Every year, as the holiday season approaches, I make a pitch for Gamay as a good wine choice with the holiday turkey (aka, "The Bird").
Mostly, my plea falls on deaf ears. But, I'm determined. So, let's give it another go.
Gamay, of course, means Gamay Noir (officially Gamay Noir a Jus Blanc). And the pitch should include Napa Gamay, which is actually, Valdiguié. In the same neighborhood is Pinot Noir , but more on that favorite later.
One more thing before we begin. The traditional American Thanksgiving feast is a cornucopia of different dishes with an array of seasonings and flavors. So, save your aged red wine, like Bordeaux/Cabernet Sauvignon, Rhone/Syrah/Shiraz, for a meal planned around red meat.
Why serve a treasured wine, when Gamay fits the holiday wine needs. Gamay is the go-with-everything red wine, which means you'll have no worries and you can relax and enjoy the meal, with family and friends gathered around the table.
The Meal
Holiday family meals often include obligatory dishes, like the ubiquitous three-bean casserole and sweet potato pie. Menus for the Thanksgiving feast are highly personal, often containing ethnic and geographic preferences, such as a spicy Southwest dish or briny shellfish.
The Boyd family holiday meal is not complete without the Creamy Onion Bake, a rich side that has been a welcome dish at our table for years. My son, who took over preparing the Creamy Onion Bake from his mother, once took the dish to an employee holiday buffet where he worked, prompting one person to exclaim, "It's the orgasmic casserole!"
Side dishes are essential holiday fare, and none more important than dressing, or is it stuffing? In eastern Pennsylvania, where I spent my early years, it's called stuffing, because it goes in the bird. I didn't hear stuffing referred to as dressing, cooked outside the turkey, until I left home.
Another consideration for what goes into or alongside the bird is the use of poultry seasoning, that is usually heavy on sage. My mother's recipe for stuffing: small torn pieces of slightly stale white bread, celery, onion, salt and pepper and plenty of butter. No poultry seasoning, oysters, cornbread or whatever. Add carrot to that classic combo and you have what the French call mirepoix, although my mother never knew that.
In my youth, the smell of celery and onions simmering in butter, wafting from the kitchen, was the tantalizing promise of the future meal. Many years later, I still looked forward to that sensory pleasure.
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The Wines
The challenge is to select a wine that goes with all of those multi-flavored dishes. Chardonnay would be overpowered, Cabernet Sauvignon would lose the battle with sweet potato pie. And Syrah should've been the wine you picked for roast beef and not turkey.
So, it's back to Gamay Noir, which I find stands up nicely to all but the spiciest dishes, and for those, you're probably better off with beer. Gamay Noir is the grape of Beaujolais, so a simple Beaujolais, or if your budget will stretch, one of the 10 Cru Beaujolais. The Beaujolais Crus are not that far from a lighter Burgundy, made from Pinot Noir, in the Cote de Beaune, such as Santenay or Volnay.
At one time, Gamay Noir had a respectable place in U.S. vineyards, although there's not much planted now. In the late 1980s, Napa Gamay was doing business in the Napa Valley until a visiting French ampelographer told vintners they had the ancient French variety, Valdiguié, in their vineyards. Valdiguié looked like Gamay Noir, tasted like Gamay Noir, but some growers reasoned, who's going to buy a wine labeled Valdiguié?
If you like your red wine with more juicy fruit, grab a bottle or two of Beaujolais Nouveau, a ready-to-drink red wine that will be in the U.S. market in time for Thanksgiving, and a week earlier in the bistros of Paris.
Nouveau's major distinction is a technique called carbonic maceration, where fermentation takes place in individual grapes, so long as the skins are unbroken. Each grape becomes a mini-fermenter. Not all grapes at the bottom of the tank remain intact, as the weight of the clusters above break some of the skins. Important to the texture and flavors of the wine is a small increase in ethanol and flavorful compounds. The high degree of fruitiness, and relatively low tannin, is what attracts consumers to nouveau (new) wines.
And carbonic maceration marries effortlessly with a variety of foods. Some people believe that a special meal deserves a special wine. Others, myself included, think a special meal, like the American Thanksgiving feast, is a time of communion, when friends and family gather for a meal with wine, but not a gathering where wine is the centerpiece.
Next blog: Making Wine Sparkle
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