We’re three weeks away from The Big Feed and you need to
start thinking about buying wine. Since you’re the classy, thoughtful
individual that you are, you actually give a rip about how the wine goes with
food and you don’t want anyone to take a sip, and go “um…ew.”
Thanksgiving wine-buying can be challenging. At a standard
dinner party, there’s usually a general theme or national cuisine you can pull ideas
from. A traditional Thanksgiving meal presents you with bunch of flavors beyond
turkey that usually don’t play well with grapes. Cheesy casseroles, sweet
potatoes, various beans and legumes, yeasty rolls, and other homestyle
favorites create a riot of flavors that simply aren’t conducive to a pause and
savor pairing.
Your goal instead is to treat Thanksgiving like the
gluttonous feast it is. We’re shooting for a selection of “good enough” wines to
please a range of palates, yet give people enough options so they’re not making
wine runs after the salad course. Here, for your grape-purchasing pleasure, are
the Naked Vine’s steps to success:
First – How many wine drinkers at the table?
Get a rough count. Even if you have guests who have
expressed that they don’t like wine, budget for them anyway. Assuming it’s too
late to uninvite them, they’ll probably end up sneaking a glass or two anyway
because they “just want to try it with food.” Worst case scenario: a couple of
extra bottles get left over for slugging during cleanup.
I subscribe to the 80% rule. Let’s say you’ve got 10 guests.
Eighty percent puts you at 8 bottles. Each bottle holds 5 glasses of wine, so
you’ve got 40 glasses total to go around. In my experience, heavy and light
imbibers tend to balance each other out. Adjust accordingly if you are cooking
for a number of true teetotalers or if you know that you’ve got some
professional lushes like your narrator at the table. Also, since most people bring
at least one bottle with them, you should have a comfortable cushion.
Second – Start with
bubbly.
My one hard-and-fast rule for Thanksgiving beyond the above calculation – start everyone off with bubbly. Toasting the start of the meal
with a glass of bubbles wakes up everyone’s palates and appetites and gets
everyone in a good mood. Also, since you generally don’t pour full glasses of
sparkling wine, you’ll likely only need an extra bottle or two, max.
I’d recommend something like the Gruet Blanc de Noirs from New Mexico or my old Spanish standby Freixienet Extra Dry. Again, nothing complex -- think crisp, refreshing, and
food friendly. Some of your guests might also prefer bubbles with your first
course, whether it’s soup, salad, or something else.
Third – Taste the
Rainbow
Now we get to the actual wines for dinner. We’re not going
to mess with course-by-course pairings. That takes too much energy and besides,
you might have to make a mad dash to the kitchen, frantically searching for
your copy of your local newspaper to fan the smoke detector, which is still
sounding incessantly after you left your oven mitt on the burner.
In most cases, I’d suggest getting three different types of
wine. Why three? Like I said – we’re doing wine in broad brushstrokes here and
people like to sample. Think about basic flavor profiles. We can immediately rule
out super light whites like pinot grigio. They’ll get run over by the feast’s
flavors. On the other end of the spectrum, avoid highly-tannic or oaky wines
like most American cabernets or Chardonnays or big rustic French and Italian
wines. We don’t need complexity to get in the way of the stuffing. The three
profiles I use are:
Fruity and Flavorful
Whites – For the white wine drinkers, I’d suggest whites with a lot of
fruit flavor and usually a little sweetness. I’m a big fan of Thanksgiving
Riesling. Chateau St. Michelle Dry
Riesling and Kung Fu Girl Riesling are a couple of easy to find choices. If
you’d like to go German with your Riesling, look for bottles that are labeled
“Trocken,” which means dry.
Light, Comfortable
Reds and Rosé – Good middle of the road, “keep on pourin’” wines that pair
up with almost any sorts of food, be it meat or fowl. I love my rosé, but for
this occasion, avoid those beautiful, delicate flowers from Provence. Go with a
fuller, more fruit-forward bottle – perhaps something from Italy like Villa Gemma Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo or a
South American version like Montes
Cherub Rose of Syrah from Chile.
If you can’t bring yourself to buy pink wine, then another
quality option here is Beaujolais,
specifically, Beaujolais-Villages.
Thanksgiving is also the one time of year that I find it OK to buy Beaujolais Nouveau, which is usually
released around then. Don’t get suckered by a sale and buy last year’s vintage,
though.
Big, Boomin’ Reds
– Because every table will have at least one person who likes to drink big ol’
reds, don’t leave them out. My go-to wine when I need something big, fruity,
and rich is good old California Zinfandel. Seven
Deadly Zins, Ravenswood Vintner’s Blend, and their other $10 cousins should
do nicely. If you want to look beyond California, a Garnacha (Grenache) like Los Rocas from Spain or a
Cotes-du-Rhone like M. Chapoutier
will certainly fill the bill without giving folks big mouthfuls of tannin.
In my previous eight-bottle example, I’d probably get two
bottles of the whites and three bottles of
each of the other two categories to
start with. I find that folks tend to lean red as the night goes on. Obviously,
you know your dinner guests better than I, so jigger as necessary. And remember
– while you can send leftovers home, all remaining wine stays with the house!
Happy Thanksgiving!
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