This is the time of year when all the wine pundits are falling all over themselves writing about the best wine for Thanksgiving dinner. And everyone writes about a different wine. And at least one or more of those choices you look at and wonder what planet is that writer from?
No need to stress out on this one. You can pick out your own wine for Thanksgiving. Seriously. It’s easy.
You do a blind tasting. Now this is something you want to do with friends because it involves multiple open bottles of wine. But that will also make it a lot more fun.
Choosing wine for Thanksgiving Dinner is actually kind of tough because several of the traditional elements are sweet and do not go well with dry wines, whereas the savory elements are often overwhelmed by sweet wines. And just to confuse things, while turkey is technically at least part white meat, its stronger flavor tends to do better with dry reds.
There are a few exceptions. Sparkling wines go with pretty much everything. Some really fruity dry reds, such as syrahs or zinfandels, do okay with the sweeter foods as well as the savory. Anne doesn’t agree – her palate is more sensitive to the sour of acids, and to her, that’s how anything dry tastes after anything sweet.
Now since dinner is what this is all about, you will need some food to go with your tasting. We recommend turkey pot pie, something cranberry, and baked sweet potato. Pretty much everything you’re going to be eating that day is combined in those three elements.
Next, you need a few wines to try. Check in with your favorite wine merchant or see what the local Trader Joe’s is recommending. Pick up, say, three different bottles. Or have your other friends each bring one. Or get the same number of different whites and different reds, if you want to get that fancy. Because a lone white in a tasting of reds kind of gives itself away.
Doing the blind tasting
Once you’ve got your food elements ready, open the wine bottles, unless they’re white wines. Red wines usually need a touch of air to taste their best. Now, here’s the fun part. Have one person put each bottle into a different paper bag. Have another person shuffle the bottles around and number the bags. That way, no one really knows what’s in each bag.
If you have them, get out enough glasses so that each person has one glass for each wine. So, if you’ve got three wines, each person gets three glasses. But don’t stress. If you don’t have that many glasses, you don’t. Just rinse between tastes.
Then eat the food and taste the wines along with it. Make notes about what you like and don’t like.
That’s it. Simple. Then you serve the wine you liked best and to heck with what the pundit said you should be drinking. Pundits can only offer suggestions. You and your family are the only palates that count in this one.