the year 2025. That is obviously a mistake. No, drink it now. They meant to just stamp 2025 and just say like this will last for a really long time. Smoke Porter, which is also in the series, that's vintage dated. I've had 10-year-old, 15-year-old batches that still are incredible. Especially in those salmon years, right, Rod? The most coveted of the, yeah. Lexi has no idea what we're talking about. I hope our audience does because I don't want to spread more misinformation about that. But for your vegetarians, if you want to incorporate a beautiful layer of smoke to a dish if you're cooking, but also to serve alongside something, Alaskan Smoke Porter is not only the most award-winning smoke beer of all time, it is one of the best Quite incredible. I always recommend that if you're smoking a turkey, that's a great pairing. Alderwood in fine Northwest tradition. But this Central Waters Bourbon Barrel Age Scotch Ale is back. It is available for the first time in four-pack can. For the amazingly affordable price of $15.99, it clocks in at a whopping 12% alcohol. Roger doesn't want anyone sober on Thanksgiving apparently. He's really swinging for the fences with these. Is that the point though? Yes. Just avoid the dicey topics and you need a little bit of a holiday cheer. Roger, this beer is epic. Is this incredible? It's really good. It's interesting though that the nose to me gives me lots of savory umami characteristics. But it's sweeter on the palate. Man, it's malty. They figured out a way to make malty beer more malty, but also like higher tone spice and vegetal notes too. There's a lot going on in here. I think you nailed it. The depth of malt complexity is incredible. Sometimes I really geek out over when a beer avoids the mistakes. Scott Jail is so plagued by, I've had so many mediocre ones where there's really no historical precedent for that they should be smoky at all, other than at one point all beer was a little smoky. That's always what ruins it. But because of some scotches are smoky, a lot of brewers brew them with peat-smoked malt and they go overboard. That's gimmick. Or they just are under-fermented, so they're way too sweet. Some of them are sticky, cloyingly sweet, or they're just way too boozy. Sometimes, they have fusal alcohol. A proper wee heavy, though. Yeah. All these pitfalls. When somebody avoids all those and then delivers this, it's like sticky toffee pudding in a glass, just amazing depth of character, but without being cloyingly sweet, it's really good. I love it. That's excellent. That's all I have to say. It's good. I like it. You do like it? I think this would work with pecan, but especially with pumpkin. Yeah, I agree. I think it's just going to... That lift of the spice in the pumpkin pie will complement so well with the really, really deep, rich malt character. There's a ton of vanilla here from long rest and bourbon barrels. It's getting a lot of that vanilla, and it's got even a teeny bit of that coconut that you get sometimes from oak as well. It has a dusting of cocoa powder and the caramel quality through the mid palate, but then it finishes dry. Yeah. It just finishes dry and it's clean, but then it lingers in like a bread-y dessert bread kind of quality. There's a teeny bit of the alcohol spice too, but it's not burning. I think that's what I meant by vegetal. It's that little lift, the little twist at the finish. I think the weird thing about the finish, or not the weird thing, but the interesting thing is you would never drink this beer and think about hops first, but there's just enough hops to make that finish a little cleaner. There's just a bare hint of bittering hops that carries through, and it's all about balance. It has nothing to do with showcasing hop character. It's just the beer is dialed in. The hint to citrus that's here, I think, is from that. And when he points that out, I'm glad you said that. Like, this is like 40-some IBUs. So it's just that as he totally nailed it, like it's there for balancing purposes, but it's that, like, je ne sais quoi of the citrus that works so well with the Caramelly character. Yeah, way to go. Cool. Nice beer. All right, to wrap it up, Finn Dumond from Unibrew, Alaskan Sentinel Strong Ale, and Central Water's Scotch Ale Brewers Reserve. Great picks. Yeah. Watch out for Roger on Thanksgiving. He's gonna put you down. All right, cool. We gotta run. We gotta get to wine. We'll be right back. 18:40 Expert Wine Pairings And we're back. We have the wine people. Oh, Chris is still here. Oh, yeah. I didn't go anywhere. Seems like a few minutes have passed, but two hours. Yeah, exactly. Here's what I love about this. This continuity. That may not even have happened already in real life. Maybe we didn't know that one yet. I don't even know. It's all happening right now. That's all I know. Okay, Chris is here, and Lexi. And we have wine manager, Gabe, coming back on the show. Thanks. Glad to be back. All right. We tasked you with... Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. So we asked you to come up with some pairings for the meal. Yeah. And I'm stoked to see what wines we have on deck here. As someone who is often working on Thanksgiving and late to the party, this is my contribution on any given day or any given holiday. We appreciate your service. I'm happy to be here. All right. First course, we're having cheese and charcuterie. Cheese, charcuterie, family, friends. This is such an accessible wine for freaking everybody. Do you want to pop? Yeah, but not all over the table. Well done. Nice. I didn't make it whisper. All right. Chris is pouring this sparkling wine. It's pink. What do we have? This is Kiriani's sparkling wine. This is the Akakis sparkling rose. This is Inomavro. I didn't know any of those words. That was all Greek to me. It's all Greek to me. Yay. We love a little Greek wine. That's exciting. I'm pouring it all over the table. You did say a bunch of words, but can you say what the varietals are? Are they just Greek, mavro? Inomavro is the grape that we're referring to. It generally produces high tannin, high acid reds. It almost mimics nebiolo, but if nebiolo had more plum happening. Because of that natural acidity, actually it does really well for sparkling wine in this Charmant method. Yeah, indeed. This is, I believe, Charmant method. The name translates to sour black, I believe. So yeah, it's known for high acid, which you definitely want in a sparkling wine. But this has some considerable dosage, right? Yeah, it's like 18.6. So we would live closer to the Demisec, I think, than it would like extra drive. Yeah, but that's not off-putting at all. It's really balanced by zippy, zippy acidity. And the red fruit is exactly how I want red fruit on a sparkling rose, A to B. It should be fun and accessible and playful and ripe, but not too in your face. Yeah, but what I like about this pick, Gabe, is that you could drink this on its own. It does have nice acidic cut, but there's enough of that sugar to plump up the fruit. So it's tasty on its own, but all that acidity is going to be great with fresher cheeses and cut through fatty things. So this is really good and it's fun. Yeah, very different. Shermot method, so not traditional method sparkler. This is done in tank rather than being re-fermented in the bottle. Does that bring you savings? How much is this? $18.99. Oh, hey, that's great. Yeah, you could buy a ton of this stuff. It's unpretentious and it's not like bone bone dry. Even though the acidity is there, it gets so burnt out on this stuff, especially when you're trying to serve people, you're like, I'm not going to like this. It's too dry. This is just that it's going to make everyone happy. Thanksgiving is a time for coming together with people who don't share our absolute geeked out passions. Yes. Curiati portfolio is fantastic. You should be able to find at least one of their wines in almost all of our stores. If your local Binny's doesn't have the Akaki's Rosé, ask for it. It's good. This is a good producer. It's relatively modern producer, maybe 30 years old, but this is a part of the Butari family. Everybody knows Butari, right? One of the guys split off in the 90s and opened this place. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah. What do we have next? Yeah. What's going on here, Gabe? I'm ready for this one. All right. Thanksgiving is this week. Earlier this month, you saw us drop our top 50 under 50. On there was a producer called Apollo's Praise. We got this stuff like two months ago, and it's just been a storm through the stores. Everyone's loved this. This is Dry Reisling from Upstate New York. Specifically, their La Homa Vineyard. This is a newer producer to Binny's. I mean, this is a relatively new project there, La Homa Vineyard. It's on the west side of Lake Seneca, the really big central lake. One of the deepest lakes in America. Is this 100 percent Reisling? I get like a Gversderminer spice kind of quality. Like that musk melon. Yeah, it's all Reisling. But that's a good note. I'm getting like bright green apple. Yeah. Glowers. Yeah. Very typical of Reisling to have tart green apple notes that usually most often do not go through malolactic conversion, therefore preserving the malic acid, which tastes like tart apples. And that is here. And it even gets citric on the finish too. This is a really interesting version of Reisling. It's not overwhelmingly fruity and like tart, the way the German Reisling can get. It's super balanced and the fruit is lower. It's like peaches and apples and citrus on the finish. Yeah. Really nice. It's almost Austrian in styling that way, but there's still some baby fat to that. There's still a little weight behind this. Yeah. And I think if this is going a little bit too dry, again, they make a sweeter version. That is just a few degrees moving to the right, a little bit sweeter, still balanced. That same basket of fruit. I bet that's really good too. Yeah. They're both great. Couldn't bring them both. This is, as is typical for dry ricing, there's a little residual sugar here, but you don't taste it at all. It's just to support that fruit. And acidity. Yeah. Yeah. And to balance the acidity. If you went bone dry with this, it'd be searing. This probably has three, four, five grams of sugar per liter. I feel like I want to try it with sweet potatoes. Yeah. I made a pizza yesterday with butternut squash. I know. Sorry, Jim. Butternut squash, caramelized onion. A drizzle of balsamic. Red peppers and a little bit of hot honey. It's really sweet. You made autumn the pizza. Yeah. Yeah. But this would have been a really good wine to have with that. Coming at you this fall. Yeah. Well, yeah, you say that. I think cheese. I think fat. I think that the acidity here against fat is going to be great. I completely agree. If you're not starting with the sparkler or you want to have both open, this is going to be great with a wide variety of cheeses. Riesling is an all-star with cheese. Hold on a second. What sauce did you use for your autumn pizza? It was like a brown sugar. It was mostly just the caramelized onions. You made a pastry. That's not a pizza. It was a pizza. There was cheese. There was a little bit of mozzarella and then there was ricotta. Yeah, there's cheese on Danish too. Different. I had a delightful pumpkin soup the other day. Austrian pumpkin oil, a little sprinkling of pepitas on top. I bet that would have been really good with the swine too. Since we're talking about stuff we've been cooking lately, I bought way too much masala, so I've been making a bunch of Indian food. This would go great with that spice quality. The fruit here, balancing that, and then I use a little bit too much ghee. There's never such a thing as too much ghee. No. All right, back to Thanksgiving. Yeah, I know. Real quick, do you ever find yourself, you're hosting and you've gone through the efforts of going to Binny's and you ask them what you should serve with each course, and then you're hosting this little dinner party and somebody doesn't finish their wine in time? That drives me nuts, like, bro, you got to dump that. We're moving forward with or without you. I hate that. Because your dinner has to be a wine pairing exercise. Dude, you have to buy more crystal, okay? I've amassed this knowledge. I got to use it somewhere. Quit speed shaming your... That's what's perfect about these first two wines. You're having a dinner party for Thanksgiving, somebody's not going to finish their glass from appetizer time, and that's where your cockies or your Apollo's praise is just going to transfer right into your main course. I do often serve Riesling with the main course at Thanksgiving, honestly. Usually, I go for Cabernet or Spateless because there's so many sweet elements, cranberry, sweet potatoes, things like that. Yeah. It's a great way to go. And savory. Every Binny's wine consultant is fighting the urge to recommend Riesling. Yeah. Don't fight the feeling, baby. Just take one. Go for it. Yeah, it's classic. Yeah. I mean, we've got tons of great German stuff on the shelf right now. Okay, but I want a red wine. Oh. Red, red, red, red. What did you get, Gabe? I brought GD Vyra's Barbera di Alba. Translate, please. This is Barbera coming from the Piedmont region of Italy. Specifically Alba. Alba, which comparatively to Asti produces slightly more structured and hardier expressions of Barbera, but Vyra does a fantastic job of keeping things bright and accessible. I always want to go with a Pinot something, but you run out of Pinot options occasionally, and that's where Barbera comes in clutch. This is Pinot near. What's the word for that? Pinot adjacent. Yeah, I think this is Pinot askew. Yeah, Barbera has naturally high acidity and usually some bright red cherry and berry fruit. Bogey of Italy. Yeah. Could be considered as such. Although people used to say that about Dolcetto more often. Although I don't see that as much anymore. The acid on this is perfect. It smells so bright and fresh. Let's just say a word for GD Vira. I mean, some of the best Piedmontese wines on our shelf at the best prices. Really good prices. Number one on our top 50, under 50 was the Barolo Alba. It's like 30 bucks and it rocks. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Lexi, what do you think of this one? I'm deciding. One moment. Okay. It's not bad with the chill. Yeah, it's not too serious, but it does have serious acidity and structure. I think that's what I get with this one is it's an adult wine. There's pretentious wines and then there's not pretentious wines. I think this is about to step into the pretentious wine where it's not too big and too scary. I think that it's fairly approachable, if that makes sense. If this came in a different bottle with a smiley face on it, your perception would be totally different. It looks kind of stuffy, but there's so much fun, like jubilant fruit here. You know the cherry candy with the gum in the middle? I'm the only person who remembers this. No, I don't. It's got that. I was upset when I got to the gum. I know, it's like the worst part. It's sitting around with all this gum. There's this lovely candy to cherry quality. I agree. I think this is a really good choice for the acidity. This is kind of Piedmont, along with Dolceto, Piedmont's everyday food wine. This is what people are most often drinking day in and day out. And you put this up against turkey. The wine is medium bodied. It's not too overwhelming. It's not aged in oak, or at least not a lot of it was. And it's bright, it's fresh. And some of that acidity will go back into the background against some of the foods, and the cherry fruit is going to pop even more. Realizing that I just shouted you down, give me a counterpoint. What do you think is that puts it just right on the edge of being a little too serious or pretentious? I don't think I have the words. I think it's just big. It's a little bit bigger than the last one. This is like, I don't know. I don't have a wine vernacular. Well, it is bone dry. There's that. But I love a dry wine, so that's not typically it. I don't know. But the fruit is playful and accessible. That tannin lingers, and there's this unmistakably Italian herbaceous quality behind it. It's like tea leaves and asphalt. A little bit. And I think that's what's driving it more towards this. It's very old world in styling. That's what I think is driving it towards the adult factoring of it. But that dry herb quality is going to play really well with stuffing with sage and herbs and all of the kind of things that go into a lot of these dishes too. But that natural texture, even if you don't do traditional turkey, if you do venison, I think this still would go great. There's something wild about this wine that I'm really into. This just feels like outdoorsy wine. Outdoorsy. I want to drink it out of a solo cup and run a fire. Thanksgiving picnic. Is this 20 bucks? This is 20 bucks. That's pretty good. Yeah. 1999. There's tannin here, but it's very, very fine. Yeah. Agreed. Very silky. It's not even when it's meant to be drank with food, much of it. Absolutely. We should have had something to eat with this, like a Snickers bar. So we're moving on to dessert and you have a port. This is an old favorite. What's the year on it? 2020. Say it again. Otima 20-year port? 20-year Tawny port. 20-year Tawny. By Wars. Oh, Wars makes Otima? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's right there on the label. Yeah. Famous port house, like 350 years of port tradition. They oxidize this and age it to the style that it would be if it were 20 years old. That is correct. 20 programs have large stocks. Most producers make 10, 20, 30, and 40 in their age portfolios. These days, 50 has been added as an official designation now, and then you can make Kolhaitas, which are vintage dated. So all from a single year, Tawny's, or just older age statement ports these days. But the thing is, this 20 year, when it's labeled as 10, 20, 30, it's not exactly that. Only a Kolhaita will give you the exact age. What they do in port is they blend ports from different lots of different ages and try to hit a style that is agreed upon. This tastes like 20 year, this tastes like 30. So there could be 30 year port in here. There could be 10 year old port in here, but as long as it adds up to a 20 in style, that's cool. Okay. Yeah, there's probably both. What's the alcohol in here, 19 or so? It should be getting to that. Probably right around there. No, 20. 20 percent. So the way that this is produced since you asked about alcohol, these are very ripe grapes, blend of grapes including a bunch of different stuff that most people haven't heard of like Turiga Nacional. But they start the fermentation. First of all, we are still foot treads, which is rare, but they also have mechanical treaders that mimic human feet. I just imagine a conveyor belt of little feet. Imagine being the person whose foot they cloned for that, like your foot is just stamping on in perpetuity. Yeah, exactly. Okay. All right. Let's talk about what it actually is. Right. So what they do is they foot trot it, then they ferment it to about 5% alcohol, and then they add aguardiente or neutral grape spirit. Grape spirit to kill the yeast and stop the fermentation. That is exactly right. So the sugar in here is natural grape sugar. It's not added after the fact or anything like that. Some sherry styles are sweetened on the back end. This is halted fermentation using alcohol and preserving all of that sweetness. Then the aging process is oxidative and gives you these nougatty nutty flavors and aromas. Along with an underlying red fruit, that's still in there. Yeah. So I think this kind of puts it into the realm of a spirit for dessert. It's wine, but it's not that far from someone who's looking for a scotch or something like that, just in a lighter way. Yeah. It falls somewhere in between there. You're right about the fruit. So a lot of people love 20-year-old Tawny for that very reason. When you're drinking 10-year-old, there's still a fair amount of primary fruit, a lot of cherries and things like that. When you get to 20, you have full oxidation with all those nutty things, but you're still retaining a core of sweet fruit. When you get past that 30, 40, 50, you're pretty much into nuts and nougat and candy and stuff like that, with not much real fruit character left. This is fantastic. This is perfect. You're kind of matching textures, and you're also matching that nutty aspect to it. You're balancing the sweetness. The little bit of acidity here helps give it lift and actually helps clean the palate a bit. I loved it. I'm not a huge poor drinker, and I really enjoyed this combo. It's real cozy. It is. I want to be really full after Thanksgiving and just sip by the fire. It'd be easy to sip this a little bit at a time, over the course of the fourth quarter of the football game. Absolutely. Not only is pumpkin pie and pecan pie stellar with this, but get into some funkier cheeses after dinner if you want to. The third cheese course at the British House? Yeah. It's mostly cheese, to be honest with you. This is where you'd break out blue cheeses or mature farmhouse cheddars. Manchego with this guy? Yeah. Buddy. Yeah. Manchego, an aged Gouda would be nice where you get all those caramely nutty notes. Also, I was thinking about cashews and hazelnuts. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Ice cream, obviously. Nuts, ice cream. It's delicious. It's interesting too, a lot of people around the world, most Americans don't think of it this way, but a lot of people serve Tawny as an aperitif. And we don't really wrap our heads around sweet aperitifs. In this country, we always think dessert. But in France, you might have Sauternes as an aperitif or as an early course with foie gras or something. And the same is true with Tawny, particularly in England. They love to drink a 10 or 20 with a chill on it to start the meal. Just watch your pore sizes. Hilarity will ensue. Is there something wrong with hilarity? That's a great point. I think you were talking about pumpkin soup earlier. I think this would go great with that or like a butternut squash thing. You know what? Flip your whole thing. Let's have this for the first course and let's have that bubbly along with dessert. And that would be great too. We can do that. Think about this. Some of the traditional soup pairings, like soup is notoriously hard to pair with wine. But if you're going to, historically, a lot of times, it would be something like sherry. And there might be a little bit of sherry in the soup too. So this would be great with a pumpkin or squash soup or maybe even a mushroom soup that would fall into the fall regime too. I think they'd be delightful. All right. Outstanding choices. That's how I built it. Absolute versatility. If you bought two, if you bought three, if you bought all four, you would have all your bases covered for the weekend. Outstanding. For the whole weekend. How much is this, Gabe? This was on sale for? $41.99. Yeah, $41.99. Normally $48 or something. Correct. We always say that sherry will last you a while. This one you need to drink within a couple of weeks, but it's not like it's going to oxidize and go bad the next day. No. It has a light shine on it too. It's already oxidized. Couple of weeks is very conservative for this. Keep it in the fridge. Oh, I've had these knocking around my fridge for months. They're not the best, but they're also not bad. No, seriously, they will remain drinkable for quite a long time, if not peak. Cool. All right. We have to run. We have to catch up with the spirits, guys. So thanks for coming. We'll talk to you soon. Will I still be here when they come? I don't know. Let's find out. 38:19 Expert Cocktail Pairings And we're back in, oh, Chris is still here. I was hiding under the table. Okay. Once again, I don't know if we move forward or backward in real time, but here we are 15 seconds later. Dan. Hello. You have spirits for Thanksgiving pairings, but you went with cocktails. Yeah. As much as I love whiskey and rum and everything, I thought of eating turkey with a glass of whiskey, just didn't seem super pleasant. So I thought we'd do some classic cocktails with a little bit of a twist on them. I'm all about it. To guide us through the entire day of Thanksgiving. Outstanding. Exciting news. First one, we'll start with a very dirty martini to go with the charcuterie. All right. That's like a, what do you call it? Putting a hat on a hat. Well, you mean the charcuterie is going to have olives and cheese and then have a- Then we have a drink with olives and cheese. There's nothing wrong with that. A ham on a hat? A ham on a hat, something like that. Oh, the hotline way. All right, so let me get this mixed up for you guys. Okay. As Dan shakes, as Dan prepares, as Dan- Scooping ice. Cookie. Scooping ice? I have to pour. He's tricking you, Lexi. He's sucking you in. No, not today. Lexi vowed to do no work and now she's working. I see it. No, barely. It counts. It's a day's change up. We're making a dirty martini here. Stirred. Dan is stirring the dirty martini. Nice. Which I might note is the appropriate way to make a martini. But you can go all James Bond on it if you want, but stirring is where it's at. So that would be typically gin, dry vermouth, olive brine, little extra olive brine. All right. So I've got this dirty martini here with I olive Harris gin, cokey dry vermouth and olive brine, Binny's olive brine, and then I'm garnishing it up with blue cheese olives and blue cheese and ham. Yay. No ham for us, but that's okay. We can smell it. Get an idea. So extra dirty because it has extra vermouth and olive brine? Yeah. And blue cheese floating in it theoretically. And blue cheese floating in it theoretically. It smells fantastic. What is the gin here? I olive Harris gin. It's very ginoper forward even in the context of this vermouth, but it's more than that. It's very pine forest. I like the olive. The olive doesn't hurt. So fun fact, I don't love olives. I don't love blue cheese. Sometimes I think it's weird, but I love a dirty martini. I don't know why. Oh, I don't. It doesn't really make sense. It features those things. The sum is greater than the parts. I don't know. Look at all that ham. I'm going to pass this around and you can garnish. Oh. You just blooped the ham and blue cheese right into your cocktail. That's why it's so dirty. That is filthy. That is the hotline way. I've never been offended by the dirtiness of a cocktail before. Chris, there's a fork at your hand. Yeah, I know. I don't want to garnish that way. You don't like the ham garnish? I'm rejecting this concept. No, not entirely. I'm going to eat on the stove. Let Chris rub the ham around the rim of the glass. Just express the ham. I'll express the ham. Should I light it and have the ham fat shoot out? That's a phrase I've never thought I'd hear. Ham fat. The ham fat shoot out. You should have Serrano wash this gin. You think I have that kind of preparation time? Yes. Oh, man, this is some stinky cheese too. That's good. A little gin-soaked ham. I'm also, I'm not putting my cheese in my dirty, dirty martini. Yeah, but thank you for having this cheese warm. It's so creamy and leathery. Yeah, and intense. It's great. This cocktail is so salty. It's so good. That's the best part. It's great with this dope. Well, my thought too is with a strong cocktail like this, it's going to keep your appetite going for the meal. You're always thinking about you're eating and then you're eating and then you're eating, and you want to think about what's going to sustain that better. Not filling up with a carbonated beverage? Yeah. I mean, I'll do a lot of that as well, but a drink like this does whet your appetite. Interestingly, I am the inverse of you, Lexi. I like olives, I love gin, but dirty martini is not my go-to. I tend to drink really vermouth-heavy, clean and twist. I do love a twist. Yeah. But this is fantastic, Dan. It's really good, and the extra garnishes are spot on. Yep. I could open my day with that. Delightful. All right. Saltiness really does keep you coming back. Yeah. Oh yeah. I could drink this with a handful of nuts too. Okay. All right. Moving on. So for the next cocktail, let's thinking, Thanksgiving food tends to be pretty rich and lighter in flavor, generally like lighter in flavor, like turkey is not a super flavorful meat necessarily. So you want something that's going to be refreshing through the meal, and that also will pair well with those flavors. So I went with a cranberry gimlet. Cranberry gimlet. And I'm going to garnish it with cranberries, fresh cranberries, and I have rosemary that I'm going to flame to kind of get that flavor going, so. All right, flame away. A little Christmas tree. Flame on. Well, this is exciting. I like the fact that you're using gin here, because a lot of people make gimlets out of vodka, but they shouldn't. Outstanding. Can you do that by the microphone? But don't burn the microphone? But do one thing at a time. That is a crackling. Don't set off the smoke alarm. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. And then if you just want to take a sprig, pass. Take a sprig, pass it along. Everybody's taking a flamed rosemary sprig. Well, it's already pretty. I've got mine kind of constructed here while everybody else is doing it. A little sprig of rosemary and some cranberries. It's beautiful. The drink is, of course, pink. And what do I do with the sprig of rosemary? Just pop it right in there. Like it's a piece of ham. Loop it in like that. Like it's a piece of ham. What am I doing? I don't know. Pouring my cocktail in the Chris's spit cup. You just know that I'm going to drink that later. So yeah, like this is refreshing. Cranberry Gimlet with a Flamed Rosemary Sprig and a couple of Fluting Cranberries. What did you use in here? So I did a little bit of a twist because we sell so much of it this year. It's Dile Harris Gin again, but also the Colval Cranberry Gin Liqueur instead of cranberry juice. Yeah. Then lime juice, simple syrup, and then the garnish. So pretty straightforward. You could also top this off with sparkling wine, I think, and have a nice- Ooh, that's a good idea. Okay. So the acidity of the lime juice and the vibrancy of the gin cut right across everything. And you're right, this is refreshing and uplifting, and it'll go with rich foods and it won't be stepped on by too flavorful of foods. Right. Yeah. What I'm impressed with is the balance even after putting the cranberry liqueur rather than cranberry juice on is not too sweet. It's tart and sweet and delicious. It really works out well. I want to try this with stuffing. Yeah. There's no veggie. I mean, that's probably like the most savory dish on the Thanksgiving table for me. And I feel like they would pair really nicely. And I think that like, I mean, rosemary is my favorite herb to like cook with period. But I think the rosemary, like in the context of baked poultry and stuffing and everything, I think works really well. And the smoke adds a complexity to everything too. And you can have a hazy cloud over your Thanksgiving dinner. And it's not necessarily from the fried turkey that you burn your garage down with. That's really good. I like that. That's delicious. That's a delicious take on that. Yeah. Light your rosemary over the fire, the kitchen stove and prep these in the kitchen before you take them out to people. And people will be like, what's that smell? Yeah. And they'll freak out. I think the gimlet is kind of underappreciated, you know. People still drink it, but not that much. It's kind of like a daiquiri made with vodka or gin. Yeah. Okay. Question. Why is the cranberry in there? It tastes gross. Because they look good. Because it looks cool. Oh. Yeah. You got to do some real work on a cranberry to get it to taste good. Which is basically just adding a ton of sugar. They're tannic. If you were going to do a spritz, you could freeze these into your ice. That's a great idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Cool. All right, last cocktail. Dan, what's for dessert? For dessert, I'm a pumpkin pie kind of guy, but I think this cocktail would go with any of the traditional Thanksgiving desserts, so pecan pie or a pumpkin roll or anything like that. So it's a black Manhattan. At the end of the meal, you still got some more eating to do with dessert, and the best way to make yourself feel better after a big meal is to drink a strong cocktail. Drink something bitter. With a lot of bitterness. It's actually pretty much scientifically accepted that drinking amarros will get your gastric juices flowing and will make you, will settle your stomach. So this is a black Manhattan. It's got Old Overholt for the rye whiskey and then Braulio Amaro, which is kind of an aggressive Amaro, but that's kind of how I like it. So I brought that one today. And then it's got cranberry, orange and angostura bitters. Nice. So the cranberry is just an extra addition again to get that kind of Thanksgiving. What part of Italy is Braulio from? The Alps. Yeah. I was going to say, Alpine style Amaro is great choice here because it brings you into that holiday-ish aroma. It smells like a Christmas tree lot in the city. Yeah. One of our managers, I was talking to him and he said he was hanging out with his friends or something. And one of them, they were eating too much or had them up to that stomach, and he said, well, he's like, why don't you take some mullert? And I said, did you say take some mullert? Take, take. It's a medicine. Come on, it's a medicine. This is an aggressive cocktail. The old overholt is spicy. Yeah. Alpine braleo is. It has a nuttiness, a nuttiness too. It'll really go with that stuff. I think that's the braleo, really, right? Probably. That's good. I mean, yes, this is something you'd sip on. If I was serving myself this, I would leave it on the rocks and let that go. Water slowly, water the stone a little bit because it is very intense, but it's kind of what you want. You want something that's going to. You're right. The Greyhatton finish is sweet, and this finish is crispy and bitter. Yeah. It does, yeah. Black Manhattans are often made with softer Amarros, like a Vernon or something like that. That's what was recommended on the recipe I fold. Yeah. But I thought this would be. That's not how we roll here. Just so people know that that's what makes it a Black Manhattan as opposed to a Manhattan or Amarrow Manhattan. It's the addition of the Amarrow. Amarrow, yeah. Instead of Vermouth. Having dessert, something sweet, have something bitter with it. Yeah. And this has some sweetness too, backing it up. And I know when I make pumpkin pie or pecan pie, I put a little bit of whiskey in the filling too. You put a little bit of whiskey in your pumpkin and pecan pie? Yeah. Just flavor blast it, yeah. But yeah, so I thought these three cocktails were pretty straightforward, pretty easy. They're not super complicated, but go well, I think, with each phase of the meal. Do you think you could batch them or make them en masse so that you don't have to make a bunch of individual ones? For sure. You could do that. And they're also the kind of thing you just have the ingredients on the counter and people can make them themselves, so they're not super complicated. Yeah, but you could definitely make a pitcher of any one of these and have people stir, shake them themselves as needed. Pour them over the ice how they want. Yeah. Cool. Great idea. Yeah. Your Thanksgiving's probably dangerous too. Yeah. Oh yeah. I usually go to bed pretty early that day. All right. Well, thanks Dan. Thank you. Lexi. Hello. I learned something today. What did you learn today? I didn't learn anything today. Oh. Yeah. You learned that you could put a hand in your martini. I would prefer not to, but I guess. I mean, why not? Just drop some meat in there and bloop. I think we've offered people a bunch of different ideas. And I think really the lesson here is combinations and things can be limitless. You really could do whatever you want. Most importantly, drink what you like, and then share that with the people that you care about. Chris is still here? He's still here, this guy. I've learned that I can live in the podcast room if I just bring a sleeping bag for like a week and a half easily. All right. I want to know where you're showering to. Poor assumption. Everybody, let us know what you're having for Thanksgiving. We'd love to hear about it. Email us at comments at binnys.com or hit us up on social media everywhere at Binny's Bev. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Happy holidays. We'll be back in your feed real soon. Until then, keep tasting.