Red, White, & Pink For Your Turkey

Put down that bottle of $12 beaujolais you keep getting snookered into buying for Thanksgiving! Don’t get me wrong, there’s a time and a place for value priced beaujolais, but on Thanksgiving with the turkey you sweated over (or at least braved holiday traffic and stood in line to pick-up) is not one of those occasions. So what’s the alternative you ask? Simple.

If you’ve been buying beaujolais but really prefer drinking white, stop being silly and reach for a succulent soave from one of the zones top producers. Yes, soave-but not the stuff you usually see in the supermarket in the bottle bigger than a fire extinguisher. Times have changed and soave’s top bottlings have improved remarkably from the drak that took up shelf space just 8-10 years ago. Easy to drink and quite appreciable alone or with food, soave is dry and crisp, but the peach and apricot flavors that attack the palate will liven up any bird on the table. Look for bottles from Inama, Pieropan, Coffele, and Anselmi($12-$18) (although Anselmi's bottles won’t say Soave on them) as they all provide good examples of the new wave of winners coming from the historic zone.

If your guests are split down the middle between red and white wine drinkers, throw them a curve ball and pull the cork on a zesty bottle of rosato. Although I’m still waiting to review some of the lovely rosati from Librandi from Italy’s southern region of Calabria, the Planeta estate located in Sicily makes a pleasantly tart rosato full of white peach, lime blossom, and dried spice aromas and flavors. With a pork loin or turkey, the racy and fruit-driven nature of Planeta’s Rose ($12) will work nicely and have your table mates smiling throughout the marathon at the table.

But it is here that I suggest to you the ultimate turkey red. Lagrein, a grape grown in the higher altitudes of Italy’s mountainous Alto-Adige region, has been my Thanksgiving staple for years. Its attack is soft and enticing and full of tobacco and plum fruits, but as it gains further entry on your palate the chewy acids and tannins come through to dance with the food that exposed them and they waltz in harmony like no one’s business. Then there’s the trademark slightly almond finish that is the trademark of the grape that woos you back time and time again for another sip. Because we know that the big holiday bird can tend towards dry unless smothered in gravy, I love matching up lagrein with turkey because of its juicy and fruit driven character. Plus the rich plum and cranberry flavors naturally found in lagrein tend to sing with the side dishes that we pony up with our turkey. Muri Gries, Abbazia di Novacella, Alois Lageder, and St. Michael-Eppan all make outstanding examples and should be found in the $15-$20 range.