Trimbach Gewurztraminer Cuvée des Seigneurs de Ribeaupierre 2008

Somehow this year has completely flown by and I find myself yet again at the start of another holiday season. While Halloween technically kicks it all off, Thanksgiving is what really gets it going. I've developed a distaste for this time of the year since I started working in retail, but if I'm being honest I never really cared too much about it to begin with, especially Thanksgiving. While I can understand why the turkey holiday (seriously, does anyone actually even like turkey?) is so meaningful to some people, it was never really anything super special to me, especially not after 1999, the year my grandmother died right before Thanksgiving.

I honestly can't remember a Thanksgiving before that one, I'm sure we must have done something in the past, but the tragedy of her passing near the holiday paired with my penchant for forgetting things completely erased all memories of previous ones for me. That year we had a memorial service for her and then my parents decided we needed to get out of town  so they packed up my sisters, me and my grandfather and drove down to Galveston. My memory has never been very reliable (unless we're talking really useless facts and random knowledge that is no good to anyone, not even me) so I'll be the first to admit that my recollection of this time is super hazy, but I'm fairly certain that we drove down there on Thanksgiving Day. My reason for believing that is this: we arrived super hungry and so my parents decided to hit up a Whataburger. You're probably thinking that Whataburger for Thanksgiving doesn't sound too shabby and it honestly doesn't, hell at that point after the long car ride and through my fog of sadness it sounded absolutely amazing. Unfortunately it was not meant to be. The wait was ridiculous and though my parents were willing to endure it, after the only cook in the joint said "f*** this" and walked out they realized their dream of feeding their family a feast of fast food for Thanksgiving had come to an end. 

And that is why I spent Thanksgiving of '99 in a hotel in Galveston eating trail mix. The holiday has never meant a thing to me since then.*

Of course that's not the case for most other people in this country. For them Thanksgiving is a super special day spent with family, gorging on turkey (I'm really truly serious, who the f*** likes turkey and what the hell is wrong with them?) and all the ridiculous sides and traditional dishes served for this holiday (I would list some, but I honestly have no idea what they might be, just know they exist).

On the plus side Thanksgiving is the one time of the year that people actually come in to my store looking for Gewurztraminer mainly because they read somewhere or another that it was the perfect white wine to pair with their feast. They're not wrong about that, Gewurztraminer, when it's done right, is a really unique wine, bursting with all kinds of spices and baked stone fruit flavors. My far and beyond favorite is the Alsatian Trimbach Gewurztraminer. It is a wine that has never let me down and I even managed to turn my mother on to it so she now keeps at least three bottles on hand at all times.

The only other Alsatian Gewurztraminer to outshine it is Trimbach's Cuvée des Seigneurs de Ribeaupierre and I got to open a 2008 vintage of this not too long ago. 

This wine was bursting with aromatic notes of white peach, lychee and rose petals. The palate had flavors of baking spices, peach and honey with enough acidity to offset any flabbiness, The finish is long and the honeyed notes linger for quite a bit. 

*Though to be fair I don't think it ever did before that anyway.