No, it is not rude to bring wine to a dinner party
So, is it rude to bring a bottle of wine to a dinner party? The latest Waitrose Food and Drink report says that the smart gift to take to a dinner party is a nice olive oil, expensive vinegar, honey or designer salt. Homes and Gardens magazine has asked if fashionable olive oil is in fact “the new wine”.
The trend is, I think, probably attributable to changing habits among young people. Many of them drink little or nothing, so bringing a bottle of wine is to assume they’re drinkers when they might be more at home with something masquerading as alcohol, like a bottle of sparkling tea. Some may eschew alcohol for religious reasons and regard drink as a species of micro-aggression.
So far as I’m concerned though, the answer to this contemporary query is no. Just no. It is not rude to bring wine. Invitations to my dinners are prefaced in the case of my friends, with the student formula PBAB – please bring a bottle – on the basis that guests will probably want to drink more and better than I can afford to buy.
And for the most part, whether you bring a bottle to a dinner depends on the means of the host. If you’re going somewhere grand or to someone wealthy, there’s not much point. You don’t bring a bottle of Tesco Finest to someone with his own cellar. If you’re going to a wine buff, you can assume that he’ll be wanting to show off his own taste, which is very much fine by me. And if it’s someone grand then the old formula, of flowers for the hostess, is safest.
But if you’re going to a friend rather than someone you don’t know well, an interesting bottle of wine is a welcome present. If you’ve been to France or Germany, and found something good, bring a bottle, and everyone can talk about it. Personally, I find that champagne goes down well with practically everyone. If the host isn’t well off, it’s a good policy to bring something decent that you’d like to drink, for your own sake as well as theirs. Just make sure they open it.
Teetotallers might like to bring a bottle of what they like drinking with them. It feels mean to give them just fizzy water but you don’t always have time to get in designer lemonade. So non drinkers are doing themselves as well as the host a favour if they bring their own drink, if only to avoid elderflower cordial, the usual staple for non-drinkers.
And there’s nothing wrong with chocolates. A box of chocolate covered gingers is always good. Or there’s that modern staple, truffles with a salted caramel centre or a slab of good nutty chocolate to serve with coffee. That would actually be useful.
I can see, though, why some people bring foodie gifts. Olive oil is now about £8.50 a bottle, which is as much as an inexpensive wine, and it’s much more than that for the rarefied sorts. That would be very acceptable. Vinegar from a specialist supplier would be odd, but nice to have. Good honey or salt? OK by me, though not particularly useful for the dinner party.
Can we agree to work on the basis that the foodie stuff is in addition to a bottle of wine, not a substitute for it? That way, everyone’s happy.