Friend, it’s too late. If you’re responsible for any part of the wine situation for Thursday’s feast and you’re looking to a wine column at this late moment to help guide you, you’re out of luck. The turkey got ordered, the cranberry chutney is made, the stalks of Brussels sprouts have been stripped. Please don’t tell me you haven’t yet deliberated over and also picked up the wine.

This is an important day, better than a birthday, and you need to prepare. Spending any part of Wednesday on wine research seems rather ill-planned, wouldn’t you say? On the other hand, I’m not sure what else we should talk about. An article on carmenere, tannin, Paso Robles, aglianico, Rueda or massale selection isn’t going to be very relevant right now, is it?

So, let’s talk – briefly, since you’re probably pretty busy getting ready – about Thanksgiving wines. Thanksgiving 2016. It is truly not too early to consider.

The guarded secret of Thanksgiving wine is that while marketers would have you think that there are countless options, very few of the most appropriate wines are currently sitting on the shelves of any retail establishment.

Sure, mid-weight whites like riesling and Vouvray, and fresh reds like cru Beaujolais and Sicilian nerello mascalese, are amazing with this meal. But that’s because those wines are always amazing! It’s just a sad fact that people are more amenable to their charms in this five-day period than they are the rest of the year.

The truth is, if you care about wine and you take an honest look at the food before each fourth Thursday of November, you will see that the most ideally matched wines are those that have lain in repose for a few years. Gamy poultry, potatoes, roasted green beans, candied squash and sausage-flecked stuffing are not, not, not calling for the youthful embrace of Beaujolais Nouveau or jammy zinfandel.

A satisfying Thanksgiving meal, forged in the twin ovens of your overstuffed kitchen and your over-analyzed family history, is calling for old wine, wine with stories, wine that’s almost as tired as it is profound.

Salespeople will tell you about the incredible 2015 vintage in Beaujolais, and prosecco, and 2013 Rhône reds and some stupid zinfandel. The motivating force there is that they bought heavy on a few wines and they want them gone by Dec. 1.

You, though, smart and skeptical buyer that you are, will take a slightly different approach. You will buy wines now for next year. You will start eyeing wines whose pleasant but somewhat skittish demeanors now will turn into something altogether more rewarding and impressive a year henceforth. Good news – they are likely to be discounted as retailers look to diminish inventory for 2015 tax reporting and start fretting about the lean winter months.

Here’s what I’m bringing to Thanksgiving tomorrow:

• Austrian riesling, dry but richly fruited and earthy, from 2008.

• German riesling spätlese from 2007, with a touch of sweetness that has begun to knit so deeply into the wine as to be indiscernible as sweetness, but it’s still ever so slightly discernible, which is why it’s so great, and there’s all that juicy acidity, too, and luxurious mouthfeel.

• German scheurebe from just one vintage back, 2011, because it’s sexy and green and kind of psychedelic, and I always try to sell it at the store where I work but no one buys it so I bring it home.

• Vouvray sec (that means dry) from probably the most highly regarded producer in the region but still dirt-cheap for what it is, from 2010.

• Corsican rosé, herbal, smooth and suggestive, from 2011.

• Beaujolais Fleurie from an excellent producer, the grippy and gulpy essence of gamay grown on granite, 2009 and 2010.

• Very, very meticulous pinot noir from Santa Rita Hills, California, the one splurge of the group, from 2011.

• Austrian St. Laurent, a woefully under-heralded indigenous grape that’s like pinot noir’s wild step-cousin, red-fruited and brambly, racy and rugged like it had to bushwhack five miles uphill to get to the bottle, from 2009 (current vintage is 2011 but I’m excited to watch what happens when such a boisterous wine enters middle age).

A couple of these cost me more than $20, the rest cost less; it was a total of $140 or so. By buying them three to five years ago, I spent $140 that I could have had earning interest; that’s the only opportunity cost. If you had invested that $140, you’d be up over me to the tune of $20 or so max, which you’re now spending on a 2014 Châteauneuf-du-Pape, 2013 Burgundy Fixin, or 2013 Russian River chardonnay that I promise you will be a disappointment.

We sit down to Thanksgiving with people we’ve always sat down with, people we love. We’re in the room we grew up in, or our spouse or mother or cousin or new neighbor grew up in. The season has turned once more. We remember, at least briefly, why we’re here on this earth; we remember our role as stewards of things much longer-arcing than our own fleshy frame. Why, in that moment, would we drink wine of youth and immaturity, wine with no memories, wine with no wisdom?

Hey, y’know what? It’s never too late. Go on out to the shop right now and buy your wine for this year’s Thanksgiving. Buy a current-vintage wine meant to drink now but taste like it’s old. For example, the Tami Nero D’Avola 2014, brittle-textured but rooted, deep-purple and soulful; the Monastero Suore Cistercensi Coenobium 2013, a long-skin-contact amber wine with shocking aromatic intensity and luxurious grace, all honeysuckle and wildflower; or the Aberrant Philtrum Pinot Noir Blanc 2014, which is rendered white through an absence of skin contact after pressing, silky but explosive, with flavors of citrus harvested from vineyards in Middle Earth.

These are wines of experience rather than innocence. If your shopkeeper doesn’t have any of them, ask for something she’s got kicking around in the basement that she gave up hope of selling some time ago. And buy a few other wines to set aside for 2016.

Oh, one more thing. There’s a Beaujolais Nouveau 2015 – you know, the category of barely fermented fruit cocktail that entered the market last Thursday and is geared to exit it a week or so later – that’s not yet for sale. It’s from the estimable no-funny-business Domaine Dupeuble, and should be available in Maine by the first of December.

The 2015 vintage in Beaujolais is supposedly extraordinary, and I can’t wait to try this wine: a dry, fresh, fun-loving expression of gamay, a Nouveau made without the artificial enhancements of so much Nouveau – built for the moment, though it’s a moment for which you have to wait just a tiny bit longer.

Joe Appel is the wine buyer at Rosemont Market. He can be reached at:

soulofwine.appel@gmail.com