What wine should you want to pair with Alice’s Restaurant Massacree…?

Now, this is a blog post about what wine to pair with Alice’s Restaurant Massacree. It’s about wine and Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, but Alice’s Restaurant Massacree isn’t a restaurant or a massacree, it’s a musical Thanksgiving story-turned-social movement by Arlo Guthrie. This all started a lot more than two Thanksgivings ago, long before I first became aware of a Thanksgiving tradition of my weird older cousin. This song goes back all the way to 1967. But for my personal history, we don’t have to go back quite so far. When my cousin and I were kids, every year before arriving at my house with his family for Thanksgiving dinner, he’d listen to this nearly twenty minute long song. And once we (the family) inevitably became aware of his personal tradition, every Thanksgiving somebody would inevitably ask him at dinner, “Have you listened to Alice’s Restaurant Massacree yet?” and his answer was always, invariably, “Yep.” I have, however, with age come to learn that this is not a tradition that is personal to my weird older cousin. People all over are listening to Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, which is not the name of a restaurant but rather a song, every Thanksgiving. So, I suppose that begs the question: if you can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant, what wine should you want to pair with Alice’s Restaurant Massacree?

As Arlo Guthrie explains in great detail through the tale he so carefully weaves for us, Alice doesn’t live in the restaurant, but rather in the church nearby the restaurant. So, it would stand to reason that perhaps on Thanksgiving you might want to pair your annual listening of Alice’s Restaurant Massacree with a wine that was made in a church. I’m not suggesting that you go out and steal a bit of sacramental wine, as that would likely land you a phone call from Officer Obie. Even if you’re brave and honest on the phone about what you’ve done–nobody’s going to give you a medal. So, rather than stealing from a church, perhaps you should consider buying some wine from a church. You may be surprised to learn that there are a slew of wineries occupying old churches. One example of such a place is Wooden Door Winery’s Vandergrift location in New Kensington, Pennsylvania. While they offer all sorts of wine, I’d suggest the Corot Noir. This red wine may not be quite the same hue as a red VW Microbus, but it’ll pair excellently with both your Thanksgiving dinner and your annual listening of Alice’s Restaurant Massacree. 

If you’d rather have a wine from the, quote, scene of the crime, unquote, look no further than Graham Farmhouse Winery and Apiary. While Arlo Gutherie explained in his musical tale that the town of Stockbridge, Massachessets has three stop signs, two police officers, and one police car, he forgot to mention the winery and apiary–maybe because it’s in West Stockbridge. The Little Autumn Pinot or Wicked Acorn Red are again, not quite the same hue as a red VW Microbus, but perfect pairings for a Thanksgiving listen of Alice’s Restaurant Massacree. 

If you’re not a red wine drinker and you’re more of a shovels, rakes, and implements of destruction sort of person, you might consider pairing a barleywine with your annual listening of Alice’s Restaurant Massacree. Rohrbach Brewing Company makes a barleywine called Instruments of Destruction. Barleywine isn’t really a wine, it’s a beer. (Just like Alice’s Restaurant isn’t really the name of the restaurant, it’s the name of the song.) But with this beer’s notes of toasted hazelnut and orange, it’s worth a sip or three. For a beer, it has a relatively high ABV clocking in at 9.2%–it’s won’t help you clean up your friends house or get the trash to an appropriate dumping site, but this blackwheat brewed ale might help you get through another Thanksgiving with your family without internally screaming, “I want to kill, kill, kill!” 

If you can relate to being put in group W (group W is where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army) maybe you’d like a wine from Warburn Estate to help display your group W pride. The labels for these wines boast a giant letter W. They’ve got a wide variety of white wines and red wines, for whatever your inclination may be because mean, nasty, ugly looking people deserve a nice glass of wine just as much as the next person. So, if you’re part of the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacree Movement, you really can get just about anything you want to pair with Alice’s Restaurant Massacree. If you want to end war and stuff, you’ve got to sing loud–wine helps. Happy Thanksgiving, friends.