How do you celebrate?
What’s you plan this year? Are you going all-in or carefully checking where to buy the best value cases?
Why not to simply combine both goals and get the best possible wine without breaking the bank. We’ve searched the web for the great deals on wine, selected a few interesting options for you and added some useful tips along the way.
Where we’ve found great value?
Marks & Spencer offer: buy two cases of wine, sparkling or still, and get 25% additional discount. You will need to spend around £190 to get the discount on your two cases. The choice is there, but quite dominated by France: 238 bottles against 96 from Italy and 87 from Spain.
Laithwaite’s Wine Club does mention Christmas but still focuses on offering £60 off their slightly overinflated and quite generic wine case. They are also still running their free glasses offer when you join, but there is nothing exciting otherwise unfortunately.
Naked Wines appear to have the same promotion – they offer £60 off your first order, which is a good deal, but if you not a member you are going to redeem it against a very limited selection of wines, which re also priced much higher for non-members.
Organic Wine Club offers a specific deal on their 12 bottle ‘Amazing Christmas case’. You can grab £25 off with code: XMAS25. They’ve added a nice bonus chocolatey drink with it, so you can treat your kids or serve it with your pudding.
What do you actually need?
Provided you are going to serve canapés or starters, main dish with garnish, and finish with some gorgeous pudding, you will need at least three different wines.
You can start with something light, maybe also lower in alcohol, so you can enjoy a glass and match it easily with delicate salmon or caviar canapés.
Your main wine hugely depends what you are going to be cooking – are you going to have veggie option, turkey or pork (white meat), beef or venison (red)? As a general rule, you will need to pick your wine to match how flavoursome is your food, i.e. a very strong and robust Malbec from Argentina can easily overpower light veggie dishes and something like light and unoaked red can go unnoticed when matching to a rich lamb course. You can opt for a medium bodied red for your beef or even rich turkey main – good examples of Malbec from Cahors, France or even Rioja Crianza would be good options.
Finally, to make your Christmas Day truly special, you can opt for a glass of port – its natural sweetness matches so good to most puddings. Some people also love the contrast port creates hen matched to cheeses, highly flavoured stilton is a very good match.
Yet this is where you can be flexible – have a look what really sparks your imagination and don’t forget that all this is for your guests – friends and family!
Have you given a lot of thought about gifts?
How about:
- wine subscription,
- wine and deli hampers,
- amazing chocolates (choose dairy free, no refined sugar organic chocolates for pure indulgence),
- glorious wine
How about treating your loved ones to organic and natural wines? Afterall, you do care about their wellbeing and healthy lifestyle, don’t you?
Whatever is your plan for festive days, we hope you will be social, enjoy chatting to your friends and simply chill. Spaniards and Italians know how to do it so well – just get a nice cheese and cured meats’ platter, grab a bottle of wine and create a mini celebration! For veggie options you can simply grill peppers, aubergines, baby leeks for a varied veggie platter.
What can you serve with these platters?
We have found a bottle that can be your perfect match for festive tapas or antipasti – this bottle of Lambrusco that is most satisfying for this occasion. Enjoy!
Lambrusco is a red sparkling wine made in Italy from indigenous varieties i.e. Salamino, Grasparossa, Marani , Montericco and more. It had such a bad reputation for a sweetish, quite sickly drink. Yet it should not be always this case – there are one top notch examples and we’ve found one.
Venturini Baldini 2015 is ruby red in colour with some purple-violet hints. The wine is fragrant with herbs and juicy blackberries on the nose and a fresh, semi dry flavour with tannic sensations.
Find it at Organic Wine Club and also a part of special Xmas mini sparkling pack.
Merry Christmas, happy holidays and don’t forget to serve a good jug of water with all your festive wines. Cheers
