Thanksgiving Part 4

Suppose you want white wine with your Thanksgiving turkey, what do you drink? To me, that's an easy question. With the wide variety of foods often on the dinner table, you need a flexible, food friendly wine. You need something aromatic, rather than oaky and full-bodied.

So, where do we go? Because we can find it in dry versions and in off-dry for those who just don't like dry wine, Gewurtzraminer is the obvious choice.

As we noted about a month and a half ago, experienced tasters can almost always identify a good Gewurtzraminer in a blinf tasting. Even before tasting it, the lychee on the nose is a giveaway. 

Back to the turkey, however, we note that it has the white meat parts (breasts and wings) and the dark meat parts (legs and thighs). The textures are different; the flavors are different. This takes an adaptible wine. It takes a wine with an array of flavors to it that will go with either one.

On the palate, we've noted previously that characteristic notes of Gewurtzraminer include apricot, tangerine, ginger, and of course, lychee. Consider any one of them with turkey. Would you like the combination? 

If you can imagine the combination on your palate, I think you have a serious winner. And, in fact, the juicy flavors in a well-prepared turkey will calm down the most difficult of those flavors -- the ginger. 

My personal preference for the Gewrutzraminer to go with turkey is either dry wine or a barely off-dry one, perhaps 1% or less residual sugar, but just enough to satisfy the sweet tooth and to get you ready for dessert (speaking of dessert, Thanksgiving dessert time will be tomorrow). Wines that are sweeter than that, at least to me, do not go with the traditional Thanksgiving vegetables and the stuffing or dressing. The sugar tends to overwhelm, but if your taste needs the sweetness, go to your favorite wine store and look for an off-dry or even sweeter than that Alsatian Gewurtzraminer.