Which is worse – to take an expensive wine to a party (“Oh, how sweet of you!”) only for the host to snaffle it away, or to take a lousy one (“Oh, um, thanks….”), and be publicly humiliated as it is placed next to the cooking sherry?
Of course, in our parents’ day it was considered terribly naff, even insulting, to take a bottle, just as it was to take flowers or chocolates. You simply presented yourself, had a nice time, wrote a fulsome letter of thanks the following morning and then sent flowers or chocolates.
Nowadays, though, a bottle is de rigueur. But what should you take? The simple answer, of course, is to take a wine you would like to drink yourself. Take something ghastly and it may come back to haunt you. A friend of mine swears that a bottle of cheap Chianti he once took to supper with a neighbour is still doing the rounds of his street eleven years later.
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