Falanghina Dei Feudi di San Gregorio 2013
What to serve as the white wine for the most difficult food and wine pairing dinner of the year. With the cacophony of flavors on the table at Thanksgiving, you have two choices, either to ignore the situation entirely and simply pick out a good wine, or make a careful, deliberate decision to throw a wine as a sacrifice in the great coliseum of flavor overload (little Greco-Roman metaphor there).
I did both. Pick out a good wine? Check. Carefully select a wine that would be quite satisfying but would also deal with the flavor assault without particular difficulty, remaining light on the palate, lively, refreshing and, above all, drinkable? Check.
Falanghina is the grape, Campania is the place. Feudi di San Gregorio is the winery. Falanghina, purportedly from Greece originally, is a premier variety best grown on the volcanic slopes of Mt. Vesuvius in Campania, outside Naples. It is said to be the base for the legendary “Falernian,”most famous wine of the antique Romans.
In the hands of Feudi di San Gregorio winery, Falanghina is a superb non-glitter wine. Mostly an abbondanza of fruit---apples, pears, pineapple, even banana---the rest is delicate white flowers supported with mouth-watering citrus acidity and crisp minerality.
This is downright enticing wine, difficult to drink in restraint, simply because it smells so fresh and vital with flower and fruit, is lively on the palate, and lingers delicately, never heavy, never dull in the long finish.
The turkey, the fat-dripping gravy, the herb-laden stuffing, the cranberry with orange zest, the sautéed onions and green beans, the sweet potatoes and brown sugar? Hey, don’t worry about it. This wine handles all of those, singularly or together, with aplomb (which translates in youthspeak as “Dude, not a problem. It’s all good.")
And it is. All good.