Posts Tagged ‘Beaujolais’

Three Wines for Thanksgiving Dinner

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

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.

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