Ep 587: The Thanksgiving Show 2025 - Two-Wine Strategies to Rule the Feast

Wine for Normal People

Alcohol, Lifestyle, Arts, Education, Food, Wine, Dining, Grapes

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thanksgiving is one of the most difficult meals to pair with, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try!

Source: Canva

This year, for one of our weekly discussion questions I asked the Patrons how many wines they would be serving with their Thanksgiving/holiday feasts and the answer was overwhelmingly 2-3.

Given that, in this show I talk about combinations of two wines you can purchase for your table that will pair with many types of Thankgsivings. Some examples:

If your dishes tend to be on the sweet side… honey glazes, marshmallow sweet potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, etc

Off-dry Riesling or Vouvray (although butternut squash soup with a kick could do well with a regular Gewurztraminer)
Reds: Grenache, GSM blends from Rhône, California, Australia, etc., Garnacha from Spain, Zinfandel

Asian-influenced Thanksgiving

Aromatic whites: Alsace Riesling, Pinot Gris, Gewürztraminer, Torrontés, or Viognier
Fruity reds with low tannin: For smokey or braised meat: New World Pinot Noir, Côtes du Rhône, Garnacha. For something especially smoky: Saumur-Champigny from Loire

Desserts....Pecan Pie: Tawny Port, Madeira, Pedro Ximenez Sherry

From Getty Images via Canva

There are these ideas explained and so much more packed into the episode. Listen, take what you want leave the rest! Please know that I'm grateful to you for listening and your loyalty to me and the show!!

Full show notes and all back episodes are on Patreon. Become a member today!

www.patreon.com/winefornormalpeople

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Wine for Normal People, the podcast for people who like wine, but not the snobbery that goes with it.
0:15.8	I'm your host Elizabeth Schneider, author of the Wine for Normal People book and Certified Wine Dork.
0:21.6	This podcast is brought to you by my exclusive sponsor, Wine Access.
0:25.7	Go to Wine Access.com slash WFMP and get a gift card for the wine lover in your life
0:31.4	or stock up on holiday favorites for their Black Friday sale this Friday.
0:36.3	You can get some fantastic stuff for this holiday
0:38.7	season for serving at your holiday functions. From Hanukkah to Christmas to Festivist to New
0:43.8	Year's, they have you covered. Wine Access.com slash WFMP. Listen in the middle of the show for more
0:48.8	details. It is the annual Thanksgiving show.
0:55.5	Every year I do the show, and I've skipped it a couple of years because I feel like I'm always saying the same thing.
1:02.2	But then when I ask you guys if you want a Thanksgiving show, you always say yes.
1:06.3	So maybe it's just fun to have a refresh on it.
1:10.7	And if you're not a patron, you can't listen to
1:12.3	the back episode. So this is new for some of you. And that's exciting too. I try every Thanksgiving
1:18.1	to think of a different theme. I've done like the one bottle solution before. I've done the
1:24.2	full course thing. I've done American wines. I've done a bunch of different stuff.
1:28.2	And this year, on Patreon, the weekly discussion question was about how many wines are you
1:33.6	having for Thanksgiving? And I didn't think that I was going to use it for the podcast, but now
1:39.1	I realized this was the perfect setup. So thank you patrons. I'm sorry that I used your data. Usually it's a
1:46.7	survey. Everybody can see the results. The split was between two and three wines. Most people didn't
1:53.2	have one wine. Most people didn't have more than four wines. It was really two and three wines.
1:58.5	A lot of people were saying, I'm only going to serve two wines
	...

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