Hosting Christmas dinner can be stressful; there’s all the planning, the preparation and the cooking. But we’re here with all the wine tips you could possibly need for the dinner to go off without a hitch. Plus, you’ll find some gift tips at the end too.
Wine tips
Choosing wine based on your tastes
Not everything has to be about wine and food pairings; you can choose a wine that you like. In this article, we take you around French wine regions and give you an overview about the wine produced in each of them.
How to open a mature bottle of wine
Opening a mature bottle of wine can seem daunting if you’re never done it before so we’ve put together a step-by-step guide. And this separate article has some service tips in case you need them.
To decant or not? It’s a difficult decision but we talk you through the thought process here.
We know that you may not finish a bottle and if it’s your favourite wine or beautiful bottle that you’ve kept for Christmas Dinner, you’re going to want to store it. So here are our tips.
Pairing ideas
Christmas Dinner pairing ideas for just one bottle of wine
For one reason or another, you may be planning on opening one bottle for Christmas Dinner. There’s no judgment from us as we enjoyed getting creative to think of these pairings. There’re are pairing suggestions for Champagne, white wine, and red wine.
Pairings for Christmas in the UK, Natale in Italy and Weihnachten in Germany
As well as having team members that have strong connections to Christmas traditions in these three countries, we know that many readers do too. In this article, we share pairing ideas that would marry perfectly with traditional dishes from each country.
How to jazz up a mince pie break
This one is for all the countries around the world where mince pies are a traditional Christmas sweet treat. We took it upon ourselves to find some French wine pairings – a hardship, we know – to jazz up any mince pie break.
All the different ways to pair Champagne
Christmas is celebratory time of year, and nothing says celebration like Champagne, which is why we’ve put our heads together to come up with all the pairing ideas and tips we could think of for Champagne, including Blancs de Blancs and Blancs de Noirs.
If you’re having a salmon starter this year, you might be interested in taking inspiration from Ireland. Orlaith, our Irish marketing manager, shared her recipe for Irish brown bread, which is traditionally served with smoked salmon, and a few pairing ideas.
Christmas dessert pairing ideas
Many countries have their own traditional festive desserts. In this article, we find pairings for those from Italy, the Nordic countries, France, German and the UK.
You can never have enough cheese and wine… pairing ideas
Cheese is a classic way to round off Christmas Dinner in some countries, so we have placed all our pairing ideas in one place.
Our gift guides
We have created a few gift guides for you because we know how difficult it can be to choose a wine for someone else. In our in-dept, ‘How to choose the right gift when you don’t know anything about wine’ article, we offer ideas for the artistic friends, hipsters and those who you don’t know very well.
We have also created some gift ideas for the wine connoisseurs in your life who love Bordeaux, Burgundy or Champagne. They include some bottles to enjoyed now and some that can be added to a collection to be enjoyed in a few years’ time.
