Ho Ho Ho! It’s that time again. A time where you contemplate the 12 months leading up to this day and spend the morning asking, ‘Gosh, where has the time gone?’ and ‘Christmas has come around so quick this year!’. But, this special day is an excuse to justify champagne an chocolate for breakfast, snoring on the arm chair with a glass full of red wine and bottomless port from 1pm onwards.
But, as happy and excited as everyone is during the festive season, we understand that choosing the best wine is usually as stressful and panic inducing as last-minute present shopping for the loved ones. With multiple hungry mouths to feed and plenty of empty glasses to fill, choosing the right wine can be an arduous, time-consuming task. Or - you could remove the guesswork and just let us (the Christmas wine experts) do the hard work for you.
So, if you want to save the time, and avoid pulling out unnecessary hair follicles, read on for our guide to The Best Wine for Christmas, from pre-9am bucks fizz to 8pm smoky red wines, we’ll cover the best wines and champagnes for every part for the day to make your Christmas extra merry.
But less of the fluff, here goes:
Christmas Morning Wine
Starting off the Christmas celebrations can only be done one way; with a cold and refreshing glass of Bucks Fizz, the nation’s favourite Christmas morning Cocktail. A simple combination of fresh orange juice and a great champagne is a statement piece for any celebration.
For those of you who are nursing a hangover from the Christmas Eve celebrations and need Christmas morning to be that little bit more ‘hardcore’, you can’t go wrong with a Bloody Mary. The infamous cocktail that includes vodka, tomato juice and a range of spices and flavourings including Worcestershire sauce, spices and black pepper, another classic to make sure the day starts on the right trajectory.
Christmas Brunch Wine
Swiftly after everyone has opened their presents, and the floor has been wiped clean from the mountain of waste wrapping paper, it’s finally time to let your hair down for a brief moment before acknowledging the mountain of food that needs to be prepped and cooked ready for the main event.
This moment in time is the best opportunity to get the flutes out and pop open a bottle of ice-cold Prosecco or Champagne. Some see it as an escape from the impending stress of making sure everything is going to plan with the Christmas roast, whilst others see it as an opportunity to put their feet up and enjoy a moment of peace and quiet. How you choose to enjoy it of course is up to you.
Christmas Roast Dinner Wine
Time for the main event, days on end of preparation and hours upon hours of cooking all come down to the most important meal of them all. The Christmas Roast. A meal that draws in so much criticism it’s as if you’re starring in an episode of the great British bake off, with a panel of extra merry, very hangry judges reminding you of all the foods they didn’t want on the plate. But the hard part is now over, it’s now your time to fill your stomachs with rich foods and great wine, and appreciate the day for what it is. But the big question is, what wine is best paired for each meat?
The Best Wine for The Christmas Toast
The perfect toast can be no other than a fantastic bottle of Champagne. Fill your Christmas Champagne glasses with some impressive golden bubbles and have a proper ‘Cheers’ to that. It’s an easy opportunity to make a statement with a great bottle of Champagne.
The best Wine for a Turkey Christmas Roast Dinner
It may be white meat, but the general rule book goes out of the window here. Red wine makes for one of the best pairings with Turkey at Christmas. Light in the body and tannins, a bold, Old World Pinot Noir is the best wine of choice to sit beside a freshly cooked Christmas Roast.
But for those of you who can’t drink red no matter what, a cold and crisp Chardonnay is another terrific choice of wine to pair with the Christmas Roast. Medium to full bodied with an abundance of fruit and oak flavours, you simply can’t go wrong with a special bottle of chardonnay.
The best Wine for a Beef Christmas Roast Dinner
With the added pressure of overcooking the turkey and making it too dry, some people play it simple and opt for beef instead. Red wine is the perfect companion for a beef Christmas Roast. Red meat is able to stand up to the tannins in red wine, so neither the meat or the wine will overpower the flavours of the other. A fuller-bodied red makes an excellent choice for a beef roast at Christmas, try a Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec or Shiraz
The best Wine for a Chicken Christmas Roast Dinner
Without a doubt, the best wine to pair with a juicy roast chicken is a rich and smooth white wine. Sitting at the top of the White Wine list is no other than an Oaked Chardonnay. A wine that has spent time in oak barrels gives a beautifully buttery nuance that goes down like silk. Refreshing, acidic and fruity, rebelling from an Oaked Chardonnay is a very risky move.
The best Wine for a Lamb Christmas Roast Dinner
Lamb is a fairly delicate and tender meat, and we recommend a medium-bodied red. Lamb packs a lot of flavour so it’s important not to compromise on intensity and flavour clashes. A beautiful Spanish Rioja or a red French Bordeaux are two classic pairings for a flavoursome leg of lamb.
The best Wine for a Vegetarian or vegan Christmas Roast Dinner
Vegetarian Christmas Dinners are most definitely able to pack as much flavour as a meat-filled one these days. Think of that elegant nut roast jam packed with herbs, or the creamy cheeses and spiced root vegetables. It’s just as important to find a suitable wine to pair with a vegetarian/vegan dinner as it is for meat, especially if the non-vegetarian chef slightly overcooks the delicate meat-alternative!
The best Wine for a Christmas Cheeseboard
A carefully crafted, well selected cheeseboard deserves its own designated bottle rather than the ends of wines that have been consumed during the mains. A quality, diverse cheeseboard deserves to be paired with a quality bottle of wine. After all, these two complement each other. As a general rule of thumb, the harder the cheese, the more suited it is with big, bold tannins in wine, and the creamier the cheese, the better it is suited with a more acidic wine, to help cut through the richness.
The best Wine for Christmas Pudding
The final piece of the puzzle, the Christmas Pudding! Undoubtedly, you’re going to get some people proclaiming they can’t stand the taste of a Christmas pudding, and opt in for a chocolate gateau instead. But for those of us who do have the palate for a fiery Christmas pudding know full well that a glass of Ruby Port or Tawny Port serves as the perfect companion. The warm fruitiness of Ruby Port and the nutty flavours of a great Tawny Port compliment the rich flavours of the Christmas pudding. Should you not be a Port enthusiast, the perfect alternative is no other than a thick Irish cream on the rocks.
The best evening wine at Christmas
So, the time has come, the dinner table has been wiped clean, the dishwasher is on, stomachs are full, and the sun has disappeared. Candles have been lit and the reclining sofa is now serving its purpose. It’s finally your turn to truly relax and make the most of what’s left of Christmas day. At this point, when the board games come out and the Netflix film choices have been queued, the perfect opportunity to pour yourself a glass of fruity red wine, or a botanical gin and tonic just conveniently slips into your palm.
Fear not, last minute shoppers! With Next-Day delivery and Free Delivery available at Oddbins, you can afford to leave things to the last minute. Want to send multiple gifts to multiple different people? We also accommodate a multi-drop service, where we send multiple gifts to multiple different people all within one order, please follow this link for more information.
