Thanksgiving Dinner with Wine

Thanksgiving is this Thursday! Time to spend 7 hours making a meal that gets consumed in 20 minutes. Yay! Thanksgiving is the official kickoff of the holiday season, which means that we’re all going to eat and drink too much from now until 2010.  That being said, let’s talk a little about Thursday’s meal.

From a traditional standpoint, families all across the country are going to be preparing a turkey. There are a number of preparations that we could get into, but, we’re not going to. If you have specific questions, feel free to ask. Popular sides for Thanksgiving include potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, etc.

A lot of people have been asking us lately what to pair with their dinner on the 26th. We are happy to give our advice, and are actually really looking forward to doing some pairing experiments of our own. However, to be safe, here is a brief list of wines that we recommend with your Thanksgiving dinner this year. We have shared some amazing bottles of wine this year that we feel would be appropriate on Thursday afternoon.

Classically we would like to recommend Champagne.
This bottle of Chartogne-Talliet was a bottle given to us on our wedding night by a friend that we enjoyed a great deal. ($42)

Secondly, we would recommend drinking a nice Pinot Noir with your dinner this year. This bottle of  2006 Williams Selyem Pinot Noir from Sonoma County is one of our fondest wine drinking memories together, and we would like you to make your own special memories with this bottle. ($68)

Beaujolais Nouveau is a traditional pairing which is released on the third Thursday of every November right before Thanksgiving. We have never paired it, but we will tell you that we will be this year, just to see how it goes. This wine separates wine snobs from wine lovers. It’s about $8 a bottle, and easy to find.

Might we also recommend an Austrian Gruner Veltliner. This is a bottle that was on our by-the-glass list at the wine bar where we met, and eventually worked together in New York. Our decision to pair a Gruner is primarily based on its compatibility, but also in honor of our friends in NY who we miss. ($18)

Finally, we would like to offer up another twist on tradition, and recommend a Zinfandel blend that we were given as a gift from another friend back in March of this year. We are recommending the 2006 vintage (for nostalgic value), though the 2007 vintage is equally as impressive. Ridge 2006 California Geyserville- Zinfandel Blend. ($42)

These are our recommendations this year. Being that this is our first Thanksgiving as a family, we are thankful that we have a lot of wine at our fingertips in case dinner doesn’t turn out like we hope it does. Happy Thanksgiving! Cheers!