Let’s talk about wine. Wine can be a quiet night-in with friends, something you save for special occasions or a collection of rare vintages that you treasure. Regardless of where you fall, it’s a beverage that brings you joy. That’s something that should be preserved, and there are so many options to do just that in the form of wine coolers, the largest growing storage solution for everybody from the casual enthusiast to the most devoted of connoisseurs.

More often than not, the wines that work best with a particular dish are those that complement the predominant flavors in the recipe. Meats of all kinds are usually the dominant flavors that grab the taste buds, so the palate needs something that softens them, enhances them or stands up to them. Throw in spices and you add another level of complexity to the dish, and a higher degree of difficulty to the food-wine pairing.

So, how to pick a wine for a dish that may not be vegetarian, but that features vegetables as the lead ingredient? By looking at the whole dish.

It's no accident that the foods signaling a traditional Thanksgiving are such late autumn staples as pumpkin, apples, Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, turnips and cranberries. Root vegetables and all kinds of squash – from acorn to butternut – are found on the menus of diverse restaurants around the country but are especially prominent in those restaurants where the produce is locally sourced and follows each season’s bounty.   

Here we are in fall and you’re probably scratching your head thinking, “why are we talking about white wines as the foliage is in its full Technicolor splendor and the temperatures are dropping about as quickly as the leaves?”