Tim Halloran's piece on Thanksgiving Reds can be viewed here . Thanksgiving dinner, while delicious and nutritious (well, at least delicious) is not the easiest meal to pair with wines. So many different elements are present; there are savory/mild foods like turkey, gravy, yams and potatoes, crisp/acidic foods like cranberry sauce and salads, and hearty foods like ham and stuffing. Throw in a few other vegetables and you have a veritable cornucopia of flavors and textures to match.

It's almost like a Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan film. A young man meets the woman of his dreams after his sailboat is chased ashore by a hurricane. Marriage and career success ensue and years later the happy couple end up running a Sonoma winery that just so happens to produce some of the finest Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in all of California. Yes, Ken Freeman's life story may indeed be one of which movies are made. I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Ken Freeman about his eponymous winery, Freeman Vineyard and Winery , as well as his unique path to becoming a revered wine maker.

Part One: The Tasting Room This three part series will explore wine tasting etiquette from the tasting room to the barrel room to the living room. Don’t be that guy who asks if they can drink the contents of the dump bucket or makes inappropriate jokes about the bung hole. Taste like a pro and be proud of it. You don’t have to be the sommelier of The French Laundry to taste like the experts. Learn your way around a wine glass in three easy steps: stop, drop and roll.

Take a deep breath. While exhaling, say “Ahhhl zas.” It resonates like a yoga mantra with the emphasis on “Ahhh.” The phonetic version of Alsace reveals the beauty of this little border province and the prominence of one of France’s smallest wine regions. It harbors a medieval landscape from a bygone era. Half-timbered houses, cobbled streets, and Romanesque churches have you anticipating someone heavily cloaked in costume to walk by you munching on a giant turkey leg.

Everyone talks about oak in wine, or the lack of it. It is such a prominent matter of conversation that any wine-tasting in the world will inevitably be seasoned with talk of the wood that has become the number one natural container of choice in the world for winemakers. But what is oak? Why is it so important? Why do some winemakers use oak while others eschew it in favor of other containers like stainless steel?

Yellow Tail. There, I said it. The first brand to spring to mind when one uses the words “Australia” and “wine” in the same sentence. You know you’ve drunk it. You may even have enjoyed it, though if you are part of a wine-geek circle, you’re probably reluctant to admit as much. If that’s the case, allow me to take the pressure off and acknowledge what all too many casual quaffers are afraid to admit – the stuff ain’t bad, and for under $8 a bottle, it’s one of the best bargains out there.

Our appreciation of wine enhances our enjoyment of entertainment media when wine plays a key role. The goal of this piece is to create a new kind of entertainment shopping list—a fun way to satisfy our desires with no added calories. Of course, if you can resist drinking wine while reading, listening to or watching any of these media pieces, you’re a better person than I. If calories are no object, you can try the suggested pairing listed at the end of each media description.

The English language has no accurate translation for the French word terroir . The closest thing we have is terrain , a word designed strictly to denote the way a land lays, a word for describing surfaces. Terrain says something, but far from everything, about terroir. At its closest, terrain is perhaps to terroir what a page is to a book, though terroir as a concept is admittedly more slippery.

It happened again a few weeks ago: I was exploring the wine section at a new local supermarket where I was taking notes on unfamiliar wines and comparing prices. You know, just minding my own business when another shopper came up to me looking quite desperate, and started asking me questions about wine. Now, I was dressed in my summer khakis, white linen shirt and sandals, definitely not the store uniform, but that made no difference to him. “What’s a white wine?” he asked me. Several replies came to mind, so I took a moment to study him.

The Rhone Report: About Rhone and Rhone-Style Wines and Winemakers is part of an ongoing series. Recently we were visiting one of our favorite wine bars (our definition of a good wine bar is one offering a diverse range of interesting wines that aren’t the usual suspects found on the shelves at the local Safeway). We got to talking to the proprietor about California Rhone wines. Readers of this column know that we favor blends of Rhone varietals, the model followed in the southern Rhone Valley, as opposed to the varietal paradigm popular in California