Many years ago I did one of my first blog posts on what wine to drink at Thanksgiving, suggesting Zinfandel should be your choice:
In the first place, the turkey is not what determines the choice of wine for Thanksgiving dinner. All those powerful sweet flavors (yams with little marshmallows) competing with equally potent savory flavors (herbed stuffing) are what has to drive your choice. Zinfandel's spicy berry flavors and mellow tannins are going to match up to the classic Thanksgiving fare than would, say, the steely tannins and currant and cedar flavors of a good Cabernet Sauvignon. In the second place, the dark meat of a good free range turkey has plenty of flavor to stand up to a zinfandel. In the third place, if you want to show off the wine, roast turkey - like roast chicken - is an great blank canvas against which the wine will show brilliantly (this is something I do not recommend for Thanksgiving, when I think the wine should be a condiment rather than the star, due to the presence of all those other dishes with their complicated flavors, but its worth keeping in mind).
In a 2004 TCS column I elaborated, observing that:
Assuming a gathering of friends but not of wine snobs, you want good wines that will complement the food but not be the star attraction. Anyway, star attraction wines -- well aged clarets, cabernets, or burgundies -- don't mesh well with Thanksgiving Day.
Granted, roast turkey would go well with most wines. Turkey is not quite as much of a blank canvas as roast chicken, as it has stronger flavors and a firmer texture, but it still will work well with most wines.
Instead, the problem children at the table are all the other things we eat at Thanksgiving. You have a lot of strong and diverse flavors with which to deal. Worse yet, you've got both sweet and savory items, sometimes in the very same dish: herbed stuffing, yams with those little marshmallows, cranberry in some form, and (lord help us) Jello molds. No fine claret or burgundy should have to compete with little marshmallows.
Which led me back to Zinfandel and a Ridge Lytton Springs or Geyserville Zinfandel-based wine with some age on it has been my standard Thanksgiving wine for many years.
But this year the WSJ suggests going a different route and I'm more or less persuaded:
Our radical plan to make Turkey-Day even more delicious? Pair your Thanksgiving meal—from start to finish—with sparkling wines: Champagne, Prosecco or Cava. Here’s how to pull it off. ...
Sparkling wine happens to be particularly well-suited to the Thanksgiving table—and I’m not only talking about the pre-dinner toast. The bubbles provide a lively counterbalance to the rich flavors and general heaviness of the meal (although they won’t necessarily counteract the turkey-induced tryptophan fatigue). Think Prosecco or Cava. Or, better yet, think rosé Champagne, which has the weight of a red wine with the liveliness of a white—and bubbles that lend a more festive note.
I'm on board with the bubbles. But then the article goes off the rails by recommending all sorts of foreign wines. And that's where I get off the train. As I observed all those years ago:
While lots of countries have some sort of thanksgiving holiday, Thanksgiving -- with a capital T -- is a quintessentially American holiday. So I start narrowing down the field with a basic proposition: Only American wines on the Thanksgiving table.
This has been my hard and fast rule for many years. And that seems especially appropriate this year with all the talk of nationalism in the air. Even a Davos-loving, globe trotting, citizen of the world should be okay with a little wine chauvinism.
This gives us a lot of choices. Schramsberg rose would be a nice choice for the main meal, with their cremant for dessert. J Schram would be a great choice if you're going to push the boat right out. Argyle (Oregon) and Iron Horse would be good choices too.
But here's a real wild card: Sparkling red zinfandel. Long time readers readers will recall my love affair with Australian sparkling shiraz:
Now we come to my favorite fast food and the ideal match. I love NY- style pepperoni pizza with extra cheese. It's a tough match for wine. You've got the bread of the crust, the acidic and often rather sweet tomato sauce, the salty meat, the rich and unctuous cheese. You need an acidic wine to slice through the fats, big flavors to stand up to the salt and tomatoes, and something to scrub the palate. In my book, the ideal match is a good Australian sparkling shiraz. It has all the requisite attributes. Indeed, if you can literally feeling your arteries clogging as you eat a good pizza, you can also feel a good sparkling red wine cleaning them out. It's the roto-rooter of Wine matches.
The same qualities would make an interesting (although perhaps too forward) match for Thanksgiving. Sadly, there aren't a lot of US versions, but Schug and Picchetti make sparkling red Zinfandels in the style of Australian sparkling shiraz.
As I assessed the state of my cellar, however, there was one obvious choice: 2012 Sea Smoke Sea Spray LD sparkling wine. It's mostly Pinot Noir, which makes a nice match for this meal. Medium weight with nice strawberry and black cherry fruit, with toast and nuts on the finish. This is the late disgorged version, which ramps up the yeast flavors and adds a lot of complexity. Good acidity and tons of very small bubbles refresh the palate.
