Wines for Your 2025 Thanksgiving Table

Thanksgiving is almost here, which means it’s time to plan for Thanksgiving dinner and in particular, what wines you plan to serve with your Thanksgiving feast! Here are four fantastic wines that will pair well with almost any Thanksgiving dish!  

While Christmas is my all-time favorite holiday, I also love Thanksgiving and the fact that it’s a holiday built around a huge feast to be enjoyed with family and friends! Laurie and I adhere to the traditional Thanksgiving menu – no goose or turducken (a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey) for us! Instead, it’s always the classic roast turkey served with all the trimmings (mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, rolls, and a vegetable like green beans or brussels sprouts. Oh, and don’t forget the sweet potato or chocolate pie for dessert (and preferably, both)!

With that menu, the only thing missing is the wine that’s served with it. And there are so many options to choose from. The traditional Thanksgiving meal might be the most wine-friendly menu ever. In fact, with the sweetness of a sweet potato casserole, the saltiness of the turkey and gravy, and the richness of the stuffing, you can go with a sparkling wine, a rose’, and white, or a red – all of them are perfect matches for the meal!

Laurie and I usually include two or three wine choices for our Thanksgiving feast. We always start out with a sparkler to kick off the celebration, usually served with a cheese plate or some other snack a couple of hours before the main event. Then, we serve a white or rose’, along with a red for dinner. I have four great recommendations for your Thanksgiving meal this year – a sparkling wine and a red wine from California, and a white and a rose’ from France. Here’s my review of each of these delicious wines!

• Mumm Sparkling Brut Rose, Napa Valley, CA ($18). It’s difficult to find food that doesn’t pair well with sparkling wine, and that definitely goes for Thanksgiving dinner! There are a lot of salt-forward dishes served at Thanksgiving – the turkey itself, along with the gravy and stuffing. As fate would have it, sparkling wine goes perfectly with salty dishes! Mumm is a fantastic winery that specializes in sparkling wines and they are all delicious! With over 50 different sparklers produced by Mumm at different times of the year, there are plenty of options to choose from, and this lovely brut rose sparkler is the perfect place to start. It’s zesty and clean, with hints of strawberry and orange on the finish. The variety mix includes Pinot Noir (76%), Chardonnay (22%), and Pinot Meunier (2%). And best of all, this wine is affordable with a price less than $20 a bottle and widely available as well (Total Wine usually has it in stock).

  
  

• 2022 Chateau Laur Paradoxe Blanc de Noirs, Cote du Lot, France ($35).  This is a fun and utterly unique wine! The “Blanc de Noirs” descriptor means it’s a white wine made from a red grape (in this case, Malbec). They create this wine by fermenting the pure juice from the grape and then fermenting it without the skins or stems – this results in a white instead of a red wine. This is a rich, aromatic white wine that shows floral hints on the nose, and stone fruit, citrus, and orange peel in the mouth. It’s medium bodied, but it has a rich mouthfeel and a lovely long finish. You can find this wine on-line – it’s not usually stocked in most wine stores, but it’s worth seeking out!

  
  

• 2023 Domaine Mas Des Lavandes, Mediterranee, France ($25). This lovely French Rose’ wine is made from the Syrah, Merlot, and Ugni Blanc grapes. The Mediterranean coastal influences result in a light, expressive wine with notes of strawberry, orange blossom, citrus, and vanilla. It will pair perfectly with the sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce! This is a relatively low production wine, but it is available on-line and in specialty wine stores and restaurants. It’s also a great sipper on its own, so if you can find it buy a few bottles and enjoy!

• 2022 Trefethen Cabernet Franc, Oak Knoll District, Napa Valley, CA ($60). This one is a bit of a splurge, but when you are celebrating all you have to be thankful for over the past year, why not open up the wallet a bit and get yourself a gem of a wine? This one certainly qualifies! Trefethen makes fantastic wines – I haven’t had a bad one and in fact, I’ve only had outstanding wine from this top shelf producer. Cabernet Franc is usually used as a blending grape instead of being the main event, but more and more wineries are figuring out that the Cabernet Franc grape is a worthy grape on its own. There are more and more wineries making single varietal Cabernet Franc wines, many in California and Washington. But some of my favorites come from Virginia, where this grape thrives. This wine is from Napa, and showcases everything I love about this grape – dark cherry notes along with light baking spice and leather notes on the finish. It’s full bodied, with bright and bold fruit up front. It also has a nice long finish that shows more earthy notes – absolutely beautiful! This wine is available on-line from the winery.

Try out these wines and let me know what you think – and Happy Thanksgiving as well!