The boundaries of the wine world we are allowed to see in our UK shops are changing in new and exciting ways. For example India is starting to become a player, now producing better quality wines.

With all of this bewildering choice in mind say you have to pick up a bottle of wine for a dinner party.

A wall of wine looms in front of you at your local wine merchant. An annoying chap (some people are just inherently annoying) suddenly materialises asking if you need any help. You try to shake him off as you want some time to ‘mull’ (come back to this word later) over the choices, but he sticks to you like some unwanted earnest virtual avatar and did not take the hint. Was he on commission, bored or just a wine bore?

Eventually you decide to play safe and decide an ‘Old World’ Pinor Noir would be best. There would be a price to pay for such a Burgundy (normally well over £10.00 for any sort of quality). You find something acceptable with a nice, quietly understated but impressive label (always important) from Beaune. You feel sort of proud of your solo choice as you parade it to the counter. Slightly extravagant, but sort of knowledgeable.

‘Good choice sir’

This whole process takes about 20 minutes.

You then have a problem. It is hot...very hot. Your car will be parked in the sun all day. You don’t want very expensive mulled wine on your hands (wine does not like large temperature fluctuations, and a hot car in direct sunlight is possibly the worst place on earth for a bottle of wine, or anything for that matter. Tempting to leave it in the car with the window open, but then even more tempting for a passer by). You transport it to the office in a paper bag (all sounds very dodgy).

So the evening arrives. You can at last deliver the wine so carefully chosen and cared for. Knock Knock....

-Noise of latch opening-

‘Hi how are you’

-Kiss Kiss-

‘How lovely to see you’

The usual pleasantries out of the way you present some last minute dodgy garage flowers and the wine (now not in a paper bag) to the host.

The flowers are much appreciated and the wine is thrust onto the kitchen counter anonymously nesting amongst other guest’s bottles.

You finally sit down for the meal. The host has already prepositioned two bottles of his own wine on the table. In front of you is very large rather vulgar cavernous glass.

’Would you like some wine?’

‘Yes please’ (all you can tell at this point is that it is red in colour).

Your glass is submerged in a red deluge, filling it to about 250 ml (a third of a bottle). One sip and you realise that the host likes sickly sweet lower end mass market New World wine, with enough alcohol to tranquilise a very large mammal. (Large glasses like those were designed to swirl and sample modest amount of wine. Lots of free space for aroma ergonomics or something similar. The fact they can hold a reservoir of wine is just there to fool you).

You battle through the glass, every sip stripping the delicious boeuf bourguignon from your palate, your tongue feels blow torched much like the scorched surface of the creme brulee to follow.

Just when you near the end of the glass your host refills (before you can get your hand in the way).

At the end of the meal you and your red teeth stagger to the kitchen to find your long lost bottle of Burgundy. It is nowhere to be seen, now probably residing in a hidden collection. You then roll outside and fall over in your own tracks only to be discovered millennia later fossilised in your own footsteps like the poor recently discovered Protoceratops.

So should the host always open a guest’s wine, or is it the host’s prerogative to wine match the meal to the food prepared?

I think if you bring wine to a dinner party, there is a presumption that it should be at the very least offered to be opened, especially if you have gone to lots of trouble choosing it. Otherwise you may as well have brought a bar of soap.

What if the host has outgunned your wine, providing exquisite bottles? The host should still offer to open your wine (just make sure you drink the host’s good stuff before someone else polishes it off).

If the host is fortunate enough to have lots of guest’s bottles to choose from, and has not clocked your wine (or is simply not into wine), then gently suggest that you are interested in trying your bottle, elaborating on how you came about the bottle, the implication that it is not £3.99 dishwater.

In truth though the etiquette is all important not the quality of the wine.

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