Choosing the Correct Wine for a Dinner: Party

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Farley and on behalf of Expert Village.com I am here trying to unravel the mystery of wine. One think I think we get really nervous about is being invited to a dinner party with people we don’t know very well, whether it be the boss or business partner or perhaps your significant others parent, you want to bring a bottle of wine but you don’t know what to bring. Well because you might not know what is being served for dinner and as I said before, food and mind pairing can be very important for the meal, you might want to take another route by staying with wine that go in a different direction. One of my favorite wines to drink, happens to be after dinner, would be Port. So what you can do is go to the liquor store or your wine shop and go to that section on Port, typically comes from Portugal but there are very nice versions made in California. There is several different types Port. You have Tawny Port, Ruby Port, and Vintage Port which tends to be quite pricey and might be out of your price range. You can go with any of those or even a white bottle vintage port which can kind of takes Vintage Port to a more affordable level. If you aren’t sure what to get because there are several different kinds, I myself tend to like Tawny or Vintage, just go up to whoever is working in the shop and ask them, say I am going to dinner and I want to bring something nice and I was thinking about a Port. If you don’t like Port because there are some people out there that don’t, you can also do a desert wine because that is something that can stand alone. It can go with desert but it also can be drunk by itself. In that case, I would recommend late harvest white wine such as Semillon or Gewürztraminer or even Ligonier. If it says late harvest on the label that means typically that it was picked later in the year which gave the grapes a chance to get riper which means there is more sugar and that sugar is not converted to alcohol as it often is with regular wines. It has a sweetness and also intensity that is very enjoyable to drink just a small glass of. If you don’t get to the wine when you are at the dinner, then you can leave it there and it is a nice host or hostess gift. That is one way to impress your friends and family with your wine knowledge just by bringing a Port or Desert Wines instead of just a bottle of Chardonnay or Cabernet. "