BOTTLE SERVICE
80 DECEMBER 2019
8 Wines Anyone
Would be Happy to Get
WINES FROM
SURPRISING PLACES
If you find a bottle from
Poland, Switzerland, Michi-
gan, Mexico, Israel, either
the republic or state of Geor-
gia—I’m interested. That’s
something I can’t easily
find and have never tried.
It doesn’t have to even be
good. The most obvious ver-
sion of this is Chateau Musar
from Lebanon. I’m always
excited about that.
A YEAR THAT
MEANS SOMETHING
The year we met? The
year we graduated college
together? The year we both
had kids? A bottle with
meaning is a really nice gift.
A BOTTLE FROM A PLACE
YOU TRAVELED
I like to be bored with your
stories about wine.
SHERRY
All sherry is good sherry.
VERY OLD RIOJA
Old Rioja vintages are no
more expensive than Veuve
Clicquot but do take some
work to find. Very old any-
thing is interesting to me. It
can even be from an off-year
of Bordeaux. You can buy
those online at auctions
pretty quickly, but it does
take some planning—which
is what makes it a good gift.
DESSERT WINES
No one buys dessert wines
for themselves. Port,
Madeira, Sauternes, Cana-
dian ice wine—it’s all fun.
OVERSIZE BOTTLES
Magnums are nice. But
3-liter bottles are super-fun.
Even cheap ones.
SEGURA VIUDAS
RESERVA HEREDAD CAVA
My wife and I like this Cava in
part because it has all
this metal hanging from the
bottle. It tastes good, too.
detail about the kinds of wine I like.
Veuve Clicquot is so universally gifted that my friend Kristin
Newman, a sitcom writer, was given a box of Veuve Clicquot
that came with a “Happy Anniversary” note. It was not her
anniversary. The note was addressed to the person who gave the
bottle to Kristin. I was relieved to find out that person wasn’t me.
It’s not just Veuve. All liquor is lazy gifting. Oh, that guy likes
wine! That woman loves whiskey! That couple likes to get wasted
and forget how much they hate each other! Liquor is an Amazon
gift card with heft.
Except liquor gifting is not as safe as you think. Lots of peo-
ple I know have confessed to giving wine to friends who were
newly sober, which is a rough faux pas to
recover from. A gift that says, “It slipped
my mind that you wrestled the genetic
demon that destroyed your marriage,
ended your career, and got you arrested
on Hollywood Boulevard” is not going
to go over well, no matter how pretty
the box is. My friend Cara Berk told me
she once bought her friend a bottle of
Frangelico: “She was allergic to tree nuts.
But it’s boiled down, so she’s good. So that’s
good; she’s going to be fine,” she remem-
bered. “She was not fine.”
There’s an even more horrifying liquor-
gifting error than almost killing your friend
with a liqueur I’m guessing was named
after one of Angelina Jolie’s relationships:
not opening the bottle of wine I brought to your dinner party.
Supposedly, there’s an etiquette rule that you do not have to open
a guest’s wine. This makes sense if you want to build a society
without dinner parties. I brought that wine so there’s at least one
thing I’ll enjoy that night. Where does a host’s right to suspend gift
habeas corpus end? If I bring a box of cookies, are you allowed to
wait until everyone leaves and eat them all in bed? If I wanted you
to enjoy the wine later, I would have put it in one of those little
bags with a bow and a note about Kristin’s friend’s anniversary.
I get that you may have carefully selected a Rhône to pair with
your braised short ribs. But if you don’t also open the Montrachet I
brought before the entree, at your next dinner party you’re getting
a Veuve Clicquot box full of rocks.
I’m in no way saying you should go to your next Christmas party
with a vase or a candle or one of those pillows that you put on a
bed and then take off a bed so you can use the real pillows under-
neath. Just put a little bit of time into your liquor purchase so the
gift is personal.
If I need to spell it out further: Buy me the Grande Dame.
I get that you may
have selected a Rhône
to pair with your
braised short ribs.
But if you don’t also
open the Montrachet I
brought, at your next
dinner party you’re
getting a Veuve Clic-
quot box full of rocks.
Joel Stein is the author of the recently published In Defense of Elitism: Why I’m
Better Than You and You Are Better Than Someone Who Didn’t Buy This Book.
