Our wine writer ponders what the Pilgrims would serve with Thanksgiving dinner.
Lately, I've been revisiting Andrew Barr's award-winning book about American boozing habits, Drink: A Social History of America.
Among other things, Barr drops some fascinating facts about the Pilgrims’ arrival in the New World. I did not know, for instance, that the working sailors on the Mayflower deposited their guests prematurely in order to protect their dwindling supply of beer.
Had the sailors' suds held out, Barr suggests the Pilgrims would have been delivered further south, where they were actually intending to go. But alas, the poor Pilgrim's were punted off the ship at Plymouth…and forced to drink water.
Meanwhile, in the surprisingly similarly titled book Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol, Iain Gately writes that the Pilgrims were put down in Cape Cod primarily because of bad weather. But just the same, the sailors were supremely stingy with their beer.
Gately quotes William Bradford: “The passengers...were hasted ashore and made to drink water that the seamen might have the more beer.” A bit later, Bradford says that when he was sick and asking for a small bit of beer, “it was answered that if he was their own father he should have none."
Turns out, the Pilgrims were not puritanical teetotalers. They partook freely in beer, booze, and wine when they could get it.
I did a little further digging in Barr's book and uncovered another interesting tidbit. It turns out the Mayflower, before being commissioned by English Separatists, was used to ship wine from Bordeaux to England.
And Bordeaux-style wines are not bad at all with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Bordeaux reds are fine, food-friendly blends of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and a couple other lesser-known grapes from the region.
So this Thanksgiving, I'll be looking for light styles of Bordeaux, perhaps a couple bottles with a few years on them, preferably low on the alcohol side. It will be my little tribute to the Mayflower's early career as a workhorse for carting clarets to London.
Also, as a nod to the truly American aspect of the meal, I'll keep a couple bottles of fruity Zinfandel on the table. Again, I'll favor a lighter style rather than the big Zins that are delicious but high in alcohol and potentially overwhelming--to both dinner and diner. When I drink heavy, high-alcohol wines with Thanksgiving dinner, I always run the risk midway through the meal of pitching forward asleep into the gravy boat. (Not impressive to the in-laws.)
I'll also have a dry, lowish-alcohol Riesling or two within reach. Riesling should complement Thanksgiving spices like cloves and nutmeg. A sparkling rosé would be nice, too, because it's fruity, food friendly, and the sparkle washes the palate clean leaving you prepared to greet new flavors.
At any rate, I hope these suggestions are helpful. If you have suggestions of your own, let me know what you think! What worked? What didn't? What are your all-time favorite Thanksgiving wines? Add a comment below.
Carl's Quick Picks for Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Wines: The Post Script
Here are the results of my wine pairings for Thanksgiving 2008.
Like most years, this Thanksgiving I split my time between whites (sparkling wine, Gewürztraminer, and Riesling) and reds like Bordeaux and gamay. As always, I opened several bottles of whites and a couple reds and then spent the entire meal ignoring the whites in favor of the reds. (TIP: If you're like me--always looking for the path of least resistance to the reds--try pouring some port into your gravy along with the stock!)
To be fair, the Riesling was great, maybe the best pure match on the table. Its slight touch of sweetness was the perfect counterpoint to salty gravy-slathered turkey and taters and a nice companion for sweet cranberry sauce. Curiously though, unlike the Riesling, the slightly sweet Gewürztraminer didn't work for me at all. The almost syrupy lychee flavor clashed and crashed all about the place. (I quickly corked it and will break it out for some Indian food.) But no denying it, the Riesling worked. As did the always versatile sparkling wine (particularly excellent with oyster stuffing). Either wine would have been a nice pair. Except that…I couldn't stay away from the reds.
The best red was a cru Beaujolais gamay from Chénas, which tasted like a pinot noir, a real lip smacker. I wandered happily between the gamay and a merlot-based Bordeaux from Montagne Saint-Emilion. At first pop, the Bordeaux seemed a little too big, a little woodsy. But after 15 minutes of flirting around with other wines, I came back to it, again and again, and found it to be increasingly fruity and delicious. The whites, even the pitch-perfect Riesling, were pushed to the side, through no real fault of their own, as I played to my preferences.
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