Short answer: the question is what to pour at a meal with no main course and nine opinions, and the answer is anything with acid, nothing with much tannin, and the cheaper the better, because you will open six. Cranberry, gravy, sweet potatoes under marshmallow, sausage in the stuffing, a bird that tastes of very little: no wine was built for that plate, so you want the ones that bend. They are also the wines nobody is showing off with this year, and the shelf prices them accordingly. Nobody pays me to like them. They work.
The welcome pour: Crémant, from Alsace or the Jura. Made exactly the way Champagne is made, second fermentation in the bottle, months on the yeast, the same bread-and-apple smell when the cork comes out, from regions that do not spend a fortune reminding you of their name. Alsace gives you the crisper, more orchard-fruit version; the Jura gives you something a little nuttier and more savory. Either one does what bubbles do at the door, tells everyone the evening has started, for $16 to $24 instead of $55. Serve it cold, 45 degrees, in the first twenty minutes, while people are standing up and nobody has a plate.
The table red: Cru Beaujolais. Gamay from one of the named villages, Morgon, Fleurie, Moulin-à-Vent, Brouilly and their neighbors, which is a different animal from the November party wine with the cartoon label. Bright red fruit, real acidity, a little granite dust, and almost no tannin, which is the whole trick: tannin is what makes a big red taste like a nine-volt battery against cranberry, and Gamay does not have any to spare. It handles the turkey, cuts the gravy, and stays friendly next to the sweet potatoes. Morgon is the darker one, Fleurie the pretty one, Moulin-à-Vent the one that could age if you let it, which you will not. $18 to $26 buys a very good bottle, which is a third of what a village red from twenty miles north costs. Serve it cool, twenty minutes in the refrigerator, about 58 degrees, and keep it on the table from the first plate to the pie.
The table white: dry Riesling, German Kabinett or Alsace. The most food-flexible white on earth, and the most underpriced, for one reason: a generation of Americans learned that Riesling means sweet, and the word still scares them off the shelf. Good for you. A German Kabinett labeled trocken, or an Alsace Riesling, is bone dry, high in acid, light in alcohol, and carries a whisper of peach and lime that the sweet sides love while the acid goes to work on the butter and the cream. It is the one white that can stand next to the cranberry without flinching. $15 to $25. Serve it cold, 48 degrees, and watch the person who “only drinks Chardonnay” go back for a second glass.
The fun pour: Lambrusco secco. Dry sparkling red from Emilia-Romagna, the one Italian wine that got a bad name in this country from a sweet, fizzy version in the seventies and never got it back. Secco means dry. It is dark purple, foaming, full of sour cherry and a little bitterness, with bubbles that scrub gravy fat off the tongue like nothing else on the table. It was made for a region that eats cured pork and butter at every meal, which is to say it was made for Thanksgiving by accident. It also makes people laugh, which at hour three is worth more than points. $14 to $22. Serve it cold, 50 degrees, with the heaviest plate of the day.
What not to pour. A big, tannic Cabernet, because tannin turns metallic against cranberry and bitter against sweet potato, and the bottle you paid $60 for will taste like it cost $12 next to the stuffing. A heavily oaked Chardonnay, because butter and vanilla on top of butter and gravy is a steamroller, and the bird disappears under it. And anything precious, the bottle you are saving for a better occasion: Thanksgiving is a volume holiday with a distracted crowd and an eighty-degree dining room, and nobody at the table is going to notice your 2015. Open the good-value stuff, open plenty of it, and keep the trophy for a night with four people and quiet.
The best Thanksgiving bottle is very often already in your own collection, a Riesling or a Gamay you bought on a whim and forgot. Winosseur exists to tell you what is in there, what it is worth, and which one to open tonight. Point it at the shelf before you drive to the store.
Straight answers
What wine goes with Thanksgiving dinner?
Anything with acid, nothing with much tannin and cheap enough to open several: Crémant from Alsace or the Jura, cru Beaujolais, dry Riesling and Lambrusco secco all bend to fit a plate no wine was built for.
Is Beaujolais good with Thanksgiving turkey?
Cru Beaujolais is the table red for it: bright red fruit, real acidity and almost no tannin, so it handles the turkey, cuts the gravy and stays friendly next to the sweet potatoes, at $18 to $26.
What wine should you not serve at Thanksgiving?
A big, tannic Cabernet, which turns metallic against cranberry, and a heavily oaked Chardonnay, which buries the bird under butter and vanilla. Keep the precious bottle for a quieter night with four people.