November 29, 2024 · 6 min read
The turkey was a situation. The gravy was a crime scene. The Merlot held the line.
It was 2022. Russ was hosting. That should be the whole sentence, but it isn't, because the things that went wrong went wrong on a level we hadn't previously considered possible.
A brief inventory of what went wrong
The turkey came out at 4 p.m. looking like it had personally insulted the oven. The gravy separated into three distinct geological layers. The mashed potatoes were fine. The stuffing was, charitably, a suggestion. Someone — we're not naming names but it was Russ's brother-in-law — opened the cranberry sauce can from the wrong end and acted like that was a flex.
By the time everyone sat down, morale was, let's say, reassessing.
Enter the Merlot
Todd had brought four bottles of a Merlot we'd bottled in late August. Nothing fancy. A kit Merlot we'd been drinking off and on for a couple of months. We opened the first one mostly out of obligation.
And then a thing happened. People started talking. People started laughing. The turkey, on second pass, was actually fine — overcooked but not inedible, and the gravy, when stirred aggressively, performed something resembling its job. By bottle three nobody was thinking about the turkey at all. We were telling stories. Russ's mom told a story about Russ at age eight that I'm still legally not allowed to repeat.
“A meal can fall apart. A table can't, if there's enough wine on it.”
What it taught us
We didn't realize it at the time, but that was the night the whole "backup wine" thing went from a joke into a actual operating principle. The wine wasn't the centerpiece. It was the thing that let the centerpiece be a disaster without it mattering.
Every Thanksgiving since, we make sure there's at least four extra bottles of something easy. Not because we expect another turkey incident. Because everyone, including us, is more relaxed knowing there's enough.