Best bottles of wine to bring to your Friendsgiving celebration

There’s no better occasion than the Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving feast to bring a bottle and pop a cork.

No holiday is more centered on food, and wine is the world’s finest food partner, hands down.

Even if we look beyond the meal to Friendsgiving’s higher purpose — to gather with people we know and love in a spirit of gratitude — that too is perfectly in line with wine’s core strengths. Wine has an extraordinary ability to elevate life’s precious moments and to strengthen the bonds of love and humanity that connect us all.

Consider these suggestions, chosen for a range of different possible objectives. All are available through Pennsylvania’s Fine Wine and Good Spirits stores; check finewineandgoodspirits.com for locations.

La Crema Monterey Pinot Gris, California, $18.99

There is no single wine that is more universally flattering with the full range of traditional Thanksgiving foods — from roasted turkey with gravy to sweet potato casserole — than pinot gris, provided that it is made in the ripe and luscious style of the French Alsace region, not the lighter, milder variant popularized in Italy as pinot grigio.

This reliable and widely available offering from Monterey overdelivers every time and tastes like bottled sunshine, with cheerful flavors of apricot and lemon curd.

Masi “Campofiorin” Rosso del Veronese, Italy, $23.99

Most European reds are either too dry or too tannic to flatter holiday dishes, but those from the Valpolicella region of Italy are an exception. This is particularly true of those made using the “ripasso” method, like this icon from the inventor of the category.

Here, the raisiny remnants from making the region’s specialty — a powerhouse dried grape wine called Amarone — are added to a lighter red wine and fermented a second time to boost flavor, color, and fruitiness, as if a fresh blackberry tart had been turbocharged with a hidden layer of blackberry jam.

Terras Gauda “O Rosal” Rías Baixas, Spain, $24.99

Albariño wines from the Rías Baixas region are Spain’s most famous whites, but most are too light for a meal as rich as Thanksgiving. The tiny subregion of O Rosal has its own tradition of blending in other local grapes that can boost albariño’s heft and aromatics.

The results can be eminently turkey-worthy, as they are here, featuring a lemony base of 70% albariño enriched in texture with a heaping helping of caiño blanco and made extra flavorful with a dollop of Loureiro, a grape named for the laurel leaves we know better as bay leaves.

Laurent-Perrier “Cuvée Rosé” Brut Champagne, France, $99.99

Sparkling wine famously goes with everything, and there’s a reason that Champagnes command such staggering prices: They simply deliver more pleasure per square inch than the bubbly competition, with the best leaving the palate reverberating for minutes after each sip.

Pink Champagnes are ideal for the flavors of the holiday table, and Laurent-Perrier is a thought leader for the style, having revived an ancient and painstaking 18^th century method for coaxing both a delicate raspberry flavor and a pale salmon color from pinot noir grapes in this famed cuvée, and then preserving them brilliantly.

Argyle “Reserve” Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley, $40.99

Speaking of pinot noir, this grape offers some of the best pairing potential to be found in a red wine for a Friendsgiving menu that favors whites, especially if you look to Oregon as your source rather than France or California. Traditional Burgundy can be too dry while California offerings can overpower, so your best bet lies in the premium offerings of the Willamette Valley, which can capture and channel the best of both worlds.

This lovely example has the depth and tension of a perfectly ripe black cherry dipped ever so briefly in excellent cognac.

Chalk Hill Sonoma Coast Chardonnay, California, $24.99

Whether your holiday table is anchored by a turkey or a ham, both options favor richer white wines — a category dominated by barrel-fermented chardonnays. California versions like this one are best suited, since they feature enough fruity ripeness to handle sugary accents like cranberry sauce or a brown-sugar glaze and a gloss of caramelized oak that echoes the flavors of browned foods.

Here, a respected producer’s offering is beautifully balanced — neither too heavy nor too delicate — like a warm slice of apple pie with a cold scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.