As part of keeping up-to-speed on booze culture, your intrepid liquor reporter must perform frequent reconnaissance at seedy watering holes, keggers, raging benders, and the like.
Yes, gentle reader, it’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. One item that frequently comes up at dinner parties and backyard BBQ events is the etiquette around bringing wine to your gracious host.
I will assume for the moment, that we are talking about civilized affairs, and not those BYOB bush parties from the halcyon days of my squandered youth.
For example, when I take my special lady of the week to one of those dinner parties hosted by friends, the common courtesy is to bring a bottle of wine (or two) as a hostess gift.
For those recently out of college, this may come as a shock, but that bottle of wine is actually a gift to the host, and is not something that you should expect to be opened that evening, and certainly not something you get to take home if there is anything left in the bottle at the end of the night.
So, unless you are at a BYOB event populated entirely by penniless college students whose entire monthly booze budget is wrapped up in that one bottle, once you hand it to your gracious host, it is no longer yours.
There are many reasons that this has become the accepted social norm of the day. First and foremost is that your gracious hostess has likely already selected the wines for the evening, with whites chilling in the fridge, and reds decanted in anticipation.
Since you likely didn’t prepare the meal, you may have brought an entirely inappropriate wine for pairing with certain courses. You do have an escape clause here for pot lucks, and you are encouraged to provide a wine that matches well with the dish you brought, with the understanding that the bottle is for pairing with the meal, and should not go into the host’s private cellar.
In situations like this, your humble narrator likes to bring a wine that pairs well with the dish, as well as a second bottle for a hostess gift, in order to thank the gracious host for opening their home to the ravenous horde that will soon be drinking all their wine and messing up their nice clean home.
In larger parties, it simply becomes unmanageable to open every single bottle brought by each guest, as there may be many more bottles than there are people. The hostess may choose to open bottles as required, which may come from her own cellar inventory, or she may dip into the stocks of the impeccably mannered guests who brought hostess gifts.
Again, all the wine becomes the property of the host once it enters the front door, so don’t even think about trying to take that bottle home just because the host never got around to opening it.
Unrepentant wine snob that I am, there are other considerations when on the receiving end of the hostess gift. If I happen to be hosting the event, sometimes my well-meaning guests bring a truly horrific wine that I would not wish upon my worst enemies.
When a well-meaning guest does present me with a bottle of undrinkable plonk, I thank them graciously, and make sure that bottle is quickly stashed out of sight in my cellar, in order to save the palates of my other guests from such indignity.
The rejected bottles will remain lonely in the cellar, ostracized as lesser wines by their more well-bred peers, until I pull it out of the cellar in a shameful display of regifting, when I present it to some other unsuspecting host at another dinner party.
As with all things in life, there are a few exceptions. Your host may be somewhat clueless when it comes to wine, and may ask you to bring a few bottles that you know to be sublime.
Alternatively, if you frequent dinner parties populated entirely by unrepentant wine snobs like your humble narrator, there will likely be a fierce battle of one-upmanship, as each wine snob offers to pour the extra-special bottle they brought, in order gain dominance over the group as the alpha snob.
Heed these words of wisdom well, gentle reader, and your friends will never have to write Dear Abby a hand-wringing letter about your wine faux pas.
