Our Thanksgiving Wine Guide Is the Key to a Happy Holiday

Honeysuckle and melon are part of the bouquet on this racy, aromatic white wine, a varietal not often planted in the United States but popular in Italy. It comes from an organic, biodynamic vineyard in Oregon. It’s a great starter wine to pop open with your little gathering of loved ones.

Many wineries support good causes. But Vital is a good cause, in and of itself. 2000 cases ago, winemaker Ashley Trout established the non-profit winery to be fully focused on health care for vineyard workers, giving 100 percent of its proceeds to the effort. This 100 percent Mourvèdre Rosé is a welcome kick-off to the afternoon for your holiday spread.

Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard’s Quinta Cruz line is devoted to the lesser known grapes of Portugal and this white wine is an excellent introduction to the collection. It’s fairly priced for something so satisfying and complex: It’s got all the minerality, fresh citrus flavors, and nutty notes that make it a versatile food wine—and it will play very well with just about any savory dish on the Thanksgiving table.

Our favorite white wine of the year, this blend of Italian varietals including Tocai Friulano and Ribolla Gialla is the handiwork of Dan Petroski, whose decades-long project has focused on white wines exclusively. Structured, fresh, and mineral-forward, it’s a lovely wine to find when you sit down at the holiday table.

Peach skin and pear fruit arrive on the nose of this Chenin, which we like as a party starter but also an accompaniment to self-shucked oysters. Clean and crisp on the finish.

This Burgundian Chard goes light on the oak and spends time sur lie, or on the yeast, which makes it crisp, with citrus and biscuit notes. It’s a wonderful counterpoint for salads and fish, but can also help you ease into your afternoon.

Like geographically unique wines? This one takes the cake. Grown on Santa Catalina island by the family who originally developed it back in the 1920s and 1930s, the site overlooks the ocean. As for the wine, loamy soils and cooler climates conspire to create an old-world style Chardonnay, with floral and citrus notes.

Grown during a long, warm season, this vibrant Cab offers notes of cherry, raspberry, and blackberry.

Made in Paso Robles, this blend offers black fruit, tobacco, and allspice on the palate. It’s great with meats but also with pizza and take-out—you know, in case you burn the turkey.

Sourced from the cool, foggy Anderson Valley, this is a Pinot of restraint, perfect as a pairing for sweet potatoes and turkey alike. It sees 10 months in new French oak, balanced with the backbone of the fruit.

The former Stag’s Leap winemaker is now a successful consultant up in Oregon, and has been making his own wine from a 120-plus acre property for more than a decade. This Syrah offers rich, ripe blue and black fruit notes with a lasting finish. It’s a perfect match for the Thanksgiving spread.

The “go big or go home wine” of the Mi Sueño portfolio, this heavy hitter is perfect for anyone eschewing delicate fare this holiday and instead going for brawny roasts or firing up the smoker. The first generation Mexican-American winemaker worked his way up from farmer to owner, and now makes more than 8,000 cases in all.

This top-flight Australian winemaker produces a showstopper of a Cabernet Shiraz called The Grange. This “baby Grange” is aged in the very same barrels, and combines the sumptuousness of Shiraz with the structure of Cab.

This Sonoma county vineyard excels at making full-flavored Pinots. While they typically focus on single vineyard bottlings, this, ahem, deviates from the tradition and pairs grapes from two very distinct Sonoma Coast vineyards (one producing fruit forward juice; the other adding earthy depth) to create a celebratory wine that’s equal parts lush fruit and pronounced spice, all tied together with elegant intensity. If you’re serving beef along with your turkey this year, this will bridge the two quite nicely. 

If you’re lucky enough to be surviving the year well enough to be giving earnest thanks come the holiday, this might be the wine to do it with—if you can afford it. Made from grapes grown in Napa Valley’s legendary To Kalon vineyard by the pioneering Mondavi winery in a year of devastating wildfires, this wine is a testament to our ability to endure. Savor now or cellar for ten years to toast eventually getting through the decade. 

Flavors of black cherry, cassis, and dark chocolate combine to power this ageable red blend, one of Napa’s high-end trophy wines. It’s pricey, but this was a helluva year—shouldn’t you celebrate a bit? We love this wine and its winemaker, Rebekah Wineburg, who uses biodynamic practices and ambient yeast from the property.

Producing wine since the early 1970s, the Spottswoode family was one of the first in the valley to dial back aggressive farming techniques, sacrificing yield for quality. The result is clear in this elegant, complex Cab, which launches into blackberries and cassis and offers sandalwood and spices through each sip. One for the ages.

We asked Zion Curiel, one of Napa’s most heralded somms, what he likes to serve at Thanksgiving. Here’s what he told us:

“From the organic gardens, olive oil, and heritage breed pigs and lamb to the wines, all are made with the same care and respect at Hudson Ranch. This grabbed my attention right away in the glass with aromas of ripe cherries, spice, and leather. It’s medium-bodied, and both fruity and savory, similar to a Châteauneuf-du-Pape—perfect for Thanksgiving dinner.”

A textbook version of the ubiquitous sommelier’s knife, but with a comfier handle, a sharp blade for slicing through capsules, and a double-hinged lever for easy extraction of even the most stubborn synthetic corks.

We’ve duked it out over fancy glassware in the past, but this series of wine glasses might make converts of the mason jar set. With a flatter bottom profile and undulating curves to afford for vigorous swirls, the silohouette of each glass is designed to provide maximum air contact with the contents. That means the aromas meet your nose and meld with the palate of your wine to provide an orgiastic crescendo of sensory components.

Made in Japan since 1967 and strengthened through an Ion-Exchange process, these glasses are compact, stackable, and ultra-durable. They’re often used for hot tea in ramen shops, but they function just as well with a weeknight Montepulciano d’Abruzzo (or a thumb of whiskey). Bonus: A six-pack of these costs less than a single Riedel!

Glass half-empty or half-full is not what we’re mulling with this smart series of tumblers, which features relief sculptures of prominent mountains in the base. What better way to contemplate the heights you’ll reach in the year ahead than to drain a dram with heft like this?

Go ahead, drop $300 on a fancy blown-glass decanter. That’s blown money, once it meets the edge of an elbow after the third bottle of the night. We’ll be drinking the money we saved by using this dirt-cheap and durable Pyrex surrogate, which is made for the lab but works damn well enough on wine, too. It’s food safe, brand-new, and best of all cheaper than most wine we’d recommend.

Previous models of this system injected inert Argon gas through the cork via hypodermic needle, pushing wine back out and preserving the delicate juice inside. That’s fine for sipping your way through $800 bottles of cult cab, but for the average drinker just looking to prolong something pretty damn good, or maybe to work through a few bottles in a night without the pressure of draining them, this system is a life-saver. Instead of punching through the cork, you’ll swap on grommeted rubber necks after the cork is removed. The result: Four weeks versus a few days of post-cork longevity—and zero opener’s remorse.

Consider a dual-zone compact wine fridge like NewAir’s—perfect for cramped kitchens.