OT: Happy (American) Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all, from muddy Normandy. We'll have turkey over the weekend, but I may take some time and watch those Lions.

-E

Happy Thanksgiving to you both, and the rest of afw. We celebrated with a dinner spent with friends. With a meal of roast turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, three forms of cranberry sauce/relish and sautéed carrots, we had two non-American wines:

The Cloudy Bay was the first we'd had in several years, and quite honestly didn't compare very well to some other, less expensive examples such as the '06 Babich. It was much better with food, but was still raqther one-dimensional. Since it was under screwcap, I don't think that it was tired or flawed, just not terribly exciting.

I chose the Cote-Rotie as a potential Turkey wine because our friends don't care for Pinot Noir or Gamay and my notes on this wine suggested that it was a lighter, fruitier sort of Cote-Rotie. In the event, it proved very successful with the bird, and our friends loved it. In many ways, I would have guessed that this was a Ridge Zin had I not known what it was (ironic since the backup bottle was an '02 Ridge Paso Robles Zin). I was worried that it might be too oaky, but the only sign of new oak was the clove/cinnamon/nutmeg sort of spiciness that leapt out of glass. It also went very well with the brined organic turkey we cooked. All in all, quite a fun evening and a reminder of all that we have to be thankful for.

Mark Lipton

I would imagine the Cote-Rotie also went well with the carrots.

As for myself, my sister-in-law provided a magnum of Riunite D'oro. She likes her whites simple and sweet, and this one had enough tingle to make it work with the turkey, stuffing, potato filling, candied yams, corn bake (a corn with muffin dough dish), and Boston cream pie. Yum!

Dan-O