Rosé Champagne Is the Versatile Pairing for Turkey and All the Sides
I love Thanksgiving. I love it so much that we usually do it twice a year chez Westby. I love it so much that I own a turkey suit and wear it every year the day before Thanksgiving in the store. I love it so much that I have accumulated some weight from enjoying it to its fullest—mostly by stuffing myself with stuffing. Why do I love it? Because it is the best time to be thankful for all of life’s blessings, and to celebrate those blessings with food, friends, rosé Champagne and red Burgundy!
We have a lot of Thanksgiving traditions at home: stuffed pumpkins, heritage breed turkeys that look like they would be better suited to the racing track than the oven, vintage port after dinner, pecan pies… The list goes on and on. But the most consistent tradition of all is two Champagnes, they have been on our table every year for decades, and I don’t want to change that now. Both are rosé, and I am a firm believer that rosé Champagne is the ultimate wine for the Thanksgiving table. This is because of its incredible flexibility. The red wine element pairs fantastically with the savor of the gravy and the stuffing, while the bright acidity, bubbles and vivacious minerality go with everything from the sweetest yams to the Brussels sprouts. Everyone has a favorite dish at Thanksgiving, and rosé can handle all of them.
The Ariston Aspasie Brut Rosé Champagne $42.99 is special to me for a number of reasons. The first is the quality—this wine is all estate-grown fruit from the Ariston family vineyard in the quaint village of Brouillet, aged for five years on the lees before release. It is even better in magnum (Ariston Aspasie Brut Rosé Champagne 1.5L Magnum $99.99), the first of which were released earlier this year. It is composed of about half and half Pinot Noir and Meunier and gets its color not only from an addition of very old-vine red wine made of Meunier, but also from maceration of half of the juice with half of the skins. Paul-Vincent Ariston is the only producer that I know that is craziest to do both methods for one rosé, as it makes for more than double the work. The macerated half dials up the wild fruit element, the part of the wine that I like the best with my stuffing, while the addition of old-vine red wine insures that it stays elegant and has a bass note that only this can bring. The back end is so dry and refreshing that you might find yourself taking a healthy sip after every bite of food… Or maybe that is just me!
The Billecart-Salmon "Le Rosé" Champagne $89.99 is another Thanksgiving-meal-defining bottle for us. It has undergone a small name change—it used to be known as the Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé, but now the dosage goes back and forth between Brut and Extra Brut due to the riper harvests, all the time keeping the perfect balance it has had for decades. I love how this wine works perfectly for the aperitif on its own, with my wife’s onion dip and my mother-in-law’s crab dip, but then moves on to going just as well with the dark meat of a big turkey leg. It does it all!
I hope that you have a joyous Thanksgiving, filled with the laughter of your friends and family, and punctuated by a few popping rosé Champagne corks!
A toast to you!