Whether you are the wizard of hospitality or whether for you organising a meal at home is the event of the decade, it is not always easy to understand how to treat your guests in terms of wine, especially if they are the ones who arrive with bottles.
Wine is indeed among the most welcome gifts of all, and is often brought to dinner by guests. It is just a question of whether to open it at that time or not.
So what to do if your guests arrive with a bottle at your dinner party?
For when guests arrive at dinner with wine, there are basically two ways, and they depend on the type of evening you are offering.The first concerns etiquette for formal situations - and has all the charm of slightly old-fashioned circumstances - the other applies to joyous reunions between dear friends.
- Read also: wine manners to know
1. If guests bring wine to dinner: formal occasion
If the occasion is truly formal, you will have thought of everything when organising the event, planned which wines to serve (wines designed to perfectly accompany the various courses...), brought them at the right temperature and perhaps already opened to let them breathe. In this case you offer to open the bottle that has arrived as a gift, but your guests will politely decline: at that point you only have to announce future occasions to open it together.
- Read also: How to taste wine
2. If guests bring wine to dinner: informal occasion
But if the dinner is informal, the wine is not only more than welcome, but you will want to enjoy it right away! Your friends may have asked you in advance for the menu and brought the right bottles at the right temperature. At which point you will only have to indicate the most suitable moment of the dinner when you will uncork them, to everyone's delight!
