It would not be Christmas without turkey. It’s a traditional favourite in the US and the UK since as far back as the 16th century, although it was the Victorians who really cemented its place at the festive lunch table. Turkey is not a powerful white meat and has a low fat content – the reason why it can dry out if not cooked carefully. With this in mind, your wine matches should ideally be either a full-bodied white wine, or a medium bodied red, with low to medium tannin. Tannin is your Christmas banquets enemy. It is at odds with the lack of fat on the plate, leaving nothing to soften the tannins. This can lead to accentuated, harsh tannins in a wine, whilst the saltiness of the turkey can also make tannin taste more bitter. If that wasn’t enough to think about, there is also the complexity of the accompaniments to your lunch; cranberry, bacon, parsnips, stuffing and brussel sprouts to name a few. A medium tannin red, for me, points towards top quality, robust Pinot Noirs or a Beaujolais Cru.

Pinot Noir from muscular Burgundy Crus such as Gevrey-Chambertin or Pommard stack up exceptionally well – if you can stretch to the Grand Cru of Chambertin even better. The lighter, elegant Burgundian areas such as Volnay may be overpowered by all those accompaniments, so be careful. Pinot from Sonoma will also work extremely well along with Pinot Noir from Victoria, Australia. If you are not a Pinot fan, a mature Bordeaux, Chianti or Rioja would work well too. The tannin in red wine can soften and integrate with age, allowing them to be matched with Turkey. Sometimes ignored at Christmas lunch, a full-bodied Chardonnay is an enchanting accompaniment to your turkey, especially with traditional sides such as bread sauce. Oaky richness gives sweet spice notes, while creamy lactic acid really helps out with a meat that can sometimes be on the dry side. Good Chardonnays, in general, are found in the same geographical areas as good Pinot Noir. White Burgundy from the Côte de Beaune will work well at almost all levels;

upgrade where you can to something like a Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru or a Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru. The high levels of minerality and acidity in these wines help to cleanse the palate, allowing you to wade through all the trimmings effortlessly. Other wonderful examples can be found in Victoria, Sonoma and New Zealand. The Kumeu River Chardonnays from near Auckland are extraordinary wines, offer fantastic value for money and impressed us in 2015. Vines and olives co-exist at Fattoria Casaloste. best budget italian red wineThe organically certified vineyards have produced a really fruity and intense Chianti Classico…best wine bars in italy Hess use massal selection in the Su’skol vineyard to encourage aromatic complexity from the nine different Chardonnay clones...best buy wines and spirits

When Louis of Domaine Louis Carillon retired in 2010, the family decided to divide the vineyard holdings, with son François… Mad Dog sell most of the grapes they produce to premium winemakers in and around the Barossa Valley, which says… Still trying to decide? We've got you covered... Hard, soft, blue, goat? Which cheeses do you choose, and do you pick a wine for each or try to… What styles to match with this this festive classic... Wikipedia has an article on: white meat (countable and uncountable, plural white meats) In sense “flesh of certain animals”, which animals are considered white meat is a matter of some dispute and differing usage. In casual usage, any meat which is white at some point may be referred to as white meat, but in technical usage the term is used more narrowly. Gastronomically, meat that is white before cooking is generally considered white meat, while nutritionally, white versus red is determined by myoglobin content, and white meat refers to poultry and fish meat.

Chicken breast meat is the archetypal white meat, and gastronomically, chicken and rabbit are categorically considered white meat, while cow, sheep, and horse meat are considered red. Generally the meat of milk-fed veal and pork are considered white, while the meat of ducks and goose are considered red. More loosely, the term may be used for all poultry, even if the meat is red, as in duck. Fish is also generally referred to as white meat, both for white fish (which is white before and after cooking) and, in some uses, for fattier fish such as salmon and tuna – note that salmon remains red when cooked, while tuna turns white. Seafood (invertebrates) may also be referred to as white meat, particularly if actually white before or after cooking, as in shrimp, oysters, or scallops. Rather more controversial is the categorization of pork, which turns white when cooked, but is from a mammal. Nutritionists and the United States Department of Agriculture use red meat to refer to meat of mammals (livestock), and in this usage, pork was considered as "white meat" in the the early 1970 to 2001.

But many argued since it has a high myoglobin content, it should be classified as red. As of today the US Department of Agriculture consider pork with less than 65% myoglobin as a white meat since red meats – notably beef, lamb, which are red when cooked, but also pork, which is white when cooked – are often considered unhealthy, the United States National Pork Board used the advertising slogan “Pork. The Other White Meat” in the period 1987–2011 to suggest that pork was healthy and position it as a poultry alternative. Hebrew: please add this translation if you can Portuguese: carne branca (pt) f Yiddish: please add this translation if you canI too agree with John Burgess. I started appreciating wine a lot later, and did my own experiments. I prefer red over white. But when the dish is a milder preparation, I've noticed that white wine brings out the flavour of the dish. A red would just overpower it.On the other hand, when I've eaten meat with a darker sauce, red wine tastes a lot better.