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In America, the fourth Thursday of November is the day most synonymous with feasting. It conjures pictures of crowded chairs amalgamated from all rooms of the house around a skirted table laden with dishes that only come out of the oven once or twice a year. But when we all gather round that table to give thanks, what should we be drinking?
Wine? Sure, you could wash down some turkey and mashed potatoes with a Beaujolais. But wine (a light, acidic red or a fruity, crisp white) only pairs well with the flavors of Thanksgiving, it doesn’t address the physical trial of feasting that the holiday entails. The biggest meal of the year calls for a more strategic beverage choice, but unfortunately, Americans are unaccustomed to drinking the kinds of drinks that might ward off post-meal lethargy. This Thanksgiving, we should all turn to a digestif, one that soothes with its consistency and salves with its bitterness. France’s crème de noyaux or Italy’s nocino do the trick admirably.
It’s strange how little headway the European tradition of the digestif has made in American eating. Our insistence on an efficient, post-work dinner is antithetical to much of southern Europe’s leisurely late-night dining, where the digestif shines the brightest. In Spain alone, there are dozens of liqueurs produced from specialty ingredients like sloe berries, cherries, saffron, and anise seed—lots and lots of anise seed. France also has a robust digestif culture with venerable herbal concoctions like Chartreuse and Bénédictine that Americans know only as cocktail ingredients. And the Italians have their amari, a collection of spirits infused with bitter herbs and roots, in addition to the nonalcoholic, postprandial espresso. Europeans must look at the American diet and wonder at how we can scarf down so much food without a properly designed draught to chase it.
Which is why we should be capping our Thanksgiving dinner with a final digestif glass. I can hear dissenters decrying the adoption of a European tradition at the quintessential American dinner table, but Thanksgiving is one of the only multicourse meals we all eat (even if some of us eat it piled on one plate). And it’s not like we didn’t get our taste for wine from the Europeans. Plus, digestifs fill a major gap in flavor on the Thanksgiving table; they lend a touch of bitterness to complete the meal.
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Consider the spread: juicy roast turkey, aromatic stuffing, dark gravy, autumn squash, sweet corn, buttery potatoes, creamy green bean casserole, and tart cranberry sauce (this is not the place to have the jelly debate). Where is the bitterness? I would concede to a touch in the Brussels sprouts, but across the table it is severely lacking.
Crème de noyaux, a French liqueur produced with the pits of fruits like apricots, cherries, and peaches, is a good gateway into the sometimes bracingly bitter world of digestifs for the curious turkey eater. The liqueur smells like maraschino cherries, but has a darker taste with a more bitter undertone. It’s as if the cherry and pecan pies shared the oven together. On the other hand, nocino, Italy’s green-walnut liqueur, offers a similarly approachable sweetness, but with a nuttier and more moka-leaning flavor. Both have deeply rich colors that suit the palate of the holiday.
Thanksgiving calls for seasonality, and both these entry-level digestifs deliver on the jammy fruit and nutty flavors we expect of the late autumn. Instead of nitpicking over the wine selection this year, do your indigestion a favor and opt for the bittersweet relief of a good digestif.
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Dining and Cooking