Thanksgiving Archives - OddBallGrape.com

This post was originally about picking a wine for Thanksgiving Dinner, but then we realized, not everyone wants to celebrate Thanksgiving. Some folks would prefer to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day. And there are other big holidays coming up during this time of year, many of which involve special foods and cooking turkeys. So why not look at picking a wine for a Big Holiday Dinner? So, we are.

Wait. Isn’t this the middle of October? Uh, yeah. So why worry about what wines to serve for a Big Holiday Dinner now? Well, we’re offering an easy way to figure that out. Catch is, it takes some time to make happen. Besides, you don’t want to be drinking three to four bottles in one night, do you? Yeah. Didn’t think so.

All you need to pick the perfect wine for your Thanksgiving Dinner.

If you’ve never made a Big Holiday Dinner before, you can check out Anne’s series of blogs on the process, starting here. If you’ve simply been asked to bring the wine, then you can also use this post.

Now, the trick with wine for holiday fare is that not all of the traditional foods are all that wine-friendly. Sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, anything sweet, can make even the best cabernet sauvignon taste sour and icky. Think sipping orange juice after a big syrupy bite of pancakes. Blech. And wine experts will recommend all kinds of different wines. Some love pinot noir with turkey, others insist on a robust syrah, still others prefer merlot. Almost any of those will do quite nicely with a turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy. With the sweeter elements of a meal? Not so much.

Fail-safe wine

Our two fail-safe holiday wines are dry sparkling wines (including Champagne, Cavas and California sparkling) and Beaujolais Nouveau. The Nouveau is the first wine released in France and it always comes out the Thursday before Thanksgiving. Since it’s literally new wine, from this year’s harvest, it’s light and fruity, which does well with some of the sweeter parts of the meal. Plus it’s not so in-your-face heavy. That’s great for those of your guests who are new to wine, or even red wines. Bubblies are wonderful because they are already associated with celebrations, and dry bubblies go with just about everything on the planet.

So your options are boundless. And so are all the variations on a theme on the shelf at your local wine store. It’s a bit overwhelming, but fear not. You’re not going in blind and hoping the wine will work. You’re going to buy a sample bottle or four and taste them before you buy however many you need to serve your guests. And you will know how many bottles that is because each bottle has about four to five glasses of wine inside, bubblies have five to six glasses of wine.

Note, we will taste even our standard Nouveau because not every year is that good. It’s not as big a deal because there are usually only two or three brands available. Also, while whites are nice to serve with salads and soup, you’ll probably want a red to go with the stronger flavors of the main event.

The Big Holiday Dinner test tasting

For your test tasting, you’ll need three to four bottles of potential wine. You’ll also need samples of some of the different foods you’re going to be eating. For example, if you’re celebrating Thanksgiving, you might want some turkey potpies, a couple sweet potatoes and some cranberry sauce. If you’re making a brisket for Channukah, then some beef stew, some potato and onion cooked together, and whatever dessert you’re serving. Finally, you’ll need a note pad and pen or pencil.

Cook or reheat your food samples, open up one of your bottles, pour a splash and taste it while eating the pot pie and the potato. Check the nose or aroma, look at the color, but most important of all, does it taste good with the food? Write down why you think it tastes good or why it doesn’t. Is it really sour with the sweet potato? Does it taste harsh on the back of the throat even after a good mouthful of beef stew? Does it taste even smoother and more delicious with the turkey?

Then repeat the process with the other bottles. You may want to do one a night, and have someone help you finish the bottle. Or you can try sealing the bottle and putting it in the fridge and finish it some other evening. If it’s a white, just seal it and pop it in the fridge. Just don’t serve it with Thanksgiving Dinner. Red wines tend to oxidize after they’ve been opened and bubblies lose their bubbles. And whites will sometimes go off.

Once you’ve got your notes, you may have a clear winner. You may not. But that’s not such a bad thing, especially if by the time you get back to the store, your preferred wine is gone. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it does happen sometimes.

No go and taste and let us know what you’re tasting. We can always use a new idea.

As we noted in our last post, our favorite wine for Thanksgiving dinner is the annual release of Beaujolais Nouveau. From the Beaujolais region of France, it’s the first wine to appear from the current harvest. In other words, yes, that is a 2013 you see on the label (or should see), and yes, that wine was grapes a mere few months ago.

It’s basically new wine – made to be drunk, like, now, and as such is usually very light and fruity, which is why wine snobs love looking down their long bony noses at it. But that’s also why it’s one of the best matches for the full range of flavors at a Thanksgiving dinner. It’s not a sweet wine and there’s enough acid to stand up to the stronger flavors of the turkey, gravy and mashed potatoes, but there’s also not so much that it will go sour and icky with the sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce and that strange fruit something or other that Aunt Hazel puts in the stuffing. Being more fruity helps on that end, too.

This year’s release seems to reflect the really hard year France had weather-wise. They had a tough time getting their grapes to ripen fully, and this Nouveau doesn’t have as much fruit as usual. We tried it with the turkey pot pie and baked sweet potato the other night. While it was definitely tighter and a touch more tannic (that drying sensation on your teeth) than in years past, even Anne thought it worked with the sweet potato, and her palate catches sour flavors faster than Michael’s does. All-in-all, it remains a great option for your big dinner.

There are two other reasons why it’s a great option, especially if the whole fam-damily is showing up. One is that it tends to run around $10 to $12 a bottle. Since your average bottle of wine serves four (five if you’re stingy), you can afford to serve everyone a glass or two, even if you have a crowd. That high-end pinot noir or fancy tempranillo could force you into serving that fifth glass from the bottle. Secondly, there’s bound to be someone or other at your table whose palate just isn’t up to a fine red. The new boyfriend who only drinks whites. The aged grandmother who prefers sweet wine, if she drinks at all. The brand-spanking new 21-year-old who hasn’t tasted much wine before now. Beaujolais Nouveau is a nice introduction to finer reds that isn’t so dry and heavy that you need to get used to it.

One little warning – do make sure you are buying the 2013 Nouveau. When Michael went to pick up our bottle, he noticed that there were a few cases of the 2012 next to the 2013s. Nouveau doesn’t usually taste good aged. In fact, by January, the current year is already past its prime and just barely drinkable. We don’t even want to think about year-old Nouveau. Blech. So double check the vintage date on your bottle and be sure it’s the current calendar year.