We'll admit to feeling totally relieved Thanksgiving is behind us. Why should we feel this way about such a happy occasion? Something in the air, maybe. Either way, now it's time to relax, shop, and open some really good wine for no reason at all! The crowds have gone, your kitchen's a wreck and cooking's the last thing on your mind. Let the wine inspire your food choices for the next few nights as you relax into true winter.

Too little, too late: Rebecca Murphy's pick this week in the Dallas Morning News sounds like it was meant for turkey, and if the description is true, it is a bargain for the money. It is a mix of two grapes we have never heard of: "muller-thurgau and traminer, grown on the slopes of Mount Vulture in Basilicata, the arch of the boot in southern Italy." This one might be tough to find, but Hot Plates loves a treasure hunt.

The Morning News also picked up this bit from the Associated Press about a new beverage that sounds rather horrifying. A just-for-women vodka? Silly stuff. Read it just for kicks, or if you know someone who won't drink wine but needs a little something in her glass at toast time.

Kim Pierce of the DMN does a writeup/mini-explainer of two Portuguese wines, one for $7 and one for $30. Both red and both good party wines.

We love that the L.A. Times calls this wine feature "Quick Swirl." This week, writer S. Irene Virbila tell us about a fish-friendly white that is not quite an everyday wine, but it does sound tasty: Château Carbonnieux "is all cool, steely fruit -- a gorgeous example of the Bordeaux blanc." Limey, minerally ... yum, especially after all those big flavors sitting on our palate yesterday.

Kermit Lynch is called "Berkeley's wine radical" by The New York Times. They profile this important wine importer in the week's wine column because "His influence can be seen almost any time you go into a good wine shop and spot people looking at the labels of wines to check the importer." He changed the game, as they say, when he wrote "Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer's Tour of France," in 1988. Hot Plates thinks this would make a great gift for a wine nerd we know (who was just a high schooler when the book came out).

The L.A. Times has a great piece on aperitifs and liqueurs that will help you purchase holiday gifts or just select something interesting -- in a pretty bottle to boot -- to serve after dinner at your next less-pressure-than-Thanksgiving party, when people are really letting their hair loose. We need a bit of that right about now, no?

OK, OK. We know Beaujolais Nouveau isn't everyone's idea of fun. But we have loved it since we were a kid dipping our finger in our dad's glass each Thanksgiving. We would join him for the trip to the wine shop to buy a bottle or two for the turkey dinner, and we thought he was the world's smartest, most sophisticated guy as he explained the annual Nouveau ritual to us.

By the time we were old enough to purchase wine, we thought we were truly living if we snagged a bottle of Duboeuf to have with dinner. Now that our wine tastes have slightly matured, we do still love it, but we understand that its super-juicy, mouthful-of-fruit quality leaves some wine drinkers cold.

The Wall Street Journal's Tastings column reports that this year's Nouveau might just lure back people who got turned off to it in years before, when the price began to creep up and the young fruitiness of the wine was too much for consumers. Their 2007 Beaujolais Nouveau Index will help you select which one is best this year (though Duboeuf remains the one typically found in smaller wine shops, so you might have to search for the others a bit).

Something Dottie and John say in their column really rings true for us. "Does it sometimes seem to you, like us, that you're always living in the future? That's why Beaujolais Nouveau is such a treat. It's the ultimate carpe diem wine, meant to remind all of us to enjoy the moment." We hope this puts a kick in your step, too.