best type of wine for turkey

Uncork a great Thanksgiving feast this year with wine. Whether you tend toward reds, whites, or bubbly, there's something here for everyone and everything -- even dessert! Share your take on this idea!Upload your photo here. By tradition, more wine is sold for Thanksgiving Day dinner than for any other meal of the year.Plan ahead what wines you will serve right along with your Thanksgiving meal to get the best value for this spectacular day. In some ways, choosing a single wine for Thanksgiving dinner is difficult, given the great variety of foods and flavors. There's white and dark meat. There are sweet and rich yams, tart cranberries, buttery mashed potatoes, stuffing made with any number of ingredients, and spiced pumpkin pie for dessert. You may want to serve a little of several different types of wine so guests can taste a wine with each dish. Or you may want to pick one good all-purpose wine. The most important consideration is the wine's taste, how it complements what you're serving, and what you like.

There are no hard-and-fast rules for picking the right red or white wine. Whether you favor whites or reds, lighter, livelier, less complex wines go better with the traditional Thanksgiving feast than heavier, more complicated ones. (After all, you don't want everyone to be asleep by 3 p.m.!) Here's a rundown of wines that are perfect with turkey and all the fixings. The fine bubbly bite of a great sparkling wine makes any event more lively and special. Serve a flute or two as a starter as guests are arriving -- or at the table; they're wonderful companions for food. If you're serving a sparkling wine with dinner, be sure it is labeled brut (which means it is dry) and not a sweet sparkling wine such as Italy's Asti Spumante. Though the standby white wine for many is Chardonnay, generally, the oakiness and intensity of most Chardonnays is not ideal for the Thanksgiving feast. Consider instead white wines that are refreshing, tangy, and fruity, such as: Viognier: Floral and fruity, with essences of peach, apricot, and pear.

Chenin Blanc: Spicy and slightly sweet with high acidity.Sauvignon Blanc: Light and crisp, with grassy or herbaceous flavors. Riesling: Can be dry or sweet; spicy, fruity flavor with touches of peaches or apricots and a floral fragrance.Gewurztraminer: Can be dry or sweet. The German word gewurtz means "spiced." These wines are highly aromatic with floral touches and spice notes such as cloves or nutmeg. Yes, you can serve red wine with turkey breast.
best white organic wineYou may not want to serve Cabernet because it is generally too tart and high in tannins to match well with turkey, but you can serve a lighter red.
washington wine top 100In fact, it is a red wine that has long been the classic choice for Thanksgiving because its light berry brightness contrasts well with the heartiness of the traditional menu.
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But red wine doesn't stop there. Consider any of the following: Pinot Noir: Younger wines are fruity with essence of plums, strawberries, cherries, and raspberries. Older wines have a smoky edge to them.Syrah: Strong spice and black pepper qualities. Older syrahs are fruitier, with some smokiness. Also called Shiraz if it comes from Australia.Zinfandel: Lots of intense, plummy, jammy flavors with spicy or peppery notes.Beaujolais: Light and dry with fresh, fruity flavors.
wine and food houstonChoose more recent vintages and serve it slightly chilled.
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best wine for 30 pounds Rose: Crisp, light, and fruity, this lovely light pink wine (much drier than syrupy White Zinfandel) might be just the thing to serve with a hearty meal.

Muscat: Can be white, light, and slightly sweet or dark and quite sweet. Perfumy and musky, with essence of oranges. Port: Sweet, fairly heavy fortified wine. Younger ports are fruitier. Older ports are less sweet, tawny in color, and have a nuttier flavor from longer aging in wood.Sauternes: Be sure there's a final "s" on the bottle of Sauternes you buy. "Sauterne" is a generic name for cheap, dry to semisweet wines made from a blend of only fair-to-middling grapes. Real Sauternes comes from France and is delightfully sweet, with notes of vanilla, pineapple, and peach.Riesling or Gewurztraminer: Reprise either of these -- in their sweeter incarnations (see entries under "The Whites," above) if you served them with dinner. Or break out a new bottle with the pumpkin pie.Asti Spumante: A sweet or semisweet sparkling wine from Italy. Serve it well chilled. Click below for more great holiday wines along with buying and serving tips to enjoy all year long View Buying and Serving Tips

This year’s best Thanksgiving wines take into consideration that not all turkey dinners are made equal. Here are ten wines that pair well with turkey based on how it’s prepared. TIP: The wines listed below focus primarily on red fruit flavors which typically pair well with harvest foods and poultry. A perfectly prepped turkey is truly a revelation. Now, all you need is the right wine to sip alongside of it. Garnacha might just be the unsung wine of Thanksgiving. It has loads of red fruit flavors in the realm of strawberry, raspberry and candied hibiscus as well as a distinct dusty quality. When matched with turkey and gravy, Garnacha falls nicely into the role of the cranberry sauce. Beaujolais was awesome in 2009 and then again in 2013. Seek out one of the 10 Crus (you can learn more about Beaujolais Crus here) or a Beaujolais-Villages level wine. Beaujolais is bone-dry and somewhat herbaceous with floral notes of violet, peony and iris. In terms of fruit flavors, expect tart and fresh fruit flavors of boysenberry, sour cherry and cranberry.

You’ll be spending so much time with your nose in a glass, that you won’t overdo it with the stuffing. By the way, Beaujolais is low alcohol… and low calorie. Carignan went from being a lowly blending grape to making a name for itself from the Languedoc-Roussillon. The wines are bursting with red fruit flavors, cinnamon spice and a distinct meaty note, almost like a kielbasa sausage. Because of its meatiness, it makes an amazing pairing with dark meat. The spice flavors of cinnamon and allspice in the wine will also make a simple mashed sweet potato dish come to life. TIP: Look for ‘old vine’ Carignan from the Cotes Catalanes and Roussillon, France. Pinot Noir is the darling choice for poultry as a light red wine. Since the US just had 2 awesome vintages in a row (2012–2013), you’ll luck out on value Pinot Noir this year. For lighter, more delicate styles, seek out Oregon Pinot Noir. For richer Pinot Noir, look into California, Chile and Patagonia, Argentina.

A dry turkey is the bane of many a Thanksgiving, but sometimes there’s not much to do about it. If this sounds like it could be your situation, here are a few wines that you can rely on to moisten even the driest turkey: Think of Brachetto d’Acqui like a boozy version of Martenelli’s apple cider, but better. It has perfumed aromas of raspberry, orange blossom and candied citrus with moderately high acidity and light bubbles. It’s a low alcohol, sweet red sparkling wine (about as much octane as an IPA) so you can literally suck it down after every bite. Ditch your customary wine glass and drink Brachetto out of something that was popular when the wine was drunk in the House of Savoy: Quite a large number of American Rosé wine is made with a method called ‘Saignée’, where about 10% of the juice of red wine is drained off (before it gets too red) to make Rosé. The resulting wine is rich, like a red, with bold fruit flavors but super juicy. Juicy enough for even the driest slice of white meat…

A smoked turkey is a beautiful thing, especially when it just comes already prepared and you don’t have to do any work. The flavors are rich and somewhat sweet. You’ll need a stronger wine to hold up to a smoked turkey. The combination of 3 varieties, –Grenache, Syrah and Mourvédre,– make up the blend. Because of the mishmash of varieties, you’ll taste both red and black fruit flavors and find a range of medium to full-bodied flavor. These wines are a perfect match for a rich piece of meat because of their complexity. And yet, they are still light enough for poultry. TIP: looking for a great Rhône wine? Check out this recent post for a wine inspiration list. Zinfandel is the classic turkey pairing wine for 2 reasons: for one, it’s a variety with a long history in America and two, the flavors of raspberry and sweet tobacco are an ideal match for rich darker or smoked turkey meat. It also will do great alongside a honeybaked ham. Zinfandel tends to be much more fruit-forward which is why is does well with sweet meat.

The best Zinfandels generally hail from these 5 regions: Sonoma, Napa, Lodi, Santa Barbara and the Sierra Foothills. Love bone-dry savory wines? From Tuscany and Umbria, Sangiovese-based wines have notes of tomato, cherry and leather along with an earthy note of terra-cotta. Expect tingling acidity and moderately high tannin that will compliment homemade gravy like a dream. The original Sangiovese wines were very rarely aged in oak which means they’ll be anything but a vanilla bomb. In short, they are a savory wine lover’s dream. The 2010 vintage was awesome for Sangiovese. If you’re deep frying a whole turkey do it outside, so that if it lights up on fire, you have something to be thankful for. Fried food needs something with high acidity to cut the fat and salt. The ideal answer to this is something sparkling. On the cheap, seek out a sparkling Crémant rosé from France, a Cava from Spain or a sparkling rosé of Malbec from Argentina. Cava will definitely offer the greatest value, ringing in just under $10 a bottle.