What wine to serve for a party

Deciding which wine is best suited to serve to large numbers can be tricky. It’s a question of budget (obviously), your own preferences and those of your guests and the type of food you’re serving.

So assuming you’re providing the booze rather than letting people bring their own what should you bear in mind?

1. Wine - like any drink - should be refreshing

A roomful of people tends to be an overheated environment so light, fresh-tasting wines work better than full-bodied ones (although see point 2 below). Wines of between 11% and 12.5% may sound a bit wimpy but are well-suited to parties, especially during the summer months. It’s also worth choosing wines that have a high level of acidity like Sauvignon Blanc or Riesling which will refresh rather than tire the palate. If you're serving richer reds try and keep them cool by leaving them in an unheated room or outside the back door (unless it’s freezing, obviously)

Consider: Whites such as Sauvignon Blanc, Côtes de Gascogne, Riesling, Vinho Verde (a low alcohol Portuguese white wine), Italian whites such as Verdicchio. Reds such as Gamay, Pinot Noir or inexpensive Merlot

2. Hot food or cold food?

As with any other aspect of food and wine matching it’s worth taking into account the type of food you’re serving - hot food like lasagne, a pie or casserole will need fuller-bodied wines than a cold buffet or party nibbles. A sparkling wine like prosecco or cava, for example, is ideal with canapés whereas it would be too light for a robust wintry braise. Just search the dish or dishes you’re planning as a centrepiece of the party under Find a Match or email me at fiona AT matchingfoodandwine DOT com

3. What would your guests enjoy?

That will depend partly on the age group, partly on their interests. Younger drinkers (by which I’m thinking of twenty- and thirty-somethings NOT under-age drinkers, obviously) tend to like sweeter-tasting wines than their parents. A group of fellow wine-lovers will probably have more adventurous tastes than a random assortment of neighbours.

That said, I reckon the most popular party wines all-round would be New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, pinot noir (see Aldi's Chilean pinot I recommended in the Christmas reds below), young rioja and prosecco.

4. Keeping your friends sober

Obviously this isn’t entirely under your control but you can help by not pouring hefty reds of 14.5% and over. People sometimes don’t realise just how alcoholic the wine they’re drinking is. It also makes sense to have plenty of soft drinks available. Big jugs of water with plenty of ice and slices of citrus or cucumber look inviting as well.

5. Staying on budget

Probably the least of your problems as there’s so much inexpensive wine around but please don’t imagine that if you’re buying wine at ‘half price’ or ‘better than half price’ you’re really saving yourself that amount. Even without those apparently dramatic discounts you should be able to get a decent basic white, red or rosé for under £6 and a sparkler for under £10.

Here are some wines I've recommended in recent wine round-ups and features. Remember that you should be able to an additional discount if you’re buying 6 bottles or more. (That applies to wine merchants too who may well have something in the price you're looking for.)

The best sparkling wines for Christmas and the New Year - from the Guardian

Christmas reds and Christmas whites - both from the Guardian but should be useful for New Year's entertaining too

Is Aldi or Lidl better value for your Christmas wine?

Waitrose reds and whites though remember the 25% off deal I mention doesn't currently apply

My pick of Tesco's and Sainsbury's current range. Again no 25% off deal at the moment and that some of the promotions will have lapsed.

Image © papa - Fotolia.com

Sip with supper: Guest columnists Jackie and Bianca share their favourite party wines

It's always great to have a fresh voice on the site and few are better qualified than Jackie Dyer and Bianca Ford to talk about matching food and wine. Having both worked in the wine trade they've decided to put their expertise to good use in a joint venture called Sip with Supper (@sipwithsupper on Twitter) which will be hosting events and making videos about food and wine pairing.

I managed to persuade them to fit in this guest post on the sort of wines they like to serve at Christmas parties. Here are their top tips:

"Less than two weeks to go until the holiday season starts properly but the partying is already underway. We've been turning our thoughts to the wine-matching options for those festive, canapé-laden gatherings where reasonably priced crowd-pleasers will be the order of the day.

Bianca will be back home in Holland for Christmas and Jackie's heading over to France for the New Year celebrations, so we need some very versatile wines with backbone to match a diverse, international range of appetizers.

For our perfect party fizz, we're looking for a well-priced alternative to Champagne and a change from Prosecco, but something with an easy-drinking style. This year, we've been enjoying regional Crémants from Limoux, the Loire and Burgundy.

On a recent trip to Crémant de Bourgogne country, we asked the knowledgeable team at La Maison des Vins de la Côte Chalonnaise for their advice on a fizz for Christmas parties. Their recommendation was a Crémant from white grapes only, a Blanc de Blancs, for preference, but any of the regional fizzes mentioned would handle a good spread of food types with smoked fish, cheese-based amuse-bouches like gougères, and the Burgundian favourite for New Year’s Eve – oysters – being perhaps the best accompaniments.

For still whites we're going for some crisp refreshers from Northern Spain that will be distinctive and not out of place with a mixture of flavours - look for Godello, Verdejo or the lesser-known Treixadura on the label. (Treixadura, or Trajadura as it’s called in Portugal is a grape grown in the Rias Biaxas and Ribiero regions of Galicia which is where Albarino comes from.)

Any of these Spanish whites will go great guns with seafood and olive-based nibbles but will cut through heavier, spicier flavours too. And so would a minerally Pecorino wine from central Italy, usually easy to spot on the shelves because of the logo portraying the local sheep, pecorina in Italian, that as legend has it would eat the grapes as they grazed nearby.

Finally for reds our bet is to go for something fruity and light to medium bodied that can be drunk on its own or alongside a whole host of finger food. Some of our favourite options are red Saumur, Chilean Pinot Noir, or a Sicilian Frappato, the latter perhaps blended with another local grape, Nero d'Avola. Whether your cocktail sausages are on sticks or in pastry, these wines will not let you down!

In Holland, festive gatherings will often feature bitterballen (deep-fried and crumbed balls filled with a creamy meat ragu), devilled eggs and platters of cheese or charcuterie. These too will be happy partners for our red selections.

We're getting in stocks of some of these wines for partying this Christmas while hoping that there will be a few odd bottles left over for the New Year. We’ve given a few recommendations below. In the meantime, may we wish you all the best for a successful season of festive food and wine matching!

WAITROSE Cave de Lugny NV, Sparkling Burgundy ‘Blanc de Blancs’

Normally £13.99 but on offer at £10.99 until 04/01/15

MAJESTIC Montenovo Godello 2013, Valdesil, Valdeorras
£12.49 or £9.36 when you buy two bottles as part of the current Mix and Match offer

TESCO Tesco Finest Frappato 2013
Currently 25% off at £5.99 a bottle

RED SQUIRREL WINES Orsogna Autoctoni Pecorino 2013
£9.99 with 10% off if you buy six bottles or 15% if you buy twelve

For Bianca's bitterballen recipe see here.

What to drink at Hallowe'en

Of all the festivities round this time of year Hallowe’en, with its ghouls and pumpkins, is definitely the most kitsch so if you’re inviting a few friends round to celebrate it’s a fun to theme the drinks.

Leave aside food and wine matching for the moment, I think we’re looking for wine - or beer - and occasion matching. Something with a spooky name would definitely be entering into the spirit of things - how about Bull’s Blood the famous Hungarian red, or Devil’s Lair Cabernet, a rather more refined red from the Margaret River region of Western Australia?

Or if you prefer white - and are prepared to splash out a bit how about the brilliant New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc I came across the other day called The Supernatural?

Beer too has its ghoulish bottlings - the British brewery Wychwood specialises in them. Hobgoblin - a strong dark ale - would probably be the most appropriate but there’s also a blonde ale called Wychcraft.

Many other breweries also have seasonal bottlings. Pumpkin ales - also perfect for Thanksgiving - would fit the bill perfectly (though don’t match them with pumpkin pie as the pie will probably be too sweet and cancel out the pumpkin flavour in the beer!). They'd be better with sausages.

An alternative approach would be to make colour your starting point. There are - surprisingly - many black or near-black drinks: stout and porter for a start - or serve a Black Velvet (half a glass of Guinness topped up with champagne). There’s also the aniseed flavoured liqueur Sambuca - not a favourite of mine but it would be quite effective at the end of a meal served in shots alongside shots of an orange liqueur like Grand Marnier and a green-coloured one like Chartreuse, crème-de-menthe or the melon-flavoured Midori. You can even buy black vodka (Blavod) and black whisky (Cu Dhub - meaning Black Dog) or how about this brilliantly spicy ready-made Bloody Mary called Bloodshot which you can buy, like The Supernatural from Lea & Sandeman and from some branches of Waitrose.

Of course you needn’t feel left out if you don’t drink. Teetotallers can sip black grape juice or, even better if you like the taste, prune juice. Again you can offer your guests a selection of other brightly coloured drinks such as bright red cranberry or pomegranate juice, orange mango juice or a green-coloured soft drink such as lime cordial or a kiwi fruit-based drink. Knowing kids they’ll probably mix all four to make an evil-coloured sludge. But hey, it is Hallowe’en . . .

How to feed your friends like Fergus Henderson of St John

One of the most intriguing things to find out about chefs is not what they cook in their restaurants but what they feed their family and friends. True, at St John one morphs into the other, but the lunch they held in London this week to celebrate the publication of Fergus Henderson’s new book The Complete Nose to Tail was one I’d have been more than proud to put on for my mates.

The first course admittedly would have been beyond most of us - puffed up crisp-fried pigs like giant porky Quavers served with what anyone else would have called taramasalata but Fergus just calls cods roe.

Then there were two generous platters to share - fine slivers of cooked pigs head with a punchy celeriac mayonnaise and a really gorgeous green bean salad with shallots, crisp crumbs and the softest of goats curd.

The main course was a minced meat pie which doesn’t sound that exciting but it was the Best Meat Pie Ever. Mince from a well hung animal I’d have said with maybe a sneaky bit of kidney or other offal worked in and a gorgeous shiny crust with a soft gooey underbelly where the pastry met the meat. Served with French-style mash with (I suspect) outrageous amounts of butter. No veg - we’d already had our greens in the form of beans - but you could (and I would) serve some spring greens or cabbage at home.

Then finally a sublime custard tart, baked in a deep, crisp shell, warm, sweet, creamy and wobbly. I’ve never tasted a better one.

All the food was served for sharing rather than individually plated.

It shows that you don’t have to make fancy food to impress your friends just make the food you love.

And to drink: Bloody Marys to kick off with then bottles of light, graceful Savigny Aux Clous Savigny-les-Beaune 1er cru 2009 from Domaine Louis Chenu were put on the table for us to help ourselves. A simple rustic red like a Côtes du Rhône Villages or Languedoc red would have worked too and you could of course have kicked off with a crisp dry white. (Invariably French, in Fergus's case.)

You should be able to find the recipes in Fergus’s book which I’ll review shortly. It's basically a compilation of all his published recipes but with a beautiful new design and extra photography by Jason Lowe. Even if you have his other books you'll want to own it.