It’s holiday gift giving time and one of the biggest problems with all the elitism and snobbery surrounding the world of wine is that it makes the simple gesture of offering a gift of wine so fraught with terror. And it’s so very unfair and unnecessary.

Wine geeks that we are, we have gotten our fair share of kindly-meant white zinfandel (and if you’re not a wine person and don’t know why this is not a good thing to do, relax, you’ve hit the right page). Yet we have not mocked anyone who has ever done so, nor have we cut said people off or thought less of them. But then, we try to be nice and accept the gift as an attempt to respect who we are.

At the same time, we recognize that there might be a boss, a future in-law or just somebody you would like to know better and you’d like to please and/or impress said person and you know this person likes wine. And the sad truth is, this person may also be a wine snob.

The problem is, there are wines that are pretty “safe,” in that almost anybody who likes wine will be reasonably impressed with a bottle of, say, a cabernet sauvignon from Silver Oak winery. But you’re talking $100 for a bottle of their 2006 cab sauv and that can get pretty pricey. And, truth be told, there are those who think Silver Oak is trading on its label, so you’re still not safe, as it were.

So the first thing to do, if you’re not a wine drinker or know much about wines, is give up on the notion that you’re going to be able to convince a real wine snob that you “know” wines. Because no one knows wine like a wine snob does, unless that person happens to agree with said snob often enough. And that includes people like us who make wine and know what “fine” wine tastes like. That’s what a snob is and why we generally don’t cater to such people. We get that said snob may have a son you’re planning on marrying or may be the manager you’re hoping will promote you. We’re just pointing out that you’re not likely to get on said snob’s good side by trying to impress this person with knowledge you don’t have (and you can’t have it because the only knowledge this person counts as valid is his or her own).

That doesn’t mean you can’t give this person a gift of wine that shows some thought and care in the giving. After all, it’s the thought that counts and while you don’t want to send the message that you weren’t thinking, the vast majority of people out there, including wine snobs, are willing to accept that you made an effort on their behalf. As long as it’s clear that you made the effort. Again, we recognize that there are some people willing to attribute the worst motives to you no matter what you do, and at that point you may want to start looking for another job or settle in for a rocky relationship with the in-laws or re-think the potential relationship. But the following tips should help you with the vast majority of folks.

So when you don’t have knowledge, sometimes the easiest thing to do is ask. If you really, really want to keep it a surprise, you can try framing the question as a request for another friend who likes wine. But simply saying you don’t really know that much about wine and want to learn will generally warm the cockles of even the grinchiest of hearts because there are few things wine snobs love to do more than pontificate about their preferences. You might try asking where a good place to get wine is or what’s a good wine for someone who’s really into wine.

Now, if said snob responds with several different preferred wine shops and asks about budget, or asks what your friend likes, then you’re probably not dealing with a true wine snob. Which means you can go to yet another wine store and ask the person behind the counter to guide you to a good bottle of something unusual. If said snob says things, “Well, the only place to go is…” or “Obviously, your friend will only want….” then you are, in fact, dealing with a snob, and it might be time to check out that tie or purse.

You can also respond with the “Gee, I’m not sure what my friend likes. What do you like?” Listen carefully, because your target snob will give you plenty to go on. As soon as you feasibly can, write down anything you remember. Then you’ve got two options. If your budget is wide open, then you can got to said snob’s preferred store and ask the sales person to help you. Most are pretty cool and get it. Sometimes you’ll run into a fellow snob, but then you can walk and shop elsewhere.

Any decent wine store will have someone willing to help a newbie purchase a bottle for someone else. And the good ones won’t make the noob feel like an idiot. Because you’re not an idiot. You’re trying to please someone with a bottle of wine and it really shouldn’t be this complicated. And it shouldn’t break the bank, either, because there are lots and lots of great wines for under $20 and several under $10. If you get a really obscure label from a truly tiny producer, you can also proclaim it a boutique wine, which might forestall some lip curling.

Now, you’ll note we’re not recommending any specific wines here. Why? Because there are far, far too many to list and every time we read one of these lists, we find we have a heck of a time finding a given label – which doesn’t help when you’re looking at the rows and rows of bottles without a clue what to buy.

So worse case scenario? You don’t know what the target snob likes, just that he or she likes wine. Go with a Bordeaux red, if the person tends toward stuffiness, go with a premium California cab sauv if the person loves labels and status, go with a red made from something unusual, such as negrette or tempranillo, if your giftee likes taking chances and adventure. And, again, try and ask your friendly wine store employee for suggestions. They can offer you ideas even we haven’t thought of.

The only hard and fast rule (unless you know for a fact otherwise) is never, never buy white zinfandel for a wine snob. As a wine, it tends to be just dreadful, sick sweet stuff, which is why we don’t like it. There may be good ones out there and you might even like it, which is cool. But most people who like wine don’t tend to like white zin.

Oh, and for the record, there’s a reason we’re the OddBallGrape. We love trying stuff we’ve never heard of.

Welcome to the site! If you’re here because you were at the tasting this afternoon, here’s your chance to compare what you tasted with what we tasted and {drum roll, please} find out which wine was what. And let us know what you think in the comments. If you just want to check out some tasting notes on this year’s Beaujolais Nouveaux, please feel free to join the conversation, because we’ve got a real controversial offering below.

As many of you already know, ‘cuz you were at the tasting or you read yesterday’s post, Beaujolais Nouveau is a special bottling of new wine that comes out every November. Now, Beaujolais is a place name for the region in France where this light, fruity wine is made, and the Nouveau is not to be confused with the often age-worthy Beaujolais Villages and Grand Cru wines from the region.

While a lot of wine snobs love looking down their long, bony noses at it because it is generally light, fruity, young and inexpensive, we also happen to think it’s one of the best bottles you can get for your Thanksgiving table.

We did a blind tasting of three Nouveaux, but threw in a ringer – one that is not Beaujolais. It’s just a new red from here in California, but it’s still pretty tasty. All of these are dry red wines, which go with a variety of foods. As always, our notes are here for calibration purposes so that if you tasted melon and we said peach, you’ll know that when we write peach, you’ll taste melon.

BOTTLE #1

Georges DuBoeuf Nouveau

This is your classic Beaujolais Nouveau, although it has a slightly darker color than some years. The nose is kind of closed at first, but it opens up to a very fruity scent, almost candy-like, called tutti frutti (Italian for all fruits). The mouth feel is still classically light with just a little acid and dry, but very light, tannins (that drying sensation in your mouth).

By they way, this one seems to be everywhere, so have fun.

BOTTLE #2

Georges DuBoeuf Nouveau Villages

The Villages Beaujolais are traditionally the mid-tier pretty good stuff, with the Grand Crus being the high end wines. We’ve never seen a Villages Nouveau before, so either this is a rare shipment to the U.S. or a rare bottling. We found this one at BevMo.

This one also has the dark color and tutti-frutti nose on it, but Michael also caught a hint of banana, as well. This one’s flavor is a tad more tart, however, and the tannins are softer.

BOTTLE #3

Charles Shaw Nouveau

Surprised? Yeah, we were, too. We’ve always said that if you didn’t know you were drinking the infamous Two-Buck Chuck, you’d probably like it a lot more than you would if you knew what you were drinking. That being said, we’ve also had some pretty dreadful bottles from this label. The most consistently good ones, we’ve found are the chardonnay, which is the one that has won all the medals, and the cabernet sauvignon.

So we weren’t counting on much when we tasted this one. Anne tasted the three wines blind (not knowing which was which) and actually thought she had one of the DuBoeufs when she sniffed because she caught a hint of what we call French Funk – an eensy, tiny hint of sulphur in the nose of the wine, to which Anne is particularly sensitive. Michael said he actually liked this one a bit better than the French ones – and he was not expecting that.

But it has the same dark color the other two have. The nose isn’t quite as obviously fruity as the other two, but it still has the same light mouthfeel. It, too, has the tartness of good acid and a hint of fizz. Michael thought the flavor was slightly sweet, but Anne didn’t think it was sweet at all. The bottom line was that it compared quite favorably to its two French cousins, though Anne didn’t think it was quite as good.

And, yes, it’s only available at Trader Joe’s.

BTW, the unofficial results of the blind tasting this afternoon – when we asked you which of the three wines were your favorites – are listed below:

Nouveau = 7 favorites

Villages = 5 favorites

Two Buck = 11 favorites

There you have it. But the continuing lesson of OBG is whatever tastes good to you is what you should be drinking. Scores and labels be damned!

Bottle #1

Bottle #2

Bottle #3

We always love it when some wine snob sniffs in disdain at the Beaujolais Nouveau release. Let’s be real – all the hype and hullabaloo about the annual release of this brand, spanking new wine is just that. And, no, it is not the kind of fine wine you save up for that perfect occasion with a special menu designed around it.

But, we ask, so what?

Beaujolais Nouveau is the first wine harvested in the Beaujolais region of France and is not to be confused with the much nicer Beaujolais Villages or Beaujolais Grand Cru. It is very young wine, meant to be drunk young. If you see a bottle with the words Beaujolais Nouveau on it and the year is older than the year you’re in (okay, you can make an exception if you’re buying in January), you’ve got a bottle that’s probably too old.

It’s always released on the third Thursday of November with big parties in Paris and a certain amount of press, etc., which is probably part of the reason why the snobs love looking down their long, bony noses at it. The other part is that it does tend to be very light and fruity. It’s not a complicated wine that you’re going to spend an hour analyzing.

There are two things we love especially about Beaujolais Nouveau and it’s timely November arrival. The first is that it is a lovely way to celebrate the end of another harvest. As home winemakers, we’re finally winding down the crazed slog that usually starts sometime in August, with the first white grape harvests, then the extended “will we, won’t we?” wondering if and where we’ll be picking grapes on any given weekend. Not to mention all the various tasks that go on with crushing, pressing, racking (siphoning the wine off the leftover skin and stuff left in the container), and other stuff that goes on until the new wines are ready to rest quietly over the winter.

With the Nouveau arriving just when all that work is finished, it’s a great way to toast surviving another harvest – and we have no doubt that’s part of it in France, as well.

But there’s a second part that we discovered long before we starting making our own wine. Beaujolais Nouveau is pretty much your perfect wine for Thanksgiving Dinner. Not only does the light, fruity profile match well with all the different flavors in the traditional feast, including those sweet potatoes with (blech) marshmallows, it’s also a great beginner wine for those members of your extended family who are either new to wine or suspicious of red wines, in general. This is an important point to remember, because while you do want your wine to match your food, you also want your wine to match the people at your table.

We find that almost every year, we have a couple wine newbies at our table, even if some of them aren’t all that new. They just don’t like red wine – or think they don’t. And we have gotten a few converts with Beaujolais Nouveau.

So give this year’s vintage a try with your turkey and let us know how it went.

Type: Off dry white wine

What makes it special: Hand-picked grapes from the Santa Barbara region

Plays well with: Spicy foods, including Indian and Mexican

The Garagiste Festival happened this past weekend – and not only were we going to go, we were going to do an advance post on the event, just in case some of you would want to go.

Alas, Michael’s grandmother passed away the week before, so not only were we in Arizona for the funeral when the festival was on, we kinda got distracted.

But perhaps more important is letting people know about the movement, which is dedicated to supporting small, artisanal winemakers in the Central Coast region. In fact, we were delighted to see that one of our recent featured wineries, Tercero Wines, showed up on the Garagiste member list.

“They don’t have a lot of money for marketing,” said Stewart McLennan, one of the co-founders of Paso Garagiste, about the member wineries. “They don’t have tasting rooms, well, the majority of them don’t.”

McLennan explained that the term Garagiste is the term the winemakers in Bordeaux use when they want to look down their noses at a small producer. But he decided he wanted to put a more positive spin on the term. He and his co-founders Doug Minnick, Dan Erland Andersen, all make wine at home and also work either writing about or helping to market wineries.

McLennan, a former actor, said that he’d been looking for a larger winery to work for, but came to really appreciate the smaller outfits, producing under 2,000 cases (Paso Garagiste wineries make 1,200 or fewer cases).

“We could take care of being a conduit for all of the people with various amounts of wine,” he said.

The Festival was part of that, but there were also seminars and their website, pasogaragiste.com, will eventually feature wine making videos from various winemakers.

A word about artisan wines – they do tend to cost more than wines from larger wineries simply because these folks are in the business of making a profit – maybe not a large one, but they do want to stay in the black. And because of their size, they can’t take advantage of the economies of scale. But McLennan says that gives the artisanal winemaker more control over the final product. Plus you can make a special connection with the artisanal winemaker that you usually can’t with larger wineries.

“I think what people are getting back to is artisanal stuff,” McLennan said. “If they want to make a luxury purchase, they want to know that it’s really unique. If you know the story behind the wine and you’ve met the winemaker, it makes the whole experience just that much better and it becomes a really unique thing.”

Tercero Outlier and Grenache Blanc

We met and interviewed Larry Schaffer late this past summer at a tasting of Santa Barbara Vintners and not only liked what he had, we liked him.

But the problem with these kinds of situations is that you’re doing interviews on the fly, so you don’t get the chance to dig and really learn something about the winemaker – and Larry seems really interesting.

He’s worked on the finance and sales side in the music, toy and publishing industries. So naturally, Anne had to ask him what made him decide wine was his passion.

“I lost a bet,” he replied. “It was time to do something different. I had achieved all I wanted to do and I needed challenges in my life and I felt my mind wasn’t being used anymore and science scared me. So I decided to take it on.”

We still don’t know what that bet was. But Schaffer took an interesting route to get to winemaking – he left his career and went back to school at none other than University of California, Davis, which has the oldest and probably most prestigious winemaking program in the state, if not the country. Going back to school to a graduate program is scary enough, but Schaffer had an added challenge – that ol’ demon science.

“Science scared the crap out of my as an undergrad. I wanted nothing to do with it,” Schaffer said. But he found a way to get on top of it before actually getting to Davis. “I took all my general chem, organic chem at junior colleges in Orange County with kids who could have literally been my kids.”

And he said he aced it, too.

Schaffer only makes about 1500 cases of 13 different varieties of wine, and has a tasting room in Los Olivos, at 2445 Alamo Pintado Ave., Suite 104 (. He also shares one of our favorite philosophies – that the same wine can taste totally different depending on who’s drinking it and no person has a better “palate” than anyone else. How do we know? Check out Schaffer’s blog post, from his website www.tercerowines.com.

Our good friends at Webster’s Fine Stationers had us to pour at their recent poetry reading. If you missed it, you missed some excellent poems by local poets Judith Terzi and Linda Dove. Fortunately, Lori and Scott Webster carry both their books, but it’s still special to hear them read by the poets.

We also had some great wines. And if you were there, here are our notes. Now, as always, this is not to prove we have a better palate than yours – because we don’t. It’s just to coordinate what you taste with what we taste, so that when we say something tastes like peach and you taste raspberry, you know that when we say peach, you’ll taste raspberry.

Dolce Vita Prosecco Brut NV

Type: Slightly tart sparkling white

What makes it special: Well-made and reasonably priced

Plays well with: Snacks, cheeses, finger foods

Most proseccos, which are Italian sparkling wines, tend to be on the sweet side. Not this one. It has a clean nose and very light color. The flavor has some tart fruit and it’s dry enough to make a good palate cleanser before the next bite of party food. The sharpness does back off after a few minutes but the wine does best with food on the plate.

Toque et Clochers Cremant de Limoux NV

Type: Sparkling white

What makes it special: It’s French, but not champagne

Plays well with: Appetizers, nuts, brunch

The nose on this straw colored bubbly has a light hint of oak. The taste is clean, but without the wood. There are good acids and the wine is bone dry. The finish at the back of the palate is somewhat short but it goes so well with food you won’t have time to miss it. 12 percent alcohol makes it easier to get another sip or glass on your way back to the brunch station. Hold the mimosas, please.

Twin Vines Vinho Verde 2010

Type: Off-dry white

What makes it special: White wine from the home of Port

Plays well with: Salads, seafood and Indian summer

Vinho verde means “green wine” or the first wine that is ready to drink when the harvest is over. This generally means the wine has carbon dioxide from the fermentation still inside it making it fizzy. But it is not a sparkling wine in the traditional sense. It needs to be enjoyed early and comes in a regular bottle and a screw cap.

The Twin Vines 2010 Vinho Verde has a fruity nose and a flavor of some citrus, myrhh and acidity from being picked younger and the carbon dioxide fizz.

Crucillon Garnacha 2009

Type: Dry red

What makes it special: A good example of one of Spain’s signature grapes

Plays well with: Meats, grilled vegetables

This imported Spanish red has the ruby color of a good Grenache – as it’s known in the US and France – and a nose of violets and red fruit. The taste has good acids along with the cranberry and sour cherry that makes this a wine that food will make better. There are sufficient tannins to support opening the next bottle in a year or two.

David Krumholtz, courtesy NBC

We have to say, the only good thing about The Playboy Club (which holds the Fall 2011 dubious honor of being the first show cancelled of the new TV season) was seeing David Krumholtz working – better yet, not recognizing him right away. Not because the show sucked, but because it means Krumholtz can really act and create a completely different character than lovable math genius Dr. Charlie Epps, from CBS’ late lamented Numb3rs.

Krumholtz shared with us a problem he has with wine.

“I want to know why I’m allergic to wine,” he told Anne. “I used to drink a lot of red wine. And I went to France, to Paris. And I drank some of the finest wines in the world. Spent way too much money. Got blasted on all these wines every night. Got back to the States and I could not swallow more than a couple sips of American wine without getting sick. Why?”

The reality is, not everyone can drink wine. And when it comes to bad reactions, there could be a lot of different reasons why. And what constitutes sick, in this case? Barfing? Headaches? Sinus misery?

A genuine allergy is when the body’s immune system decides that something is bad, bad, evil, evil and tries to reject it, kind of like it does when a cold virus invades. Reactions will vary – if you swallow something, it can give you hives. If you touch it, you get a rash. If you breathe it, you get all stuffy and/or start sneezing.

But your body can react badly for a lot of reasons, not just an allergy. In Krumholtz’ case, it could have been his body saying enough already after an extended period of indulgence that just happened to coincide with his return to the U.S. from his trip to France. It could have been some of the additives that American wine makers will add to their wines, such as color enzymes and extra tannic acid, that the French don’t. And it could have been a sensitivity to any of a hundred different compounds in wine, triggered by said extended period of indulgence, so that even when one is not over-indulging, one is still sensitive to said compound.

If you find yourself in this position, it’s truly a bummer. Anne, for example, will sometimes get a stuffy nose while drinking wine. Is it her normal weather sensitivity getting an evil boost from the alcohol, or a compound that happens to be in some wines, but not in others? Without doing some extensive research, it’s hard to know.

The thing to do, Mr. Krumholtz, and anyone else, if you still want to drink wine (and it’s understandable if you don’t), is to try different types of wine from different places and see if you can isolate which ones make you sick and which ones don’t. If your reaction was merely your body begging for relief, and it’s been a while since that trip, then you may be able to drink wine again – unless your brain is convinced that wine makes you sick. Then that’s a different problem.

But the bottom line is that you need to respect your body, and if wine makes you sick, then it makes you sick and that’s life.