Best Red Wine for New Year's

Beyond Champagne: The Best Red Wine for New Year’s Parties

When you think of the aftermath of a New Year’s Eve party, you probably picture dozens of empty and half-empty Champagne bottles scattered around the room. While many people love a splash of bubbly on December 31st, not everyone wants to sip on it all night. Even though Champagne has had a virtual monopoly on New Year’s for decades, it’s certainly not your only option. In fact, some of the best red wine for New Year’s can be just as impressive as a vintage bottle of Krug. They may even win the hearts of even the most diehard Champagne fans. Whether you want to break out of a Champagne rut or you simply want to offer your guests a few more choices this year, choosing a handful of high-quality, rare red wines could make your New Year’s party a raving success.

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Festive flutes of champagne for a New Year's Eve celebration

Choosing the Best Champagne for New Year’s Eve

Champagne and New Year’s Eve go together like bread and butter⁠. No New Year’s celebration feels quite right without a flute of bubbly to toast with when midnight strikes… The best Champagne for New Year’s Eve will make even the most casual party feel like an iconic, once-in-a-lifetime event, and it’s a great opportunity to uncork your true showstopper bottles. In this guide, you’ll find a curated list of top-tier Champagne to buy this holiday season. 

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A bottle of Château d'Yquem, an excellent dessert wine for pairing with many foods.

Dessert Wine Pairing 101: How to Serve Wine with Sweet Holiday Treats

From nutty, caramelized pecan pie to spiced gingerbread cookies, the holiday season is chock-full of decadent desserts. When you find the perfect dessert wine pairing for each of these classic treats, you make the experience feel even more indulgent for your guests. A honey-like German Riesling can bring out the nutmeg and cinnamon notes in a slice of pumpkin pie, while a rich ruby Pinot Noir can add a complex layer of fruitiness to a cup of chocolate mousse. Fine wine has the power to elevate even the simplest desserts, making them taste as though they were made from scratch in a French patisserie.

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Wine Storage Gifts

Wine Storage Gifts Should Be on Every Collector’s Wish List This Year

One of the best Christmas gifts I ever received was a high-quality wine fridge that my parents filled to the brim with some of my favorite wines, including selections from Côtes du Rhône and a delicious bottle of 2005 Chevalier Père et Fils. It took me almost a year to get through all of the wonderful wines inside, but even after I opened my last gift bottle, that wine fridge remained an essential staple in my home. For the past six years, I’ve used it to store dozens and dozens of bottles, from wines for holiday celebrations to collectible Bordeaux.

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Best 2006 Bordeaux

The Best 2006 Bordeaux Gifts: This Unusual, Breathtaking Vintage Will Impress Nearly Every Collector

In Bordeaux, there are vintages that seem destined for success from the start—and then there are the “sleeper vintages,” the wines that hide their true power for a decade or more. The 2006 Bordeaux vintage is one of these rare sleepers. While it was overshadowed by the legendary 2005 vintage in its youth, today, the best 2006 Bordeaux is rich, intensely concentrated, and an absolute joy to drink. These qualities, coupled with the wine’s potential for aging, make it the perfect gift for wine collectors on your holiday list this year. In order to take advantage of all that this vintage has to offer, you’ll need to consider which appellations had the most success, and choose the wines with the greatest potential for aging.

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A wine tasting gift set featuring a bottle of wine and snacks inside a basket

The Best Wine Tasting Gift Set: Tour the World’s Greatest Wine Regions

My friends know how much I love wine, which is why every year, I always end up with at least two or three wine gift baskets. But while some of these baskets are beautifully made and contain fascinating wines that I’ve never tried before, more often than not, they’re full of cheap California Cabernet or cloying Moscato. The problem with pre-made wine gift baskets is that they rarely offer the sort of unusual, interesting wines that connoisseurs enjoy. Gift basket wines also tend to be lower in value and are selected seemingly at random. One basket might contain Oregon Pinot Noir, German Riesling, and a super Tuscan from Italy all in the same gift, without rhyme or reason.

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The best Cyber Monday Wine Deals aren't always the cheapest

Navigating Cyber Monday Wine Deals: Make the Most out of the Sales

A few years ago, I found an incredible Cyber Monday wine deal on two mixed cases of superb California Cabernet from a variety of different wineries, including Robert Mondavi and Aubert—I simply couldn’t pass up this opportunity. However, by the time my wine haul arrived on my doorstep a few days later, I realized that I had made a major mistake: not only did I have very little space left in my cellar to store these cases, I also had no idea what to do with so much wine. While some of the bottles I bought could be stored long-term, a lot of them were meant to be drunk young. I ended up giving away most of the bottles to close friends and family.

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An image of a bottle of Penfolds from our Penfolds Grange Gift Guide

Your Penfolds Grange Gift Guide: Which Vintages Make the Best Gifts?

Fewer than 1,200 people are going to receive a bottle of coveted Penfolds g3 this holiday season. This brand new, limited-edition wine is made from a blend of three different Grange vintages (the 2008, 2012, and 2014) that are among the best that Penfolds has ever produced. Because of its rarity and high quality, Penfolds g3 is a wine that just about any collector would love to see under the Christmas tree this year. The only problem is that these bottles will be nearly impossible to find. You can try to order one from the Penfolds website, but with such limited supplies (only 1,200 bottles exist), securing an order of Penfolds g3 is like winning the lottery.

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Pickers during the Bordeaux 2017 Harvest

Analyzing the Bordeaux 2017 Harvest: Low Yields and Early Harvests Mark This Vintage

The Bordeaux 2017 harvest was grueling for most wineries, to say the least. Even on Premier Cru estates, it took winemakers every ounce of effort to grow and pick a minuscule number of grapes by the end of the harvest season. In many terroirs, yields were down by an average of 41 percent, sometimes more. This means that some winemakers were left struggling to find enough grapes with which to produce wine.

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2005 LaFleur is one of the Best Bordeaux Blends in the history of the producer

Hidden Gem of the Month: 2005 LaFleur is the Best Bordeaux Blend for Patient Collectors

Renowned wine critic James Suckling is fortunate enough to sample some of the greatest wines in the world, from legendary DRC vintages to the rarest Lafite-Rothschild. So when a critic as experienced as Suckling calls a wine “mythic,” it certainly commands attention. Suckling’s review of 2005 LaFleur Pomerol is downright gushing; he calls this wine “fine and beautiful” with a “rich, powerful palate” that continues to build long after the last drop hits your tongue. This is one of the many reasons why 2005 LaFleur is considered the best Bordeaux blend for collectors who adore a more muscular wine.

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Champagne Holiday Gifts are a great festive choice

The Best Champagne Holiday Gifts for Every Person on Your List

Every year during the first week of December, I buy my best friend a bottle of Taittinger non-vintage Champagne, and we share it over home-baked Christmas desserts. One year, I decided to surprise her with a vintage bottle of Pol Roger instead. After her first sip of the new bottle, to my surprise, she said, “This is really nice, but I think I like the Taittinger better.” She explained that even though the Pol Roger was a fine vintage Champagne that was technically higher quality than the Taittinger, the non-vintage wine had become a tradition for us. The taste of it signaled the start of the Christmas season for her.

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Bordeaux from the Graves region like Liber Pater

Are Liber Pater Bordeaux Wines Worth Collecting? Only If You’re Loyal to the Graves Region

Over dinner one evening, I had an animated discussion with a group of wine-loving friends about which Bordeaux wines are overrated. None of us could agree on a producer; there was always at least one person in the group who loved a particular “overrated” estate. But when one of my friends suggested that Liber Pater is the most overrated wine in Bordeaux, it gave all of us pause. It’s surely the most expensive wine in the region–the question is whether the added expense is actually worthwhile for collectors, or if the wines are more hype than substance. Ultimately, the value of Liber Pater Bordeaux will depend on your own collection and goals. Before you invest in these bottles, consider whether the current Quality-Price Ratio (QPR) matters to you, or if you’d rather spend a little extra to stay loyal to Graves craftsmanship.

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