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You have suggested food pairings with each of your wines. Why was that important?

I feel like food and wine are meant to go together. While I think each shines on its own and I love to drink wine as an aperitif, hanging out watching a movie, with friends, separate from food. I think the sort of alchemy that happens when food and wine interact is really cool. I think people need a little guidance. We were talking before about white with seafood, red with meat. I think people need to be shown how to open their mind a bit to other options. My background is in food and cooking, so I thought I’d utilize some of the experiences I’ve had that have been positive with pairing and cooking. Bring them together.

What about your video reviews of each wine?

When I first decided to create an online business, what I thought was really lacking with online wine stores is that there’s no customer service and there’s no guidance at all. Unlike buying a book from Amazon or a T-shirt from Gap online, you know what you’re getting. With wine, you really don’t know what you’re getting. You have no idea. No one knows what’s in the bottle unless you’re the winemaker or have previously experienced this wine. What I really sought to do was translate the in-store, personal experience, speaking with a wine merchant who’s tasted this wine, who’s experienced it and is recommending it to you, but translate that to a digital space. That niche wasn’t really explored, and when people were buying wine online, it was sort of this blind purchase. You spend 200 bucks buying wine online, you get it in the mail and if you don’t like it, oops. This way, you know what you know what you’re getting, and you at least have a human being talking to you who’s tasted the wine. I taste every wine in the store.

Now that we’re on the brink of Thanksgiving, the cornerstones of any Thanksgiving meal are turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Given that, what would you suggest for a versatile wine to pair with Thanksgiving dinner?

It’s very hard to find one wine that will pair with everything because the Thanksgiving table is replete with stuff that varies from A to Z in terms of texture, flavor, spice, sweetness, richness. It’s really hard to find one wine that’s one size fits all. Instead of trying to do that, I’d look at what style of cooking is dominating because the sort of mainstays of the table – the turkey, for instance – is like a tabula rasa. It’s neutral, and turkey on its own doesn’t have that much of a strong flavor. I would pay more attention to preparations. What would you marinate your turkey in? What kind of spice rub are you using? What kind of herbs are you using? The same with the other dishes. Is the general theme going to be sweet, using a lot of brown sugar and molasses and sugar and cinnamon and nutmeg? Or is your meal savory, including herbes de Provence, rosemary and thyme? That kind of stuff. Use those garnishes, spices or herbs as a guiding tool to choose your wine. If you’re someone who’s into something sweet or spicy, I’d choose a wine that has bright fruit character. Carmenere from Chile is a great choice, with a lot of dark berry fruit and a ton of spice that complements a lot of spices that people use in yam dishes and squash dishes. If you’re leaning more toward an herbal, savory theme, I would try a wine that mirrors those types of flavors and aromas, like a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand that’s really grassy and has that fresh, herbal, minty cut grass kind of vibe. Or if you want something herbal that’s red, maybe Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley, from Chinon or Borgueil, something that has that minty, kind of herbes de Provence. I like to mirror flavors in wine and food, or use contrast. So when it comes to Thanksgiving, the mirroring technique is pretty simple.

What wine would you pair with a turducken?

Something super gamy, smoky and meaty. Actually, one wine that comes to mind is from Austria. It’s made by a producer called Juris, the grape is St. Laurent. It’s a beautiful wine, very gamy, truffle-y and meaty and it has smoked bacon character. It’s great with anything gamy, like a turducken would be.

For Christmas, what do you think would be an appropriate wine for ham?

For ham, because you’re using a lot of honey and maple, and a lot of sweeter glazes. I would use a wine that would also echo those kinds of caramelized flavors. One that comes to mind is made by Enjingi and the region in Croatia is called Kutjevo. It’s actually labeled late harvest on the bottle. It’s not a dessert wine, but it does have a longer hang time on the vine, so the sugars are able to develop more. The wine, I wouldn’t call it sweet, but there are definitely a lot of traces of maple and caramelization that are really cool and really different, that I think would pair wonderfully with ham. It has a lot of honey and maple in it. There’s also a lot of cherry cordial liqueur kind of flavor in the wine that would pair wonderfully with something like that.

What about roast beef?

Well, depending on how fatty or lean your beef is; if you’re leaning toward something fattier, I would choose something pretty high in tannins and high in acid, to kind of cut through that richness. I’m actually liking the Malbecs from Patagonia, even more than the Mendoza stuff, which is higher up north. I sell a really fun one called Areo, and it’s kind of a different style Malbec. It’s kind of an Old World drinking Malbec. There’s less of that sort of sweet, chewy fruit. It’s more earthy and leathery. That would be really cool with that roasted flavor of roast beef. Or maybe a northern Rhone Syrah. There’s one that’s really fun by a producer by Eric Texier. The wine is called Brezeme. There’s also that sort of roasted meat, gamy character that I think would be great with any kind of roast.

If you could only fill your glass with one more wine, what would be in there?

My desert island wine? It’s funny. I think most wine people would say Champagne. I don’t feel that way. I love bubbly, but it’s not the last thing I’d want to drink for my last day on earth. It would be red, probably. I think what I would want for my last glass of wine – there’s nothing wrong with a big oak-y, full-bodied, brawny wine, but the wines that feel closest to my heart are wines that are a little more fresh and pure and expressive of the fruit and place, and less of the wood influence. So maybe a Frappato from Sicily. There’s one that comes to mind that’s really great, it’s actually aged in clay amphorae as opposed to barrels. It’s made by a producer called Cos and it’s made biodynamically. They actually make a whole range of wines. They make Nero D’Avola, and they make a combination of Nero and Frappato called Cerasuolo di Vittoria. And they’re all beautiful wines, but their Frappato is really special, and it doesn’t see any oak, so you get this pure rush of fresh cherry fruit, fennel seed and rhubarb. It’s really beautiful. Something like that, I think I would like as my last sip.

Would you pair any food with it?

Yeah, of course. Probably some kind of cheese, something simple. Cheese and great bread.