Wine for Thanksgiving

It’s that time of year when anyone who writes about wine feels obligated to make recommendations for wines to serve at Thanksgiving. In keeping with that tradition, here are mine.

My significant other and I have fantasies about the perfect Thanksgiving, an elegant meal with a small group of gourmet friends featuring a number of elegant courses accented by fine wine paired perfectly with each dish. The realitiy is that we host a family gathering of eighteen (or is it twenty?) people ranging in age from roughly one to seventy. The dinner is traditional turkey (26 pounds), mashed potatoes (15 pounds), various vegetables served with cheese sauce (too many pounds to count), and of course that jellied cranberry sauce that only one or two people eat. We’re lucky that by adding two tables end to end with the dining room table and using every chair in the house we can actually get the crowd all seated, if only momentarily. Only about half of the adults are wine drinkers with the rest drinking milk, soda and beer.

With that in mind, we avoid anything over $15, try to keep it simple, and have enough on hand so that there is a glass left to drink while cleaning up after the crowd has gone. Here then is what we probably will be drinking this Thanksgiving.

For a white, we’ve been drinking the Hogue Gewurtztraminer ($9). I am not a big fan of Chardonnay, especially at the low end, and don’t find it a good match for food. The Hogue has a nice balance of crispness and fruitiness without being too sweet. Just the thing to go with turkey and mashed potatoes. If you prefer your whites a little sweeter, Hogue also makes a Late Harvest Riesling in the same price range that should suit you. Both of these wines are readily available.

The subject of the perfect red wine for Thanksgiving always causes debate, and from any group of three wine experts you can expect at least four opinions. In the past, I’ve usually chosen either a Zinfandel or a Syrah. Syrah is a very food friendly wine and Zinfandel has enough fruitiness to avoid overpowering the turkey.

This year I think we will go with the Cline Ancient Vine Zinfandel ($12-$14). This is a nice Zin with a bit more depth to it than Zin’s a few dollars less. There are certainly a number of Zin’s in this price range that would also be good choices, the Ravenswood Vintner’s Blend ($10) and the Renwood Sierra Foothils ($12) come to mind.

If I was going to go with a Syrah, I’d be tempted to choose the Qupe Central Coast ($16) though it is just over the $15 mark. I’ve been a fan of this wine for years. It is elegant, smooth, and extremely food friendly, everything one looks for in a good Syrah. There are of course any number of Australian Syrah’s (Shiraz), but this is after all, an American holiday.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged as: Thanksgiving, tradition, wine