The bottle and the bird

Jon Bonné • Profile

Thanksgiving is a time for friends and family, and wine shops are packed in the days beforehand. That does not make it an ideal moment for wine. 

To put it charitably, turkey — to say nothing of green bean casserole — does not make for the best wine food.

There is a tradition of serving zinfandel on Thanksgiving, presumably to celebrate a truly American holiday with a traditional American wine. The deep fruitiness of red zinfandel may balance cranberries and other harvest fruits, but it also overpowers some Thanksgiving meals. (There's also that thing about zin's ancestry in Croatia and Italy, but let's leave it alone right now.)

Plus, as Paul Roberts, of the French Laundry in Yountville, Calif., puts it: “Zin is that horse that’s been beaten to death.”

You have a wide array of other options, including many wines beginning to overtake zinfandel as a holiday choice.

We consulted a few expert palates for wisdom on matching the bottle to the bird. While choices from around the world are plentiful, you can still find a perfect match that celebrates American winemaking.

Pinot noir from Oregon and California is the big winner, and the growing Thanksgiving choice among wine lovers. Among white wines, pinot gris is a winning match and starting to gain ground on gewurztraminer, often the popular pick for its off-dry balance.

Incidentally, it’s also a perfect time to expose your extended family to wines they might not otherwise try.  Aunt Ruth might well be a pinot fan in waiting.

The pinot pitch
Dan McCarthy of Seattle wine merchant McCarthy & Schiering also largely dismisses zin — “too tannic” for turkey, he says — in favor of pinot, especially pinot gris.

The sole exception? If you’re serving a hearty stuffing with sausage.  Indeed, McCarthy has told customers to start by considering their stuffing. (That’s dressing, if you live in certain sectors.)  Oyster stuffings are likely to need a white wine as they impart their flavors to the bird, while a meat-based stuffing can handle a red.

He also targets wines between $8 and $20, since hosts are buying more than usual: “Since it’s family, people don't really want to spend a whole lot.” There are plenty of excellent, entry-level domestic pinot noirs to be found in that range.

Roberts, wine and beverage director for Thomas Keller’s renowned restaurant, also touts pinot: “If there's one food dish with pinot noir, it's roasted bird.” He singles out wines from Carneros, the small district striding the border of Napa and Sonoma, for their bright bing cherry and spice.  For slightly bigger, bolder tastes, he endorses syrah and some of the more refined syrah-grenache based blends typical of both the southern Rhone and, increasingly, California and Washington state.

For whites, gewurztraminer gets a nod, as do lighter chardonnays (no big oak) from Anderson Valley or Santa Barbera in California, or Macon in France.

For his own table, Roberts is eyeing magnums of that most belittled of reds: Beaujolais. While it has more of a reputation as a hamburger wine, the clear fruit of its gamay grape matches sweet Thanksgiving foods without overpowering it. Bottles of the praised 2003 vintage are still circulating. “They’re more akin to Burgundy, and they're relatively cheap,” he notes. (He means that as a compliment.)

Big and bold
Michael Wild, executive chef and owner of BayWolf Restaurant in Oakland, Calif., lays out a somewhat different strategy.

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Like others, he finds Thanksgiving the right time (one of the few, in his case) to pay heed to domestic wines. But he bypasses pinot for big, bold reds, specifically those from top Washington producers like Leonetti and Quilceda Creek. Some of the bigger Washington syrahs will also work. (Given the steep price tags on these wines, it’s very lucky to be one of his guests.) These are not wines to be drunk immediately, and Wild generally serves eight- to 10-year-old vintages.

“Under ordinary circumstances, they’re not wines I would find easy to drink, especially with turkey,” he says. “But for that holiday, when we’re drinking for an extended period of time, the richness of the wine doesn't get tedious. It’s not a time when I like to drink lighter wines.”

Wild banishes hard liquor from the house for the holiday, and often starts with a bottle of Champagne.

Roberts also recommends a sparkling starter, with a twist. He recommends that you decant the wine (you're already crying heresy) and serve it in a full wine glass.  The effect is to reduce the intensity of bubbles, which allows drinkers to focus on the quality of the wine's flavor and enjoy it more as the opener to a long, pleasant meal.

There’s more to consider about sparklers (and Beaujolais). We'll revisit them as we edge closer to the holidays.

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