Creative pairings for... Thanksgiving dinner

A crazy collection of carb- heavy, often sweet side dishes arrayed around a savoury turkey centrepiece that many don't even like - Thanksgiving dinner presents a particularly thorny wine pairing conundrum. And the solutions may not be what you expect

- STORY CHARLIE FU

Turkey, a meat so abhorrent that here in the US, it's only eaten under two conditions: celebrating one of our most important holidays or when you're trying to lose weight (and yes, okay, by traditionalists at Christmas). The only reason that so much wine is enjoyed during Thanksgiving dinner is to mask the consumption of turkey.

I've tried every way I can think of to make it edible: fried, smoked, spatchcocked and even Peking duck style (which was the winner). But while the turkey sits at the centre of a Thanksgiving meal, the truth is, everything around it matters more. Ask your friends what their favourite dish is and it won't be turkey.

'I just want the sticky rice we ate next to the turkey,' says Jon Yao, James Beard's 2025 Best Chef in California and proprietor of Michelin one-star Kato in Los Angeles, referring to a very popular Chinese American combo.

That's why traditional Thanksgiving wine pairings have never made sense to me. Every pairing you see is centred around turkey, but your plate is mostly filled with sides piled on top of each other. As Ki Kim of Restaurant Ki in Los Angeles, Michelin's 2025 Best New Chef in California, put it: 'The best bite is with a mix of everything on the plate; nothing stands on its own well.'

Even though we know this, we still cling to the same tired bottles: Zinfandel, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon. No one has ever said, 'What these candied yams* really need is a 16% abv Zinfandel.'

We need new recommendations for Thanksgiving drinking, ones that aren't recycled like your grandmother's green bean casserole* recipe. As someone whose family isn't big on wine, I usually leave my Burgundy in the cellar, and over the years I've narrowed down my favourite things to reach for come Thanksgiving.

Cutting through