Bird Blends
If we’re talking turkey, and other accompaniments for the Thanksgiving dinner, give up now trying to find a perfect wine that will blend with everything on the table. There isn’t one. However, the joy and blessing of Thanksgiving is that many wines will work nicely if a little care is taken in pairing ingredients. There will be a dozen or more flavor combinations on the table — sweet, tart, savory — from the traditional cranberry sauce, giblet gravy and dishes such as sweet potatoes with brown sugar, to the more interesting stuffing with oysters or a pomegranate glaze on the turkey. It becomes trickier for those who combine all those different flavor profiles with duck or goose as the main meat on the table. My favorite method of wine pairing at Thanksgiving is to give your guests a choice of wine, if your wallet allows it. (And this removes some of the stress and pressure off the host). Rather than use big goblets for wine, select smaller glasses and pour a taste of a red, white, rose or even sparkling wine and let your dinner guests choose one to their liking.
Conventional wisdom on wine pairing
There are a few rules when selecting holiday wines, but once you know them, they can be stretched, bent or broken and occasionally in my house, thrown out the window. The old pairing of white wines with white meat just isn’t true anymore, although white wines, such as a good Riesling or a pinot blanc are terrific turkey wines.
First of all, I would not serve the biggest, most hedonistic and most expensive wine at a Thanksgiving meal. Whether you favor red or white wine, the best wines to pair with this kind of a feast is lighter, livelier and less complex. Anything heavy such as a big cabernet sauvignon will overwhelm your food and have you snoring on your chest before dessert arrives.
As a rule, you want to pick a wine that will blend well with white and dark meat and that is tougher than it seems because you need to support the flavors of the dark meat and not overwhelm the breast meat. You need a wine that should have sufficient body (alcoholic strength) to stand up to the foods on the table, yet not be so big that they conquer and coat every dish. Wines with high alcohol (14 percent or higher) tend to taste unbalanced with your meal.
A holiday wine should have adequate fruit, but not so overly fruity or sweet that it will turn foods such as green vegetables into bitter, weedy grass. It should also have mild tannins and sufficient acidity to cut through the fatty foods on the table. And, if you select a well-made wine, it should have flavors that linger on the palate, with perhaps some spice, or fragrance that dawdles in the mouth, leaving just a wisp of taste before taking the next bite. It is worth slowing down at this point to notice the nuances and you’ll also end up eating less.
In previous years, I’ve served zinfandel with Thanksgiving and loved it, although it didn’t work well with some of the side dishes. I have also served syrah, with its spice, black pepper and smokiness that supported turkey and dressing, but didn’t taste quite right with anything that contained sugar or citrus dishes.
Remember not to serve your white wines too cold and your red wines too warm. I generally pull white wines out of the refrigerator about a half hour or more before serving — wines served too cold will lose some of its fruity element, which is what works so well with a Thanksgiving meal. It is OK to slightly chill a lighter, fruity red wine, but again, not too cold.
Here is a rundown on wines that work for holiday meals, followed by a recent wine tasting of specific wine.
Sparkling wine: This is a great beverage to serve with turkey, since the acidity and bubbles cut through the richness of the meal and cleanse your palate. Many people will pour a glass of sparkling wine or Champagne as an aperitif — stick with something light and fizzy if serving only as an aperitif (usually very low in alcohol), or choose a Brut — a drier sparkling wine when serving with the main meal. The cranberries will taste funky, but the rest of the meal will be scrumptious.
White wine: Although chardonnay is a staple for some people at Thanksgiving, the oakiness and intensity of many California chardonnays is not ideal for a Thanksgiving feast — it’s like serving liquid wood. Stick to white wines with lively fruit and acidity and little oak. Select flavor profiles such as citrus, apple, mineral and herbal notes. My recommendations would include an Alsatian riesling, an Oregon pinot gris, a viognier that was floral and fruity with peach, apricot and pear in the mouth, a gewürztraminer or a sauvignon blanc, with a little herbaceous character to compliment the spices in stuffing and other side dishes.
Rosé wine: Dry rosé wines go well with almost anything and certainly at a table filled with all types of food. This isn’t the overly sweet “white” zinfandel. If you don’t like wines that are too dry or too sweet, this is a great selection. I have always though there are two types of people who drink rosé — those who are uncannily hip and those who aren’t hip but drink the wine anyway. I recently tried several dry rosé wines with turkey and found it to be a terrific match, particularly those with a grenache base.
Red wine: If mushrooms are in your stuffing, the best wine to compliment the bird and the dressing is pinot noir, particularly Oregon pinots, where the flavor profiles range from light and fruity to silky, earthen and filled with black fruits. Syrah and zinfandel will also work, or a light beaujolais, served slightly chilled.
Blind wine tasting nets good turkey wines
I recently held a blind wine tasting, serving seven white wines and nine red wines with a Thanksgiving-type meal, complete with two kinds of turkey, red-skinned mashed potatoes and gravy, baked acorn squash and sweet potatoes, green salad and other items traditionally served at Thanksgiving.
The white wines included a semillon, a sauvignon blanc, a pinot gris, two chardonnays, a sparkling wine and a French white burgundy. The idea was to taste the white wines with white and dark meat, and all the side dishes.
The white wines included Chateau Ste. Michelle’s Luxe sparkling wine, a recent release that went well with most of the meal, although most of the tasting panel admitted they preferred it alone at the start of the meal. I also tried Mountain Dome’s Brut Rose and the 1997 Brut the next evening with leftovers and found both sparkling wines very tasty with the meal.
Two chardonnays were tried—Forgeron’s 2003 Chardonnay from Walla Walla and Novelty Hill 2002 from Woodinville. Again, the panel preferred these wines alone, although most enjoyed with wine with turkey. Neither wine worked with the foods that contained brown sugar and most preferred it with white meat.
The clear winner in the white wine blind tasting was Latah Creek’s Semillon Blanc, a new, drier white that clearly liked food and vice versa. This wine is sold at the winery and is less than $10 per bottle. There is not a lot of complexity, so it works with lots of food.
The nine reds included a Columbia Valley syrah, a Spokane sangiovese, an Oregon pinot noir, an older California cabernet sauvignon, a grenache from Australia, two merlots from the Columbia Valley, a Spokane cabernet franc and a California zinfandel.
Most people thought the Waterbrook 2002 Syrah worked well with dark meat, but thought the wine too tart for the white meat or with the citrus-infused squash. Chateau Ste. Michelle’s 2002 Columbia Valley Merlot was also touted as good with dark meat selections. The Latah Creek Sangiovese worked with much of the food, although it did not work as well with many of the side dishes.
Overall, most people preferred the Sagelands 2002 Merlot and the Trevor Jones 2001 Grenache. Sagelands is easy to find at most stores. Although the Trevor Jones might be hard to find, I tried several Australian grenaches with the leftovers and discovered it is a variety that works with Thanksgiving food, so any number of them would work.
The bottom line in food and wine pairing is to serve what you like, but just avoid a sip of most wines with a mouthful of cranberries or sugary and citrus-infused foods.
Besides, this is a time for family and friends, and in a meal like this, getting close is good enough.