The night before last I laughed out loud when I read the response to this letter in “Ask Amy” re: taking wine to a dinner party. Great answer, Amy!
Dear Amy:
My wife and I were recently invited to have dinner with an old friend of hers who recently moved to our city.
As a consideration, I brought two excellent and expensive bottles of pinot noir, which can be served with just about any food.
To my astonishment the wine was gratefully received and then not served.
The wine that was served was ordinary at best, and I couldn’t help but feel slighted throughout the evening.
When I mentioned it to my wife on the way home, it led to an argument. My wife claims that we were not asked to bring anything and that the wine was a gift. She told me to suck it up.
I say, come on, if I have to lower my standards to that degree, our friendship with this couple will not develop, and we need to educate them a little bit in the social graces.
I would chalk it up to a lesson learned and move on, but this is an important relationship to my wife. Please inform people some “gifts” are to be shared.
[signed] I Know I’m Right
[Answer] It doesn’t seem to have occurred to you that your wife’s friend assessed the situation and decided to serve the wine you deserved.
I know this topic has been addressed at great length on wine boards before, and I think there is somewhat of a consensus that if you bring it as gift, then it’s up to the host whether they want to keep it or serve it, and that a skillful way to work around the issue is to bring two bottles, one as a gift and one to share that evening (better still if it’s already opened, allegedly for decanting purposes).
I disagree. If anyone brings wine to my house as a “gift”, it goes straight into the cellar. I have already thought out and prepared a special meal for for my guests and have selected the wines from my cellar to go with that meal. Just because someone shows up with a California Pinot Noir, no matter how nice, it might not go with the food that I have prepared and already decanted other wine for. I can’t have folks bringing five different kinds of wines and opening them all up, my life is more ordered than that.
I agree…this happened to me not long ago. I had opened and decanted a PN and a Cab, and my guest (very generously) brought a nice bottle of wine. I think they were surprised when I didnt make a move to open it, but it was unnecessary and I deemed it a gift.
If I’m invited to dinner at someone’s house, it’s usually to share wine. In this situation, I bring wine to share, and always bring them a bottle of wine as a gift. I always assume the same if/when then hand me a bottle of wine – although if they’re not wine geeks, I usually ask if they’d “…like me to open it tonight.”
The only way you should ‘expect’ your wine to be opened is if you have discussed it with the host first, a simple ‘Hey, you want us to bring anything to open?’ sort of thing. Otherwise a bottle is FOR THEM. No strings attached. If you brought them something good and they’re pouring swill, then you should have asked when you had the chance if you could bring something to open. In the future, maybe you can offer to help coach them in wine if they are a good friend, otherwise you can either deal with it (and bad-mouth them here afterwards ) or switch to water or mixed drinks while you’re there.
On Sunday, my wife and I are going to dinner at a friends house. I always call in advance to find out what the host is cooking. This always makes for interesting conversation, especially since my close circle knows where I’m coming from. I try to bring the right wine that will match the food.
Otherwise, when I arrive, I make a beeline to the kitchen and immediately open the wine that I brought. I know. The nerve of me to open a present. The last time this situation presented itself, the host had 3 bottles of an 05 Bordeaux spread out on the table. Hmmm. 05. Ok. Should be ok. Then I remembered whose house I was at and realized those 3 bottle couldn’t have cost more than $20 bucks. In that situation, I saved the day (for me anyway).
I agree with those who say that a gift is a gift, plain and simple and the host gets to do with it as they wish. to be sure you get to enjoy the wine that night, do bring two bottles and offer one as a gift and the other to be opened and shared. That has worked well for me on occassion and clearly is a more generous offer to someone who has invited you into their home and cooked dinner. Also, it seems most appropriate to give the host a thoughtful heads up that you wish to bring and open a bottle to share that evening, so the host can plan accordingly.
What we have here is a failure to communicate. Communications solve these issues:
I have some friends with whom we bring wine to each others house for dinner and open the wine - agreeing ahead as to theme.
I have other friends where they don’t let me bring wine (at least to serve) when I come to their house and I don’t let them bring wine when they come to mine. If I bring a wine, I know it is a gift and vise versa.
I have nonwine friends who when we ask what we can bring say wine with the expectation that it will be drunk at dinner. Typically, I don’t bring them as good a wine as I bring to the house in situation 1.
If I don’t have a set arrangement and I bring wine, I have no expectation that it will be anything but a gift. I plan my wine bringing accordingly.
You know… depening on the meal of course, I kind of agree with Mark. If I’ve thought about the menu carefully and what wines to match with it, bringing a wine over unanticipated is a bit arrogant of the bringer. If it’s a summer BBQ? Rip that pupp open. AS Howard says, communication is key. Of course, I wouldn’t just put the bottle in the cellar in the case that Mark posits - I’d say “Hey, I already have wines matched with the courses, but I’ll stash this and we’ll have it next time” or, if it was a wine that was a decent match with a course, I’d open it alongside whatever wine I’d picked out.
Think of it this way Anthony - if someone just showed up with a dish for you to incorporate into a dinner… wouldn’t that be awkward and a bit presumptuous? Wine to many of us is the same thing as a dish. The problem is that it’s NOT to a lot of folks… it’s just a beverage to them.
I have a slight twist on this topic. If we are going to a dinner party my wife will usually check to see what is being served and how many people will attend. She thinks we should bring enough wine for everyone to have a glass with dinner. As there are typically 6-8 people at dinner, this usually means that we bring 2 bottles as a “gift”. I am uncomfortable doing this for several reasons - it seems presumptuous, it pretty much demands that the wine we brought be opened with dinner (i.e. it is not really a gift), etc.
What do you think about bringing more than one bottle to be consumed with dinner?
I just look at it differently. If someone brings something over, I put it out. I was really struck by his point of whether or not this makes one’s life more or less orderly. As a guest at someone else’s home, we always ask what we can bring and the answer is usually wine.
In my circles of friends, the SOP for a wine dinner at someone’s home is typically potluck on both the food and the wine. The host/hostess often will provide the entree, with the rest of us filling in on apps, side dishes, and/or deserts, and we will all bring wines to open that night. There are some variations from that model, but the standard assumption is that if you bring a bottle to someone’s home at a wine dinner, it’s going to be opened and shared that night.
If I get invited to someone else’s home for the first time, then I’ll ask if I can bring anything–either food or wine. If the answer is no, then I understand that any wine I bring will end up being a gift for the host/hostess, and they are free to open it (or not) that night as they see fit. I never am insulted if they decide to put it in their cellar and open what they already have planned. Even if I think my bottle was “better” than what they opened, I’m a guest in their home and should act the part of the gracious guest.
Conversely, if someone comes to my house with crap wine:
I’m insulted since they know that I care about the wine
I don’t open the gifted wine, and save it for a visit to a house where they don’t care about wine.
Parallel situation… don’t you expect your host to open the cake that you brought? I can’t imagine anyone putting a cake in the freezer to save for another time.
The concept of bringing wine as a gift is wrong. Is the cake considered a gift??
But would you really bring a cake unannounced? That’s something I’ve never heard of. Presumably, if one’s bringing a cake to a dinner party, it’s been cleared with the host(s) beforehand.
For the record, I routinely bring wine(s) to dinner parties with friends, expecting that the wine(s) will be opened that evening. Of course, they will do the same if my wife and I are hosting — this is just a long-standing assumption that myself and my friends operate on with each other. If I were to bring a bottle to a dinner party hosted by someone I didn’t know well, it would be brought with the idea that it was a gift and without the expectation that it would be opened that evening.
![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
) or switch to water or mixed drinks while you’re there.![[whistle.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/87d24eb81ec6dc01d84f3d6c19fa9a357e90218e.gif "whistle"){kind=small}
I try to bring the right wine that will match the food.![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
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