I’m kind of the mascot here at Wine Review Online. Unlike my colleagues, I’ve only been writing about wine professionally for a little over a decade, which means I’ve only written the Thanksgiving wine story 10 times.
Usually I write the same thing — open a bunch of bottles and leave them on the table, don’t skip the pink wines, save your treasures for a more wine-friendly meal. And, because Thanksgiving is all about celebrating harvest and survival on this fierce continent, buy American.
This year, though, I’m going rogue. You want to know what wine would
really go well with Thanksgiving dinner? Riesling, particularly sweet Riesling from Germany’s Mosel region.
Thanksgiving is a challenge for wine pairing because there’s sweetness on every plate, whether you top your sweet potatoes with marshmallow or not. Wines with no residual sugar can taste sour when paired with cranberry sauce. But who wants to tell Aunt Mabel to cleanse her palate with water before sipping your Cabernet?
Mosel Rieslings, especially at the Spätlese level, not only have the sweetness to work with the food; they also actually taste like a basket of exotic fruit: mango, guava, Key lime. They have great acidity to wash away mouth-clogging food like mashed potatoes and stuffing.
And they’re usually less than 10% alcohol, which means you can have two glasses and still drive home unimpaired. Or, if you’re hosting, you can gently push your relatives out the door without feeling overly guilty.
Sure, you can have New York Riesling, and that can be just as good. And if it were widely distributed, maybe that’s exactly what I would suggest.
But here in San Francisco, where I can buy wine from just about any country that makes it, New York Rieslings are more foreign than Georgian or Turkish wines. But good Mosel Riesling is not that hard to lay my hands on.
Frankly, though, as much as I like New York Rieslings, the top wines from the Mosel would still be my choice.
Next year I’ll probably go back to waving the flag. If I eat healthy, I can look forward to writing the Thanksgiving wine story another, oh, 35 times or so. Or maybe by then I’ll just think it and, if you follow my brain scans, you’ll know what I’m thinking. (Yikes! I just got something else to be thankful for this year — that certain technologies aren’t quite here yet.)
Mosel Riesling. Amen.
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