A White Rhône Style Blend for Thanksgiving

Today we share our latest wine pairing experiments for Thanksgiving. Our article is part of this month’s Wine Pairing Weekend focus on Creative Thanksgiving Pairings.

Our experimenting with Thanksgiving wine pairings over the years has led to our article on What Wine Goes With Turkey serving as a comprehensive resource that gets thousands of visits as the holiday approaches.

In an age when AI results often surface first when people ask questions like what wine to serve with turkey, my Wine Pairing Weekend colleagues and I offer an alternative. Pairing recommendations based on actual testing of various pairing options for Thanksgiving, to give you suggestions based on experience over the years.

I enjoy testing new Thanksgiving pairing ideas, and Creative Thanksgiving Pairings encourages us to try something new. Sure, if you are looking typical choices, you can go with options such as Chenin Blanc for a white wine, or Pinot Noir in the red category. See my full list of go to Thanksgiving wines here.

But today it’s time to share some new pairings that I hadn’t tried before.

What’s on the plate

First, let’s cover what’s on the plate for our Thanksgiving wine pairing experimenting.

The “creative pairings” theme could have also included less common food choices. That’s the direction Culinary Cam is taking with her article.

In our collection of Thanksgiving menu ideas, each with wine pairings, of course, we include one of our takes on a creative Thanksgiving menu. The centerpiece is a Roast Turkey Breast with Cranberry Merlot Sauce – can you guess what we paired with that turkey recipe?

But for our latest turkey wine pairing experiment, we went with a pretty traditional turkey dinner, albeit with less options on the table. After all, I was just cooking for the three of us!

So I simply made roast turkey breast, mashed potatoes, air fryer Brussels sprouts and peas. Served along with gravy and cranberry sauce – yes, from a can! As I much as I generally favor scratch cooking, that canned cranberry is part of Thanksgiving for our family classics.

I’m the only one of the three of us that likes stuffing, so that will wait until Thanksgiving actually hits.

Before I leave the topic of Thanksgiving food choices, I should also mention that my Savory Mashed Butternut Squash is another popular recipe for the holiday, if you are looking for some ideas.

The latest pairings we tested

Today I am mostly focusing on new wines we tested earlier this month. But we also tried some creative pairings with our 2024 Thanksgiving turkey dinner. A skin contact Gruner Veltliner worked pretty well. Cabernet Franc goes with many foods, but we weren’t a fan of the one we tried with our last Thanksgiving dinner. We will update our What Wine Goes with Turkey article with more details on these experiments.

As suggested by the title, a White Rhône style blend was our favorite new pairing this year. We went with the 2024 Dineen Vineyards Yakima Valley Condriesque ($27, 13.3% ABV), a blend of 50% Roussanne and 50% Viogner.

I get lemon peel on the nose of the Condrieseque. On the palate, I taste some almond, lemon curd and a bit of honey, along with some light notes of lemongrass. The wine is on the full bodied side, which makes it work well with the turkey and potatoes.

The honey and lemon curd notes help the wine work with sweet elements on the dish like the cranberry. It also played along well with the Brussels sprouts, which has some balsamic vinegar on the finish.

I would definitely say this Condriesque white Rhône style blend is a good choice for a classic Thanksgiving dinner!

We have featured this Condriesque white blend a few times before, including paired with our Red Cabbage Pasta.

Dineen Vineyards is a family-owned winery in Yakima Valley. I’ve come to enjoy their wines in recent years and joined their wine club. You can learn more about the winery via my interview with Marissa Dineen, the 2nd generation owner of the winery.

What is a White Rhône style blend?

I realized I’ve been throwing around this “White Rhône style blend” term here a lot! I should explain for those that might note be familiar.

A White Rhône style blend is a wine made from grape varieties traditionally grown in France's Rhône Valley-most often Viognier, Marsanne, and Roussanne, sometimes including Grenache Blanc or Clairette. These blends are typically aromatic and full-bodied, combining stone fruit and floral notes with a rich texture and balanced acidity.

I will have to test to verify, but I would say that based on my experience with the Condriesque, most good White Rhône style blends ought to work pretty well for Thanksgiving. While the Condriesque of course takes on some distinct flavors based on the terroir of Yakima Valley, Washington, I’d also be inclined to think a white blend from France’s Rhône region could work for Thanksgiving, too.

Tried a local Petite Pearl

Given that the first Thanksgiving was held here in Massachusetts, I also had the idea of trying a local wine. So along with the White Rhône blend, we tried the 2022 Aaronap Cellars Petite Pearl ($22, 12% ABV). There’s some good background on the Petite Pearl Hybrid grape on the Aaronap website:

Just like our winemaker, the Petite Pearl grape hails from the Midwest.  Developed by grape whisperer Tom Plocher at his Minnesota/North Dakota vineyard nursery, Petite Pearl represents a huge step forward for winemaking from cold-hardy varietals. 

Aaronap Cellars website

The Petite Pearl has a musky nose, and I get prunes and licorice on the palate. Between those flavor notes and the winery’s suggestion of pairings like BBQ ribs and black bean chili, it’s probably not a great surprise that this red wine didn’t wind up being the greatest with the turkey dinner. It’s a nice bottle, however, one I will certainly pick up again when I see them at the Winchester Farmers Market.

Petite Pearl fares well in the colder climates. We tried some when visiting a South Dakota winery this summer, too.

More Thanksgiving Pairing Ideas

Be sure to check out the articles from my colleagues for more creative Thanksgiving wine pairing inspiration!

• Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm share "Wondering whether to serve Red or White for Thanksgiving? How about Orange?".
• Culinary Cam will share "Running Afoul of Tradition with Waterfowl and a Skin-Fermented Grüner Veltliner". 
• David from Cooking Chat is writing about "A White Rhône Style Blend for Thanksgiving".

Conclusion

Based on our latest testing, including our 2024 Thanksgiving Dinner, we have two new types of wine to add to our list of suggested Thanksgiving pairings – White Rhône style blends, and skin contact Gruner Veltliner.