Learning the basics of wine begins with becoming familiar with the big six varietals, which are the grapes that comprise the majority of the world's wines.
As tempting as it is for me to serve a fine Burgundy at Thanksgiving, I've learned that most guests do not crave the fussy or the obscure. Wine at Thanksgiving should be like a Steve Martin flick: likable, uncomplicated and inexpensive.
Thanksgiving can bring out the worry. Happily, there's one area that doesn't require excessive concern, and that's wine presentation. Here are my stress-relieving tips:
Every year, we get questions on how to pair wine with Thanksgiving dinner; it’s a nice dinner you’ve gone to great lengths to prepare, and you want to drink something nice with it. This is both a hard question to answer and an easy one, because turkey itself is a blank canvas — you can pair it with pretty much every wine in the world and it’ll work pretty well — so it’s never so much about the turkey as it is about the seasonings and sides. The problem here is actually that there’s too much choice.
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