Thanksgiving is a hard meal to plan for.  Logistically, it’s a nightmare – lots of separate dishes, all having to come together at once.  There’s a huge bird to roast that takes hours to prep and cook properly.  A vast array of sweet and savory flavors lie in wait to sate the palate, and put us all into a postprandial coma.

All of which presents a dilemma.  I want to have a good glass of wine with dinner.  But the quantity of food and the flavors makes choosing an appropriate drink a bit of a challenge.  With candied sweet potatoes, oyster stuffing, and turkey legs waiting to send you into carbo-overload and tryptophan nappy-time, this is not an opportunity to whip out the best vintages.  That being said, Thanksgiving is a “special occasion” with friends and family gathered around the holiday table, and cheap plonk just doesn’t seem right.

So, what’s called for are decent wines that won’t get lost or be squandered competing with the bounty of the rest of the table.  They also need to be assertive enough to hold their own against a fair amount of heavy eating without adding too much of their own weight.  To this end, I would suggest serving three wines, scaled in quantity to serve all of your guests at least one glass of each.

To start the meal, I’d like you to consider a dry rosé.  Something from Tavel or somewhere else along the Rhône valley, including the southernmost AOC from the Rhône, Costieres de Nimes.  Tavel wines are more famous, and thus more expensive than the Nimes offerings, but either offers good aperitif dryness and solid red-berry fruit flavors.  These are typically blends of Syrah, Mourvedre, Cinsault, and/or Grenache Noir.  While dry, they give the impression of a slight sweetness through their bright flavors.  White Zinfandel has been the inoffensive choice of many a Thanksgiving feast, and this changes things up a little without presenting a huge challenge to the average palate.  You should be able to find a good Rhône rosé for $10-12.

Once everyone’s tucked into their stuffing, mashed potatoes, and green-bean casserole, the intensity of the wine needs to step up as well.  I’ll be getting comfy at this point, and lighter flavors are not going to play well.  Still, there’s plenty of food on the table, and I’m usually eying seconds, so this is no time to drink a glass that’ll make me want to curl up on the couch.  Enter the secret weapon – Alsatian whites.  Riesling, Gewürtztraminer, and Pinot Gris from Alsace are still dry white wines, but they have an intensity of honeyed, floral perfume and bright apple, pear, peach, melon, apricot, and citrus flavors.  Their balanced, forward acidity refreshes the palate and cuts through heavy foods.  A solid vintage will be a $15-20 wine.

For that last go-round of the dark meat on the turkey platter, the stuffed mushroom caps, and giblet gravy, I want a red wine.  Not only that, I want a red wine that wraps everything up in a velvet package with a nice little bow on top.  That calls for a pinot noir or Beaujolais.  However, being that I’m probably stuffed to the gunwhales at this point, I’m not breaking out the best vintage Burgundy, Moulin-au-Vent, or a big-buck “cult” Californian.  There are a few Sonoma Valley pinots and Burgundian vin de pays (Burgundy wines bottled by varietal name, rather than the AOC) that fit the bill, for somewhere around $10-15 a bottle, and Beaujolais nouveau is on the shelves.  Young pinots should be opened and decanted before the start of the meal, and served at the end.  Beaujolais should be slightly chilled, but not cold.

We’ve whetted our appetites with rosé.  We’ve re-stimulated our taste buds via the graces of Alsace.  Finally, as a prelude to a nap, pie, and coffee, we wrapped everything up with a restrained, approachable red – a cushion on which our weary stomachs may fall in repose.  We’ve tread the treacherous path of the Thanksgiving wine list, and emerged with a pleasant, wistful, if slightly drowsy smile.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

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Posted in Drink, Eating In, Wine , Tags Alsace, Beaujolais, nimes, pinot noir, rose, thanksgiving, Wine