Todd Hubler
Wine is as seasonal as the food we eat. In the summer months, we consume a lot of bright, high-acid foods such as fruits and tomatoes. These are perfect for white wine with bracing acidity. As harvest brings its rich flavors and we start to eat more root vegetables and heavier sauces, we naturally turn toward robust reds.
This is a sweeping oversimplification, of course. Big whites and rosés are still excellent with many fall bites, but sweater weather signals a change to a kind of wine that doesn't appear much during sweltering hot days. Let's call it leaf-pile wine, the wine of corn mazes and early sunsets.
There are pricey wines in this category, such as a big American Syrah or French Grenache that will gallop across the dining table and your palate with thundering, tannic hooves. But I'm talking about easy couch wines, the kinds of bottles you want after a hike in cool air. Let's keep them under $20.
My mind goes to Italy for something sippable while wrapped up in a blanket reading or watching telly. If you haven't had Chianti all summer, that's a great place to start. Marco de Grazia is an Italian wine importer who is both hero and villain, depending upon whom you ask. In the 1990s, de Grazia encouraged many of his producers to age their wines in new oak for the American market, bucking tradition. Putting wine politics aside, his Fattoria di Lucignano Chianti has been called the most consistently excellent, inexpensive Chianti available; it's plush and ripe with a supple, velvety texture. Currently the 2010s are on shelves for $12.
The organically grown Sangiovese and Merlot blend from Tenuta di Ghizzano is an easy, nicely fruity wine that has some splendid farmy qualities to it. Made with indigenous yeasts, it is light and pleasant but also keeps your interest with a bit of funk. Brilliant with food, too, for $17.
Refosco is an ancient grape that offers relatively high acidity with intense fruit and some minerality. This makes Pierpaolo Pecorari Marc de Grazia 2011 Refosco ($18) a great match for harvest foods like squash ravioli or even hunting fare such as pheasant. Plus, it's made without chemicals or herbicides. With bright cherry flavors, this is a low-key quaffer ideal for when there's a frosty bite in the air and you just want to cozy up to a glass of juicy red wine.
