Dinner party wine - strange......

[Earlybird]

When you are the guest at a dinner party, do you always take a bottle of wine to the hosts? Do you try to bring a special bottle, or just something reasonably good? What is the most you will spend on a bottle to take to a dinner party?

I took a nice bottle of wine (approx £25) to a dinner party on Saturday night. The hosts accepted it graciously, but didn't open it as they already had wine picked out for the occasion. At the end of the evening, the host urged me to take the bottle home again, as it was unopened.

Can't figure out if he was being generous, or rejecting my bottle (they drink very expensive stuff usually).

How would you have reacted, and what would you think?

We take wine as a gift for the hosts. Don't mind if it is used on the night ot kept as a gift for them later. We take a decent bottle, although how much we spend depends of who, where, when, why regards the event/invite.

I wouldn't have wanted to take the wine home and would have politely told them it was theirs as a gift.

Hopefully they wouldn't have insisted as then they are moving into rudeness.

Very strange.

I always take wine. Reasonable bottle - sometimes one of each. Sometimes I take champagne.

Have never been asked to take it home again! It is usually not opened (unless champagne) as hosts have bought wine for the meal. That's fine.

Same happens if we have people over. They bring wine. Or champagne. Usually open if champagne but we normally have the wine already bought for the meal.

Hmm - this couple are are extremely picky about quality of food - what/where they shop, what restaurants they go to. All organic all the time, and only the best ingredients will do.

In the past, she mentioned that her wine of choice runs £60 a bottle, and it is ordered in specially for them. I was a bit at that - my palate isn't nearly so refined, and quite honestly, I wouldn't buy such an expensive bottle (wouldn't know what to buy, for a start )!

I didn't necessarily expect the bottle I brought would be drunk that night, but didn't expect him to try to give it back to me either.....he was very nice about it, but I couldn't help wondering if his gesture was because the wine wasn't 'good enough'.

Maybe I should take flowers next time instead? Or do I need to 'up my game' and take a finer bottle of wine next time?

i think i'd find it a bit rude if someone handed my bottle of wine back... esp if it was a 25 quid one. but suppose it depends on what your relationship with the person in question is like...

Perhaps they'd just had a wine delivery and their cellar was full? Perhaps they thought it was a favourite of yours and they wanted you to have a chance to enjoy it. Or maybe they are real wine snobs who refuse to drink wine which is not organic? Either way I'd just forget about it and take it to the next dinner party, or better still, invite them to yours and serve it with Pom bear crisps

I'm not sure wine can be valued by price in that way - there is every chance your £25 bottle of wine was far superior to their £60 one and tbh paying that much for wine is an anathema to me

i love the pom bears idea. or a bottle of blue thunderbird (do they even still make that stuff?). couple of cans of special brew?

Prawn cocktail crisps for starter
Beef and onion Walkers for mains
Chocolate covered pretzels for pudding
Washed down with Red Bull or lucozade.

maybe they were being kind and hoped to drink it at yours?

viennetta, then they'll know you're properly posh

Perhaps I should have told them to keep it, and use it to cook with the next time a recipe called for wine!