You've got the artisinal cheese (hopefully listeria free), your heritage-bred, free-range turkey and loads of organic veggies that you grew on your roof. Now all you need to make this sustainably-raised feast complete is some wine ... and since all wine is natural, this should be easy, right?
Aggravatingly, this is not always the case. Sure, throw some grapes in a barrel and they will become wine without adding anything at all (even yeast occurs naturally on grape skins) but in the age of modern winemaking there could also be any of 200 additives currently allowed in the U.S., none of which (save the least harmful and most essential -- sulfite) are required to be on the label.
But don't give up: there is now a store in (of course) Williamsburg that has done the research for you. Each wine sold in The Natural Wine Company has been hand-selected by the stores proprieters from either organic or biodynamic farms and are made with minimal intervention. "Our goal," says manager Ross Bingham "was to find wine that tastes clean and is food friendly." But don't expect to find just the typical varietals. Long-time collector and part-owner Michael Andrews is also determined to stock wines you have never heard of, like the Grolleau grape from the Loire Valley--where, he points out "they have been making wine [naturally] for thousands of years."
And for the celebration of bounty and gluttony that is Thanksgiving dinner, they have rounded up an eclectic selection that will serve the all-important purpose of washing down your third portion of mashed yams and will hopefully inspire a little wine-related conversation (more interesting than discussing the finer points of Sarah Palin's reality show, we assure you).
