This time of year, various food sections around the land trot out their theme recipes and turkey test kitchen smack downs like "24 Ways To Tart Up Your Holiday" or "Deep Fried or Brined…Why Not Both?" I am morally opposed to this sort of behavior. Thanksgiving means family. Family means tradition, and tradition means that on Thanksgiving, we all want to eat mashed potatoes the way Grandma made them; we don't want cold, miso-glazed Brussels sprouts. We want our petit chou with plenty of butter and bacon the way God and Mama intended. So when it comes to all the "What wine goes best with Thanksgiving" articles, I unrecommend reading them.
It's the holidays — drink what you like. Besides, you're gorging on so much salt and fat, how could dinner be derailed by a little ole glass of wine? The one day of the year on which you can eat however much of whatever you want deserves the same attitude toward your beverage. If you don't want your beverage interrupting the gluttony, just keep a few things in mind:
Beaujolais Nouveau: Aged only a few weeks, this insta-wine is wonderful…but only if you're in France. Farmers make the nouveau immediately after harvest and release it the third week of November,which is quite convenient for marketers around Thanksgiving. Beaujolais Nouveau made a fun enough novelty back in the days when it was $8 per bottle and gas was $1.99 per gallon, but these days the price requires serious pause. The wine also travels express to our country to get here in time for the release date, adding both to the wine's carbon footprint and your bill. If all of this doesn't convince you to avoid it, remember that most Nouveau tastes the same due to the quick turnaround and industrial yeasts used by the major brands, all bubble-gummy fruit with a hint of tin can.
Big Reds: High-alcohol, super-fruity reds are not something I would drink at Thanksgiving. However, if you’re ingesting close to 5,000 calories in one day, who am I to tell you that your 16-percent-alcohol Zinfandel is over the top? Go big or go home, right? Look: Very-berry reds will plain knock you out. Just think about your drink in reference to the morning after, and definitely do not operate a motor vehicle after an evening of tryptophan and big red.
Tannins: Just say "no" to Cabernet and other wines that will come off far too dry amidst the feast. In general, the lighter and fruitier the red, the better. So bust out your favorite Pinot Noir or get a few cheap southern French table reds (extra points if you can see through them).
Whites: Anything too sweet will lead to overkill, and anything too dry will taste almost sharp up against the food on the table. A Riesling with a kiss of sugar and some puckering acidity refreshes with personality plus and leaves your mouth apple fresh and ready to be crammed with cornbread stuffing.
Chardonnay Caveat: According to the American Council on Fitness, the average Thanksgiving meal contains almost 3,000 calories and over 200 grams of fat. In most Thankgiving meals, many of those calories come from butter. Thanks to their various oak treatments, many Chardonnays already taste buttery, and when paired with the butter of the meal, could turn out tasting like butter-flavored juice. But if you make sure the Chardonnay you pick up is unoaked, it can make a great choice. A Chardonay's tree-fruit flavors like apple meld well with stuffing, sweet potatoes, and roast meat.
Bubbles and Pink: Nothing goes better with a multi-dish feast like a fruity, uncomplicated bubbly. My heart belongs to prosecco, but I'm prone to purchase whatever's on sale. Bubbly cuts through the fat and salt, and I'm convinced that bubbles help keep the tummy aches away. Rosés, meanwhile, often have the best qualities of white and red wines all in one. Dry and crisp, they shine through the rich foods on the table, and the red fruit flavor of rose wines can serve the same purpose as cranberry sauce — tart and fruity.
Maggie Savarino Dutton is an industry veteran who has played bartender, sommelier and line cook and who now consults. She writes "Search & Distill," which appears every Wednesday in the Seattle Weekly, and maintains The Wine Offensive, a blog about wine, food, and anything else that might be discussed over the bar.
Home page photograph from victor_nuno via Flickr (Creative Commons), "Planet of the Grapes" photograph from Getty Images, "Bottle" photograph from istockphoto.com.
