For red wine, Merlots, Shiraz, and Cabernets are all good choices, with white wine’s best bet being Chardonnay, though a nice Alsatian Riesling is also a great choice. While there are certain vintages that are expensive, it’s relatively easy to find bottles that aren’t extremely high priced. With some searching, or asking the clerk at the local liquor store for help, you can buy red and white wines that won’t take away your ability to go holiday shopping, leaving you, ultimately, to holiday shoplift instead.
Serve White Zinfandel
When choosing a wine to serve at a party, White Zinfandel is an extremely popular choice. This is simply because people drink it up. A chilled beverage, White Zinfandel is light, sweet, and low in alcohol content, which makes it a popular choice for folks who are driving. One of the least inexpensive, with many bottles costing around five dollars, White Zinfandel is a preferred choice of many party hosts everywhere.
A Box is Your Friend
There is an unfavorable stigma attached to box wine, like lawyers or people obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons, but, box wine is often a party staple. This is because it’s inexpensive, it’s convenient, the leftovers won’t spoil, and even if you don’t enjoy the taste of it, many others do.
Box wine was once the laughing stock of the wine world: people often equated it with cheap wine. It was only purchased by those who had a cash flow problem, and cases of Pinot Noirs were often found pointing and laughing, mocking the box wine from the comfort of their glass bottles. Over the years, this stigma has gone down the drain and the box wine of today now stores a variety of wine, including wines that are premium.
Appease the Wine Folk
While White Zinfandel and box wine may quench the thirst of some, many wine connoisseurs prefer something a little different, believing that drinking anything other than a unique holiday wine is the equivalent of drinking from the water bowl in the Christmas tree stand. Because of this, it’s a good idea to have a couple of bottles of something a little interesting.
Article comments
1 - Box Wine Guy
I agree that box wines have been looked down on as party fare, and often rightly so. This year, though, I'm going to offer guests a selection of Free Range Wines in some less common varietals. It should be fun to get people's reactions - we've always done bottle wine in the past.
2 - Jack
May I disagree? Unless it's a party for mainly people you don't like, serving White Zinfandel or some other cheap swill is not cool. A much better and still inexpensive sweet choice are the 1 Liter bottles of German wine brought in by Terry Thiese & Co. (Rieslings and Sylvaners.)