Confessions of a wine connoisseur – dinner at mine doesn’t mean the ‘best’ wine

I have a confession to make: I don’t always serve the best possible wine when entertaining at home. This may seem a fairly cavalier attitude at best, and at worst, downright mean, but my decision has come about through hard won experience.

I really should emphasise that the wine I serve, should you ever visit, will always be in good condition and hopefully deliciously tasty. However, the situation may not always dictate that I serve the most expensive bottles I have in my cellar. Wine in my social life is always about conviviality, never about the ‘bling’.

In my youth, I admit to trying to impress guest by offering up a revered producer or as mythical a vintage as I could afford. With great ceremony and explanation, I would ‘enthral’ those around me with the provenance of the producer, the intricacies of the growing cycle of that vintage and a tasting note of which the fantastic Jilly Goolden would have been proud. It was my girlfriend at the time who thankfully enlightened me that on most or all of those occasions, painfully few of my guests had the same emotional involvement as I did in the bottles, and, that I should, in short, stop being such a bore.

After the bruising of my ego subsided, we got married and on reflection I am eternally grateful for her candid intervention.

My focus since then has always been to offer a wine that delivers the right ambiance for the occasion that we are in. Of course there are times to splash out and crack open that bottle that has been cellaring for years, but there is little point in doing that when those present enjoy an up-front juicy and fruity style; there will be scant pleasure gleaned from the ‘developed’ flavours found in your selection.

There are a plethora of wonderful memories that I hold very dear from the relaxation that a good honest bottle created; wines that would be considered ‘inexpensive’ but were just ideal for the food and the company. And when I have ‘geeked-out’ on a bottle of something odd or rare with fellow winos, those instances are just as affectionately remembered.

Unfortunately, I have no ‘silver bullet’ piece of advice to offer on the selection of the correct bottle as only you will be able to read the room or plan for those coming to dinner. All I would say is that no one can ever fault a wine chosen with the intention to pair beautifully with the occasion, that’s where you’ll find joy.

Some of my favourite sharing wines:

Montepulciano d’Abruzzo – with ripe tannins and its relatively high acidity, this red just sings when it is paired with a meaty pizza or pasta with a tomato sauce.

Grenache/ Garnacha – this is a Shepherd’s pie’s pal. Lower in tannin but often more alcohol, it really works with the richness of braised or stewed meat.

Viognier – tasty with Thai. The aromatic flavour compounds in this white grape balance the heat of green chilli in Southeast Asian food and go especially well with spicy fish cakes.