What to chug on Christmas while avoiding your in-law’s halitosis

Welcome to your Christmas drunk play-by-play. Not that I need to tell you this, but it is mandatory to consume copious measures of alcohol during the holidays. Why, you ask? Let me run through the list.

1) You’re stressed from not only work because you don’t want to work the week of Christmas but also because no one wants to work or deal with you and you can’t stop focusing on anything but the guilt you have acquired from re-gifting an ex-boyfriend’s present for a family gift exchange. Thank God Target is having a last-minute sale. Again. Take a drink.

2) The seasonal cocktails are hard to shut down, especially when they’re titled “Naked Reindeer,”  “Sexy Elves” or “Back Door Santas.” And you deserve all of them. Take a drink.

3) You’re broke from shipping costs because online purchasing is 1000 times better than warding off the crazies of the downtown shopping centers. Buying both of your parents presents at 11:30pm during a Macy’s miracle sale was possibly the wisest move you made this season and for that, take a drink.

4) You have three solid days of family holiday festivities/small talk with the extended clan who have twangs/explaining the use of your college degree yet again. God love them (and so do you), but that’s a lot. Take a drink.

5) Every store is throwing down the big guns in the procrastinator’s heaven with sales and price-tag slashing, not excluding those that sell wine. See below for a grocery list and take a drink.

• Long Shadows Nine Hats Red Table Wine – $22: The heavyweights at Long Shadows (the oenology team of nine winemakers from international fame who took on Washington fruit) made a table blend. Get it – nine of them, nine hats. Clever boys… This Cab-based blend is whatever didn’t make it into the final cut for the premium wines – Sequel, Pirouette, Feather, Saggi, Chester Kidder and Pedestal. Juicy, fleshy and a whale of a cherry bomb, backed by plum, cigar box cedar and spice, this wine is most things nice.
• Trapiche 2007 Broquel Malbec, Mendoza – $17: To say this wine is large is to be a bit restrained. She is voluptuous, powerful and GD proud of it – think Sofia Vergara from Modern Family in a bottle from Argentina as opposed to Colombia. Knee deep in dark fruit and graham cracker on the nose with blackberry, plum and currant, nutmeg spice and an overall heftiness in the glass. The palate is silky and rich in both sweet tannin and mouth feel.
• Maison Louis Latour Bourgogne 2008 Pinot Noir – $13: It is exactly what it is – a $13 red Burgundy, labeled also as Pinot and marketed directly at Americans who have no idea what that means. That being said, for a ten spot and a handful of quarters, it doesn’t try to be anything else. You get a vivid cherry and raspberry-abundant Pinot with spicy floral qualities, easy acid and soft tannins. An easy-pleaser and the ideal wine for a party with people who brought Franzia out of the box.
• Rombauer 2009 Carneros Chardonnay – $25: Because your mom will be so freaking happy you scored her some of this typically empty-shelved wine that she’ll go into vanilla-buttery comatose and forget she assigned you to dish duty. Tropical in fruit with pineapple, peach and Honey Crisp apple, the toasty oak and creamy silk-laden palate fulfill the California Chardonnay wine drinker’s every desire yet spark the interest of newer consumers with balanced acidity.
• Valdo Brut DOC Prosecco – $11: It’s new, it kind of looks like Veuve and it’s cheap. Deliciously creamy yet with active acidity, dry fruit and citrus, this Prosecco is the perfect aperitif, dinner wine or dinner alternative if consumed in mass quantities. Easy to drink in maybe a dangerous way, rumor has it this wine is the highest consumed Prosecco by Italians themselves.

With so many options, hopefully this helps to narrow down the search for what to mask family tensions with or to avoid the questioning of your perpetual lack of urgency to get to the alter or to drink so much of these wines that you won’t be able to smell the breath of certain extended family members. Whatever works for you, man.