The third Thursday of November has always been the first day where the new vintage can be tasted in the form of Beaujolais Nouveau! Beyond the first taste of the year’s quality, Nouveau is more about celebration. Celebration of the harvest, celebration of the first revenue from a year of hard labor, and celebration of another year past all the way through the holidays.

Best enjoyed fresh, or before spring returns, Nouveau is a terrific compliment to the rich, earthy and spicy flavors that come across the holiday table. The crazy complex flavors of roasts, game, mushrooms, squash, root vegetables and flavorings such as sage, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, peppers, and the like are perfectly complemented by Nouveau’s grapey flavor and refreshing acidity.

In order to get Nouveau on the third Thursday of November, it is flown around the world to restaurants, bars and parties. Historically, fuel was low cost and the environment not foremost of consideration, so the carbon footprint wasn’t an issue. But with the environment ever more important to an increasing number of wine drinkers, the cost and fuel required to fly wine bottled in heavy glass around the globe has caused wineries to reconsider how this fun and eventful wine is distributed.

Whole Foods Market is proud to present the first ever bottling of Nouveau in plastic bottles! This lowers the carbon footprint of getting this wine to your table. Just think, less guilt while enjoying wine with friends! And it lowers the cost for you to get it to the table too. Just imagine sitting on a fatter wallet while you’re enjoying the same exact delicious wine with friends! It’s more than delicious. It’s a new way to enjoy this traditional regional wine.

Worried about how plastic changes the way a wine may taste? Well don’t be. Nouveau is for near term drinking. This wine should be in your belly before either plastic or oxygen has the time to impact the fresh juicy character of this wine.

Nouveau drinkers can rejoice with a lower priced and greener wine in 2008. If you’re not a Nouveau drinker, then there is no better year to join the celebration.

Erez Klein, our Wine Buyer for the Pacific Northwest Region of Whole Foods Market, began a passion for food and wine when travelling the world during his childhood. In college, his studies in political economy were waylaid by a course in wine appreciation and he found himself reading (and drinking) everything he could get hold of regarding wine and history. Before joining Whole Foods Market, Erez worked in Napa Valley with famed wine centric restaurateur Joyce Goldstein at Square One Restaurant and at The Auberge du Soleil Resort as Wine Director.

As the first and only organic and Fair Trade chocolate factory in the U.S., bringing Theo Chocolate to our stores as part of our Whole Trade Guarantee makes perfect sense. They have a bar for everyone, but I’m partial to their Ivory Coast Dark Chocolate Bar with 75% Cacao and the Venezuelan 91% Chocolate Bar. And you have to check out their Jane Goodall “good for all” bars, which are now exclusively available at Whole Foods Market stores. Learn more about their high standards for social and environmental responsibility. Their excellent outreach work is exemplified by Juanita Vilchez’s story below.

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Hello to all the cheese lovers out there! During the holiday season, we always get a lot of questions about how to select cheese and pair it with wines for entertaining this time of year. Our team members are always available to help you out in the stores, but we also put together this short video about choosing and serving soft-ripened cheese, like brie. Check it out and if you are inspired, try out our awesome exclusive brie from Isigny Ste. Mère, a co-operative of 700 farmers in Normandy, France. This holiday Brie is unique because it contains 60% butterfat, a formula customized especially for Whole Foods Market. Let us know what you think about it!

Welcome to the Holidays at Whole Foods Market!  We’ve put together this little video guide to help you plan your holiday party or gathering.  It highlights some of our favorite holiday tips including easy and elegant decor and how to pair our Top Ten Wines with the right cheese.

For more info, check out our Holiday Entertaining Guide.  Enjoy!

Entertaining

As you make your merry way
Through this season of giving,
Don’t get so wrapped up
That you skip joyous living.

Indulge! We’ve tasted and tested
With care just for you.
We’re loaded with goodies,
Gifts, tips and recipes, too.

Let your mantra be “Lovely,
Delicious and fine.”
We offer delight
And our gift…peace of mind.

Do you have a secret passion for Thanksgiving sides? We do, too! While we love turkey, we can’t seem to get enough of mom’s green bean casserole, silky mashed potatoes and, of course, her famous sweet potato casserole. In fact, this week’s Secret Ingredient encore episode features a recipe for a spiced up version of mom’s classic topped with all-natural marshmallows. Handcrafted without chemical emulsifiers, thickeners, artificial colors or flavors, all-natural marshmallows are the secret to a deliciously sweet Thanksgiving.

Get the Recipe: Coconut-Marshmallow Spiced Sweet Potatoes

My last blog entry was extolling the virtues of Sacha Inchi and how this unique food discovery came to be found in Whole Foods Market stores courtesy of our good friends Laurent and Thierry at the Brandstorm Company.  As promised, this time around I want to give a quick run down on the other nifty products in the TerrAmazon line.  As I mentioned, there are quite a few products that involve cacao due to its ubiquitous nature in South America.  The TerrAmazon cacao is certified USDA Organic and derived from a rare variety of cacao called Criollo, which is less bitter and more aromatic than other species of cacao.  The single ingredient cacao products include cacao powder and cacao nibs.

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You may remember back in summer when we first started up on Twitter and chose our favorite Tweet of the Day until the end of August. Well, Tweet of the Day is back – starting on Monday November 17th 2008 (coincidentally, also my birthday!).

Monday thru Friday of each week, we’ll be choosing our favorite. This person will then be entered to win the title of our Tweet of the Week and a $25 gift card. The winner will be announced on Monday of the following week.  We’ll be choosing winners for TOTD and TOTW until December 26th 2008.

What do you have to do? Just mention @wholefoods in a tweet and you’ll be considered in the running.  Don’t have a Twitter account?  Get started here.  Happy tweeting!

This week, we’ve got a spring in our step and a silly grin on our face – could it be love? Perhaps, perhaps… but seriously, folks – we’re just elated with the positive feedback we’ve gotten this week! You like us, you really like us!

First off, we were named America’s Healthiest Grocery Store by a panel of leading health experts.  Hooray!  According to the article, we topped the list because:

Whole Foods has the whole package — from an extraordinary selection of fresh conventional and organic fruit and vegetables to delicious prepared foods with healthy ingredients and clear labeling. (Most other stores offer mystery meals that may very well be loaded with butter.)

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I’m one of those people who can wander a grocery store for hours, weaving in and out of the aisles, often times doubling back just because.  However, this means that sometimes wonderful and unintended purchases end up in my grocery basket and raise my total bill beyond what I’d expected to pay.  The best way to combat this?  Have a game plan.  This week’s tips are all about efficient shopping – for better health, a faster trip and a smaller checkout total.

Remember, each week, we choose tips to be featured in our weekly The Whole Deal™ blog post. Every chosen tip gets a $25 gift card, so submit you tips and recipes here.

And now for this week’s tips on speedy shopping.
From Hillary M.

I follow a meal time schedule Monday-Friday. I eat Breakfast at 7:30 Lunch at 12:00 and Dinner at 5:30 with a 10:00 fruit and another fruit/pretzel snack around 3:00. The times don’t need to be precise everyday and if it can’t be followed exactly a granola bar always comes in handy. Doing this allows me to see what I actually eat more clearly and helps me to plan my grocery list. I always prepare dinners at night making sure to leave left overs for my lunch the following day. You’d be surprised at how much you save at the grocery store when you get what you NEED.

I also bring a calculator with me (small enough so when people see me they don’t think I am too anal). I set a limit and get the necessities first, if I have money left over I let myself indulge.

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Jaindl Farms, located in the heart of Pennsylvania’s beautiful Lehigh Valley, has been family owned and operated for more than 60 years.  David Jaindl bought the farm from his father in 2005, and manages the day-to-day operations with the help of his brother and sisters.  Their turkeys are hatched from eggs produced by the Jaindl family’s exclusive breed.  From here they are fed farm-fresh grain feed, allowed free range access, and processed in a state-of-the-art humane facility.   The great taste of Jaindl’s broad-breasted turkeys have helped land it on the Thanksgiving table at the White House for 40 years and counting.

Note: Our Farm to Market slide shows currently feature farmers and producers from our South and MidAtlantic Regions. We hope to expand to others in the future.