Red wine - something mid weight and popular with a wide variety of people. Maybe a pinot noir. Red wine with thanksgiving dinner is a classic. Then maybe a couple bottles of white wine for those that favor it. Chardonnay, probably. 10 people = 5 bottles of wine. 7 if there are big drinkers or if the gathering goes all day.
Some people prefer beer, and at some gatherings a cocktail or after-dinner drink is common. So add on as appropriate. But in my experience, for a food-based gathering, wine is the standard,
For Thanksgiving I buy several variety cases of beer (Flying Dog has a nice one) and several cases of stuff I like (Dales Pale Ale, etc). The beer gets iced in a tub on the back patio. Friday morning I traditionally root through what’s left for a breakfast red eye.
We also have a variety of wines. My gf’s mom loves sweet wines, so we get a bottle of some disgusting rosé, as well as some good Pinot Grigio.
I put out a bottle of good bourbon, and sometimes it gets some attention.
We have two spare bedrooms, a couch, and an inflatable mattress. For some reason we tend to have a full house the morning after TGiving, more so than any other holiday!
I love these threads, makes me realise how sober much of the US is.
I wouldn’t dream of only allowing half a bottle of wine per person, it would all be gone before the first course. Half a bottle is a little over two medium glasses.
For a sit down dinner for ten people that lasts for several hours, we’d need about 4 bottles of fizz for pre-dinner drinks, 6 red and 6 white with food and desert wine to finish. For this reason, it’s standard for all guest couples to turn up carrying 2-3 bottles.
OP mentioned “Cupcake” wine - that’s a familiar brand name. They do make a Chardonnay and a Reisling. Either one of those will work nicely with T-Day dinner.
A good after dinner drink (IMHO) is Bailey’s on the rocks. Like having desert in a glass. Paired up with a slice of cheesecake or pumpkin pie. NOM.
I didn’t read the thread so I’m sure this has been said:
For 10-15 people I’d probably pick up a 12 pack of mixed craft beer (I don’t know what’s local in your area) and a 12 pack of something like Coors Light. I’m not a wine drinker so I’d probably end up forgetting about that but since it’s Thanksgiving, maybe 2 bottles of red and 2 of white each in the $7-$10 range. For booze, a bottle of vodka or gin and some tonic. If you want to bring a treat, Rum Chata is fun for shots.
Be sure to put the beer, white wine and tonic in the fridge at your house the night before so it’s already cold and you’re not running in the house an hour before the dinner trying to get everything in the fridge to get it cold. This way you can bring it in a cooler or put it in a sink with some ice or even just leave it outside.
You’ll probably be out $75-$100 for all this, but the host spent well more than this on food and that doesn’t count all the labor they put into the meal (not to mention the week they spent cleaning the house). Also, I’d take the vodka, Rum Chata and possibly the unopened wine back with me when I left, but leave the opened 12 packs of beer and cracked wine.
White wine: Break from the mould and bring a nice Spanish Albarino. It’s perfect to get the night started. If you can’t find one from Spain, look for Bonny Doon-- they make an excellent Albarino.
Red Wine: Pinot Noir is the most common recommendation, but a good Syrah will do as well. I would stay away from Zins and Cabs-- a bit too robust for turkey.
Get the strongest vodka you can find, add an equal amount of lingonberries, let it stand for about a week, and voilà - a delicious homemade lingonberry liquor!
By the end of the evening, everyone will call it “liquorberry” and find this absolutely hilarious and take their clothes off in the snow.
Friends gave me a decorative bottle last year, filled with cranberries and vodka. I tasted it last year and meh. Kept it out as a decoration until this past weekend. WOW!!!
Hehe, you guys. Me (Swedish) and my girlfriend (Danish) are actually doing one of those for a Christmas thing. Vodka and lingonberries, plus sugar as needed - forgot to mention the sugar in the earlier post. One recipe speaks of adding one sugarcube a day until it tastes härligt. We’re just kinda winging it.
We’re also making a smaller bottle which’ll be somewhat more, uh, experimental - vodka, dark chocolate, berries of common sea-buckthorn and lemon thyme! Like I said, experimental. I’m sorta skeptical; the girlfriend is more optimistic.
We’re also going to a Thanksgiving dinner, BTW, with nothing but Scandinavians - sorry about the cultural appropriation there, no offense!
That sounds great – now I just have to find lingonberries. My (Swedish) stepmom’s family has lingonberry jam for the holidays and always treats it like some rare treasure. And when I made blueberry-Belvedere vodka infusion it tasted excellent: I’m sure lingonberries would taste equally great steeped in Belvedere for a couple weeks.
Okay, hoping I did okay. For the record, a handful of my new friends will be there but I don’t actually know all the people I’m going to see. So I am pretty nervous about screwing this up.
My friend told me she had two bottles of red so I didn’t have to worry about that.
I ended up with
-2 bottles Cupcake Pinot Grigio
-2 bottles Chardonnay
-1 largish bottle Riesling
-1 case Samuel Adams (I don’t drink beer, but people seem to like this stuff)
-for my taste, 2 six packs of Strongbow Hard Cider (never had Strongbow but I was curious)
I just spent $90 on alcohol. They were asking me for a pitch in donation for cost of food. What do you think is appropriate?
(My husband is going to freak when he finds out how much alcohol I got… he doesn’t drink, so he doesn’t understand. But I figure I’ll drink whatever’s leftover eventually.)
Pretty hard to screw it up unless you bought a case of Strawberry Angel or Thunderbird. I think you made good choices there but I would also throw in something for afters like Frangelico, Cognac or Amaretto to put in the coffee or to have as a digestive.
