From the International Herald Tribune
Suppose I told you that with your turkey, your stuffing, your cranberry sauce, and all the delicious side dishes that will grace your holiday table, one wine and one wine only would match up. Unless you pick that one wine you face the specter of horrible embarrassment. Sound ridiculous? Well, of course it is. Yet more people than I care to think about feel exactly this way when selecting Thanksgiving wines.
Choosing the wine for any occasion is well known as an exercise in agony. Thanksgiving, for some reason, fills people with an extra dimension of dread. Perhaps it's the idea of performing for one's loving family, always so ready to heap scorn for your benefit. Or maybe there's secret pleasure in being squashed in the paralyzing spotlight, dancing, as Tom Lehrer once put it, to "The Masochism Tango."
If the prospect of shame and disgrace is a welcome part of your holiday ritual, by all means enjoy the feeling. But I would be remiss not to point out that it's all so unnecessary! Picking a wine should never be an occasion for self-flagellation, and at Thanksgiving least of all. The meal itself is typically a riot of contrasts - the savory stuffing, the sweetness of yams, the blank slate of the turkey - and wide open to individual eccentricities like marshmallows, almond slivers and the like. The wine selection task couldn't be simpler: versatility and plenitude.