Flip flops Thanksgiving

Hello from the sunny, warm Texas hill country outside of Austin. Thanksgiving is here and I'm clad in a tee shirt, shorts, and flip flops. Eat your hearts out, fellow Oregonians.

With this kind of weather, traditional Thanksgiving wine matches sort of go out the window. So too with the local wine selection. After my moment in the radio spotlight telling people what they should and should not be drinking with turkey and all the trimmings, here I am with a Shiner Bock and a view that goes for miles.

There is some wine on the menu today. We have some Gruet sparkling wine from New Mexico, about as close as I'm getting to local wine. Gruet's good stuff, but most people know that by now. We'll try both the NV Brut and the Blanc de Noirs.

Later it's on to the 2005 Durand Syrah from southern France, something I found at a local shop for a decent price. How did this lone Weygandt-Metzler selection find its way into a place otherwise full of the usual domestic suspects and fabricated imported labels? This not to heavy syrah should be delicious with the dark meat, stuffing, and sweet potatoes.

For dessert, we have a gang of people bringing perhaps 10 pies, so dessert wine might be gilding the lilly, as my mom likes to say. Perhaps a sweet sherry will make an appearance. We'll see.

It's not a wine centric crowd here and, again, the weather's more summer in my book than late fall. Sometimes you just have to go with with flow and act like we're at the beach in August. A Texas beach perhaps. More Shiner Bock please.