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Thanksgiving is supposed to be a time of joy, of gathering with family and friends to celebrate life, usually through consuming huge amounts of food, and of being thankful for that family, those friends, and the huge amounts of food. Thanksgiving can also be an anxious time for anyone charged with choosing the wine.
Think about the food spread. As a centerpiece, you have the turkey. Leaving the quality of the cook aside for now, you still have a wide range of flavors that come out of that one item. A “standard” turkey from the local supermarket can achieve a certain degree of succulence, but it usually wouldn’t be described as extremely flavorful. That’s where all the brines and bastes and stuffings come into play and widen the flavor spectrum of turkey even more. Then throw in the heritage turkeys and all bets are off.
But wait, there’s more. Just about any side dish is fair game for Thanksgiving. Family traditions usually dominate in the sides category. “We always have Aunt Mabel’s deep fried cranberry fritters…” “It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving at our house without Mom’s homemade green bean casserole”. You have your own standard fares and stories, I’m sure. That just makes picking wine that much more difficult.
On top of the variability in the food, by the tradition of the day, you are usually dealing with a large number of people, all of whom have widely varying tastes (and even tasting ability). How do you pick wine to try to cover all those variables?
I see two main approaches to choosing wine for that situation. You can have a wide spectrum of wines available and let people gravitate to the ones that they like or you can try to pick one or two that you believe will work best. The first approach is a natural one if you have an ample wine collection. You can pick a bunch of stuff out of your “cellar”, line them all up on the sideboard, and then, duties completed, proceed to get sloshed yourself. There are a few problems with that approach, though…having all that open wine means either that you’ll have a lot of overnight guests sleeping it off or you will have a lot of partially filled wine bottles at the end of the evening which you will have to consume over the following days…or both.
Here are some of my simple rules for choosing the right wine for Thanksgiving or just about any occasion:
1. Don’t worry about it
Whatever you end up choosing will be good enough. What is the worst that will happen? Some people won’t like it, some will drink more water (or beer or apple juice or whatever other choice is available). That is why point #2 is important.
2. Don’t forget yourself
Your likes and dislikes count. If you hate oaky chardonnay, don’t buy one because you think others will like it. If they don’t, you are stuck with wine you don’t want to drink. And you will tend to know the most (and care the most) about wines that you like.
3. Playing it safe is playing it boring – Expand horizons, for both you and your guests
There are times when a poorly chosen wine is a very bad thing, like maybe during critical business negotiations or when meeting the potential in-laws for the first time, but usually it just doesn’t matter that much. So just like with life, choosing the wine should be a daring adventure or it should be nothing. Have some fun with it! Choose something that will be “challenging” over something that is safe. Never had a pinot noir from Hungary? Always wanted to try South African Steen with your turkey? Go for it! Giving yourself and others the opportunity to try new and different wines is a good thing and something to be encouraged.
4. Do a “wet” run
All of these points are fine but if you want to really enjoy yourself on Thanksgiving, you will need try to eliminate as many of the unknowns as possible. This includes “knowing” the wine you will be serving. Trying new wines for Thanksgiving is great, just make sure you try the wine yourself before Thanksgiving Day. Huh? What happened to that daring adventure stuff? Well, there is adventure and then there is lunacy. There is no need to play Russian roulette with a completely unfamiliar wine on the actual day with actual guests.
I suggest you go to your favorite wine store this week, the week before Thanksgiving (if you wait for the week of Thanksgiving it will be absolutely nuts — you will actually feel the panic in the air) and ask for a few different wines that the proprietor thinks would work well with [rattle off the main dishes expected for Thanksgiving here]. Be sure to clearly state your budget, too. Any wine person worth their tannins will be more than happy to take up the challenge of providing a selection of wines that will work well with your food and with your wallet. Pick four or five and take a bottle of each home to try over the next several nights. If you can have them with dishes similar to your Thanksgiving menu, great. If not, try to approximate it. I like to try mine with different chicken and pork dishes. You will be overloaded with turkey after Thanksgiving so there is no need to eat a ton before, too. See which wines you like and which others in your household like and you will have your selection.
My Sampler
Having participated in a Frederick Wildman tasting before, I was lucky enough to receive a free Thanksgiving sampler from them a few weeks ago. Since my travels have finally calmed down, I’ve now had the opportunity to taste through these wines and I’m ready to share my thoughts and opinions.
Here’s what was in the sampler pack I received (with the suggested retail price):
Folonari Pinot Grigio 2008 $8.99
Hugel Gewürtztraminer 2007 $23.99
Broquel Chardonnay 2007 $14.99
Jaboulet Parallele 45 Rouge 2007 $12.99
El Coto de Imaz Reserva 2004 $19.99
Castello Monaci Pilùna Primitivo $12.99
(Click on the name of the wine to go to the description at the Frederick Wildman web site.)
I have had some of these wines before (like the Hugel and the Jaboulet, which have been favorites of mind in the past), but I hadn’t tried these particular vintages for any of the wines.
I tasted them in pairs, thinking that 1) my partner in wine and I couldn’t polish off six bottles in one night (without really regretting it the next day), 2) tasting different pairs over different nights would allow for more food pairings while keeping each wine “fresh”, and 3) it wouldn’t be uncommon to have both a red and a white offered together on Thanksgiving. So that is what we did…for the most part. (We ended up having the Jaboulet and the Hugel on separate nights since they were consumed on work nights.)
Folonari Pinot Grigio IGT 2008
Castello Monaci ‘Pilùna’ Primitivo Salento IGT 2007
I am a big fan of Italian wines. We have visited Italy quite a few times, each time trying to tie in as many wine-related activities as possible. I am not, however, a huge fan of Pinot Grigio. I have found that there are many insipid Pinot Grigio wines being made and consumed…which is probably why they continue to be made. When I do buy/drink one, I prefer the ones from areas like Alto Adige or, in French form (Pinot Gris), Alsace. I love the minerality that Pinot Grigio from more mountainous areas can display and I don’t care for the fat fruit that dominate Pinot Grigio from fertile farmland areas.
That said, we found the Folonari to be a pleasant quaffer. First observation: it has a screw top. This was the only wine of the six that had a screw top. I am a big fan of screw tops for wines meant to be drunk young. You can read the statistics on the web but I personally have experienced the disappointment of discovering wine to be “corked” all too many times. I served it on the cold side just so we could experience it through the full temperature range as it warmed. The color was a pale yellow with a green hue. The smell was muted (since it was cold) but it a pleasant citrus/apple/tropical fruit/grass. Taste: some bright acid up front, with sort of an apple-pear-grassy flavor. There was a touch of minerality, which I appreciated. Even more so, I liked that there was no oak flavor or creaminess. Some wines are ruined by the overuse of oak, something we will experience later in the tasting lineup.
I noticed that the Folonari carried the IGT (Indicazione Geografica Tipica) designation. That is neither bad nor good but just something to note. For me, it can be an indication of how tightly the wine adheres to local wine guidelines. The most strict guidelines are DOC and DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata / e Garantita). Those wines are typically the classic Italian wines (like Chianti, Barolo and even Soave), made in traditional ways from traditional grapes in very specific geographical areas. They can be thought of as the officially “sanctioned” wines for a given location, which is named in the DOC/G (like Barolo or Brunello di Montalcino). IGT is a looser classification; it allows for more creativity in, for example, using atypical grapes for the region and employing different vinification processes. Unfortunately, I think it also sometimes allows for shortcuts and laziness in the grape growing and wine making processes as well, like allowing too many grapes to be grown and harvested or reducing the amount of ageing a wine gets before it is released. But wine classifications are a topic for another day and another blog. IGT in this case likely just indicates that the grapes were sourced from a wide area of the Veneto which, among other things, allows the wine produced to be more predictable and consistent vintage to vintage.
We had the Folonari with a smoked salmon appetizer (which worked ok) through to our main course of roasted chicken legs (also an decent pairing). While I think it wouldn’t clash with anything you might serve on Thanksgiving, it probably won’t be a very interesting match for anything either. It is a safe wine that you might enjoy as an aperitif into the beginning courses.
The Castello Monaci was an interesting wine. Primitivo has been shown by DNA testing to be genetically identical to America’s Zinfandel. For me, Zinfandel is a wonderful grape for Thanksgiving wine. Because Thanksgiving is an American tradition, it made sense to me that a truly American wine would be an ideal accompaniment. Not being a fan of wines made from Vitis labrusca grapes (like Concord), I thought Zinfandel was the best choice. That said, I like my Zinfandels to exhibit a high degree of fruit “purity” rather than to be “classed up” with oak. What I got from the Monaci was too much oak. There was some dark fruit and black licorice on the nose and some carried through to the taste but everything was masked by the oak. The fruit was there but I had to try too hard to find it. I concluded that this Primitivo is trying to be something it just isn’t…or shouldn’t be. Castello Monaci offers a very high end Primitivo/Negroamaro blend called Artas that has achieved critical acclaim (like receiving Gambero Rosso’s Tre Bicchieri award) so maybe Castello Monaci is trying to raise the pedigree of its lower end Primitivo, too, through the heavy use of oak. Don’t get me wrong — drinking the Pilùna wasn’t painful (we’ve all had wine experiences like that) but it was tiring. We found that the oaky vanilla creaminess dulled our palates and necessitated occasional sips of something brighter and more acidic (the Folonari worked well for that) to cleanse our mouths. I look forward to trying the Artas one day and I may even try future (or past) vintages of the Pilùna — I just wasn’t a big fan of this one.
Wow, this posting has taken way too much time and space! I’ll have to leave the other pairings for next time. Stay tuned for Part 2…
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