The Best 2022 Thanksgiving Wine Pairings

Let’s face it; Thanksgiving is stressful. 

Sometimes the only thing separating you from a cringey family member or an incipient political landmine is a bottle of wine, or three.  So, for Thanksgiving dinner, you’ve got to get it right. 

Luckily, many delicious Thanksgiving wine pairings are widely available. A Thanksgiving wine pairing should be an easy-drinking crowd-pleaser that’s food-friendly across multiple flavor profiles. With so many family favorites, sides, and protein choices, you’ll need to consider your Thanksgiving wine pairings more broadly into categories. 

My top three Thanksgiving wine pairings would be rosé, pinot noir, and zinfandel. Let’s break down each varietal as to why it’s a good option for a Thanksgiving wine pairing  (right, rose is not a “varietal,” but let’s keep our Thanksgiving wine pairing simple, shall we?).

Thanksgiving Wine Recommendation #1: Rosé

Rosé is an excellent choice for a Thanksgiving wine pairing.  It’s versatile, widely available, and spans low to moderate price points. 

The first reason why rosé offers an excellent Thanksgiving wine pairing is that it transitions from pre-dinner snacks and nibbles to the dinner table with ease. Sometimes we typecast rosé as a cheese plate partner or relegate her to simple, non-fussy finger foods. But in reality, rosé is crafted in a vast number of styles, from fruit forward to more mineral-y, from lighter to fuller bodied, from higher acid to round. 

Color doesn’t necessarily correlate with weight, texture, or flavor, so taste around a bit to find one you enjoy. In general, a higher acid bottling will pair better with Thanksgiving foods (or all food, actually).  A sip should stimulate your salivary glands and psych up your palate for another bite. In general, a fuller rosé style will transition better from crunchy pre-dinner nuts to turkey with gravy. 

The lightest-bodied styles may get lost amid the heavier foods on your holiday menu. Whether domestic or international, still or bubbly, rosé should have a place on every holiday table. I’ve often found that rosé is a terrific way to tie together a disparate menu and offer a unifying theme. This is the second reason why rosé is ideal for your Thanksgiving wine pairing. 

Rosé can stand alongside everything from Indian food to poultry, cured meats to veg. Consider for a moment the scope of Thanksgiving flavors – proteins, vegetables (squash, legumes, leafy greens), starches/tubers, leafy herbs, woody herbs, citrus, tart fruits, breads, savory mouth-coating gravy, and confectionary sweet potatoes. 

Name a single specific varietal that can tie all this together with a bow. This is the genius of rosé – it’s always minimal skin contact so therefore low tannin. It’s always on the lighter end of the fruit category spectrum (think alpine strawberry or passionfruit rather than plum). And you can pick the rosé to suit your taste, style, and budget. 

Of course, as a maker of rosé of pinot noir, that’s my go-to. But when mine is sold out (as inevitably happens mid-September, well before I receive a deluge of panicked emails begging me to “find” more rosé in the warehouse in time for Thanksgiving), I also dig a good rosé of grenache. 

This brings me to my final advice regarding rose as the optimal Thanksgiving wine pairing: if you have a favorite, secure your bottle and purchase in advance. In an ideal world most (attention WSET candidates, please note I wrote “most”) rosés are designed to be consumed within a year (ish). So, if you must uncork the 2020 Bruliam Wines rosé or pinot noir at your Thanksgiving dinner table, pre-plan. Mine is sold out. But if you have a spare bottle from 2018, give it a go. 

I have opened my rosé with some age, and I loved it. This is true for a multitude of producers domestically and abroad.  Do some tasty due diligence and open some older / more widely available vintages. You may find the tutti-fruity quality has diminished in favor of a mellower offering that might be an even better Thanksgiving wine pairing with savory butternut squash.

Thanksgiving Wine Recommendation #2: Pinot Noir

My second choice for the ultimate Thanksgiving wine pairing is pinot noir. 

You may say to yourself, “No bias or surprise here, haha; pinot noir is her thing.”  But again I’d argue that pinot noir is a terrific Thanksgiving wine pairing due to versatility and stylistic variations. 

Much like rose, pinot noir can be fruity or savory.  Pinot noir offers you the full range from tart cranberries to loamy earth and forest floor. Now don’t brightly tart red fruits and savory roasted mushrooms both scream Thanksgiving dinner table?  So does pinot noir. 

Pinot noir is the optimal Thanksgiving wine pairing if you’re looking for a wine that mirrors the flavors in your meal.  You can find herbal notes like thyme and sage in pinot noir. You can find cranberry and berry notes in pinot noir. Juicy, lifted acidity is found more often in pinot noir than in heavier Bordeaux varietals.

Likewise, pinot noir tends to be soft, elegant, food-friendly, lighter to medium-bodied, and lower in tannin.  Why harp on the acidity and tannins for your Thanksgiving wine pairings? Well, the acidity lets wine play well with food, and lower tannins expand your food pairing choices. 

There is nothing better than a seared, fatty, richly marbled filet mignon to marry up alongside a high tannin, full-bodied cabernet monster. The natural richness of the marbled steak will slice through those tongue-scraping tannins with ease. 

Turkey?  Well, not so much.  This is not a mock-the-dry-turkey post but suffice to say turkey is a lower fat content protein.  You don’t need a behemoth of a wine to bog down your turkey dinner.  You need a versatile, lower-bodied wine that’s delicious alongside several foods and flavors.  Pinot noir is an easy home run. 

Again, please prepare for some pre-Thanksgiving tasting to decide which style of pinot noir you like best.  Happily, anything within the savory pinot to red fruit pinot provides a stellar Thanksgiving wine pairing.

Last year, the Petaluma Gap Winegrowers asked us, winemakers, to share our personal favorite Thanksgiving wine pairings and recipes. I submitted a beloved recipe for cranberry chutney alongside my Sangiacomo Vineyards pinot noir. 

I wrote, “This recipe is adapted from @cookinglight. This lovely, ruby-colored relish is an expansive play on traditional Thanksgiving cranberries...I love how the tangy cranberries and green apple acidity mirror the red fruits in the Sangiacomo Vineyard Pinot Noir."  Yum!  For this cranberry variation, the relish is studded with aromatic ginger, tangy green apple, and even a hint of diced red onion, really playing with the sweet/savory balance.

A good pinot noir should be equally complex, riffing on herbal, savory, and fruit-forward aromatics, perfumed, and spiced, bright, lifted, and delicious. This year, make pinot noir a top choice for your Thanksgiving wine pairing.

Thanksgiving Wine Recommendation #3: Zinfandel

The final option I’ll suggest for a perfect Thanksgiving wine pairing is zinfandel. 

Before we knew zinfandel originated in Croatia, we American winemakers considered zinfandel an “American” wine grape. And although DNA testing disproves this theory, it’s a nice idea to have an “American” wine alongside an American meal and tradition.

But that’s the flimsiest reason why I’d select zinfandel as the ultimate Thanksgiving wine pairing. Like pinot noir, zinfandel is also a thin-skinned varietal, meaning lower tannins. Again, let me reiterate, I like a good turkey. But we all recognize that turkey can be dry, meaning that pairing dry bird alongside a very drying style of wine would be a Thanksgiving wine pairing bummer. 

Zinfandel is a terrific choice for wine drinkers looking for a wine with deeper fruit flavors nudging the blue and black fruit category. If you’re looking for a wine that showcases deep, rich fruit but without too much drying tannin, zinfandel could be your perfect wine partner.  Zinfandel may also be aged in a higher percentage of new oak than pinot, offering up more of those yummy, comforting, aromatic baking spice notes that we all associate with winter holidays. 

When you see adjectives like mace, cardamom, cinnamon, and “pie” among the tasting notes, you can bet this would be an ideal Thanksgiving wine pairing. Like the other Thanksgiving wine pairings I’ve suggested, zinfandel is also made in multiple styles. 

So yes, please taste around before landing your best Thanksgiving wine pairing selection.  Lastly, zinfandel is vinified in a range of ABV.  My Rockpile zinfandel clocks in just under 15% ABV (usually 14.8 or 14.9% ABV, not wimpy by any means but perhaps feeble in the high alcohol zin landscape?), which is higher alcohol than any of my four pinots. But higher-octane zin is appropriate for the varietal and the Rockpile style that I make. 

Furthermore, for a Thanksgiving wine pairing, a more full-bodied but balanced wine like zinfandel might be the right pick alongside a rich meal. With recipes incorporating butter, heavy cream, and a roux, I’m telling you that 16+% alcohol zinfandel exists. Yes, dear readers, this is code for what you think it means; absorb the subtext. If your family gathering is going to be extra stressful, consider uncorking a 15-16% alcohol zinfandel. 

They exist, they do. And perhaps that single bottle of wine can smooth the bumps on a strained family holiday. 

Happy holidays to all, and may the test testing to discover your favorite Thanksgiving wine pairing be delicious and joyful.