Having 16 this year so doing a turkey on the Weber Kettle and a brisket on the BGE. We always go with Julia Child’s cornbread stuffing which includes some sweet Italian sausage. If I ever tried to sub that out, I would be disinvited to my own house even though I’m doing the cooking.
For wine, we are mostly doing A Tribute to Grace SBH Grenache and Sinegal Sauvignon Blanc. Solid wines that won’t break the bank. Likely to open an SQN Grenache as well for those interested.
Craig Haarmeyer found a couple magnums of his Chenin for me, so those are definitely in the mix.
Turley Zin is likely to be on the table.
Might pop an Ultramarine for starters.
I’m a big believer that worrying too much about pairings is overrated, so generally serve what people in my family want to drink*. My mom likes Gibourg and good spatlese, so I’m going to open some Gibourg and Willi Schaefer. Easy.
Kreydenweiss “Moenchberg” GC pinot gris 1994
Roederer Rose champagne 2012
Graillot crozes hermitage “La Guiraude” 2017
Musar rouge 1999
This is a good exercise, since I just learned we are hosting! All en mag – why not?
Your mom has great taste!
I switched my Roederer Estate magnum club order to all rosé for my daughter’s wedding and it appears to have stuck, so one of those will certainly be on the table.
I started with Caneros Pinot Noir and a Finger Lakes Riesling. For a while I was serving Williams Selyem but my son finally copped to not liking Pinot. So this year I’ll go back to Zinfandel. i’m hoping my order of Bedrock comes in on time but it’s upstate NY so…
I LOVE Thanksgiving by the way!
The 2014 Chaignots is her favorite wine, so it gets opened on Thanksgiving 
This is such a cool technique, I can’t believe I’ve never encountered it!
Speaking of Thanksgiving books, has anyone else been a fan of the slim-but-mighty Sam Sifton book about Thanksgiving that came out during his time as NYT Restaurant Critic? One of my favorite cookbooks ever both for recipes and the narration, although I will admit I always loved his prose.
Saw from an email that Sabelli-Frisch just added a discount Holiday Pack to the store. You’ll have to buy 3 or add on to reach the $200 free ship, but outside of BD deals, they generally don’t discount.
1x 2020 Milk Fed 4 Zweigelt red
1x 2020 Faun Zinfandel red
1x 2022 Bund Riesling white
1x 2021 Eserra White Zinfandel rosé
Almost my Thanksgiving lineup!
That zweifelt really blew me away. Awesome pairing for thanksgiving.
I was thinking Volnay, but I think that’s going to be for Christmas dinner.
I agree that stuffing from the bird is by far the best.
Thanksgiving means champagne at our house. I’ll open some good stuff since I can’t think of much better to celebrate than family and good food. We’ll do Turkey, probably brined and then I’ll do a garlic and sage compound butter, stuff it under the skin, inject with a melted version mixed with stock, then bake to temp and yank and rest. Keeps it pretty moist, pretty flavorful. Pan drippings are great for gravy. Wife will do dressing. We’ll keep it relatively simple otherwise, with brown butter chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and pumpkin pie.
I always say that if turkey was actually good you would eat it year-round outside of as a cold-cut. We are doing a coffee crusted USDA Prime- prime rib. Most of those traditional meals were invented when people smoked inside and couldn’t taste anything anyways!
Cooking a turkey is time intensive and a lot of food. If it wasn’t I would absolutely make it more often. How often do you make prime rib?
Also, I eat a lot of ground turkey.
My brother-in-law’s frat had a chef and she made turkey dinner once a week to feed all the guys.
Bold words for someone messing up a perfectly good prime rib with coffee.