My Election Results Wine Pairing

At 9:25am (Pacific Time), shouts of joy and car horns filling the streets of Oakland all around me, I texted my partner the answer he’d been waiting for: “Grab the TJ’s brut rosé.” The question? What to drink with the news that all major outlets had called the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden. I can explain myself, obviously.

I try to find wine pairings that work on multiple levels. It’s an emotional pairing in that the general level of excitement I feel about a Biden presidency is more like a glass of water, but the level of excitement I feel about Trump losing and getting humiliated on TV is closer to Champagne Vilmart, so the average of the two is somewhere right around TJ Brut Rosé.

It is also a more practical choice in that TJ Brut Rosé states on the label that it is méthode champenoise (Champagne method) despite being $9.99. The wine nerd in me, having never tasted this particular TJ wine, is curious what traditional-method bubbles actually taste like at that price point, since the laborious nature of this style of winemaking is one reason for the higher cost of most Champagne (along with higher marketing budgets). Similarly, while I have no hope that the Biden presidency will get me anything I wanted––Medicare for all, closing the wage gap, taking on corporate power, improving the lives of the most vulnerable people in the country, reassigning the duties currently given to the police––I am morbidly curious whether it will be possible to push his administration left over the next four years simply out of awareness that successful left-wing candidates have run on these policies around the country. But unlike political promises, wine labeling gets enforced, so I know the TJ Brut Rosé is somehow made by traditional method whether it ends up tasting like Champagne or not. And I have to say that’s comforting right now.