This next week we’ve got Thanksgiving coming up. Beaujolais Day  is an age-old tradition where people get in line at the wine stores to buy a wine made from Gamay grapes.

Beaujolais Nouveau, you may know, means it’s wine that is harvested in September and bottled in November It is a wine that they put out the third Thursday of November and it was done in the late 20th century as a way to hop on to the American Thanksgiving tradition because Beaujolais wines do go beautifully with Thanksgiving, with turkey and Thanksgiving kind of foods.

Beaujolais Nouveau is a fun tradition. I tend to like my Nouveau with more warm weather foods. It does really well with picnic items and real casual kind of foods. At Thanksgiving, I prefer a Beaujolais Village or even a Cru Beaujolais such as a Morgon or a Moulin-a-Vent. You can read more about the hows and whys of the details of all of that if you look up “Beaujolais” on my website foodwineandflavor.com.

I have taught three holiday wine classes here in the Lake Norman area in the past two weeks. I wanted to run through some of the wines that we have been tasting and trying with all of the holiday foods. When you come to one of my classes, I do a heavy charcuterie board that goes along with the theme of the class. And with holiday foods, because all of these wines are such food wines and they taste completely different with the food than they do on their own, it’s really important to be able to run through the wines, evaluate those and then go through a second time with all of the foods.

I do include things like turkey, stuffing, ham, roast beef with horseradish, a little bit of chocolate, a little bit of pumpkin pie, all of those things that you would typically see on a table. And then we talk about some of the more unusual foods, maybe spicier foods that some of us may have on our tables.

The first wine that we go through in my class, because it’s a classic recommendation, is a Chardonnay. In this case we actually did a Chablis. Chardonnay has buttery undertones. Now you don’t have to do a California Chardonnay. There’s a full range. You can do Australian Chardonnay. You can do French Chardonnay. We even did a Chablis. But Chardonnays are going to work really great with potatoes and things that are more creamy and buttery kinds of dishes.

We also tested out a Riesling (not your Grandmother’s Riesling), which is a classic food wine. The one that we did in the classes this month were all dry Rieslings. Although I would say that an off-dry Riesling may be a good choice as well. Rieslings just generally go with everything. They’re gonna go with white meats, they’re gonna go with side dishes.

Vouvray is made from the grape, Chenin Blanc. Vouvray is a village that is in the Loire, which is in the Northwest part of France. And it is a really a nice medium-bodied white wine. The bottle that we had is about 14 % alcohol. That would indicate that it has been fermented dry, but there is a little bit of honey notes to it. And so with those really savory dishes that you have during the holidays, the sage and some of the heavier spices like that, Vouvray works beautifully.

It also works beautifully with a savory dessert like a pumpkin pie. And it plays very nicely with salty foods like ham or a lot of the side dishes or salty foods as well.

Now, we mentioned Beaujolais is a light red wine that works very well with turkey And part of the reason that that is is because there’s not very many tannins. Another red wine that’s got a little bit more body to it is a Pinot Noir.

Pinot Noir is a perfect pair for turkey and stuffing. Works just really nice on the table. So for those red wine lovers, I would really recommend a Beaujolais or a Pinot Noir.

Now, if you’re serving something different than turkey or ham and you’re going all the way to, say, a roast beef, then I would recommend a Zinfandel because it gives you that fruitiness, that juiciness. It supports beef really well.

Zinfandel supports chocolate and chocolate desserts really well. Just beautiful, beautiful wine. And of course, it’s one of the native, one of the only native American varietals that we really can brag about. So it’s a beautiful way to also finish off your American Thanksgiving table.

Those are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, plus I said an off-dry Riesling. So that’s seven wines that you can look at putting on your holiday table. If you have any questions at all, please go ahead and you can find me in the show notes. Reach out. I’m more than happy to answer any questions. And please look into becoming a VIP and joining my Facebook group because that’s where the community is coming together.