BYO Wine Rant

This is actually a Public Service Announcement! :-)

I decided to post this rant today for two reasons:

1. It’s Worldwide Wine Blogging Wednesday so the day seemed appropriate
2. More importantly, I haven’t had a recent party where this happened so hopefully I won’t upset any friends by them thinking I was talking about them specifically!

Most of the time when I entertain I provide everything – all the food, beverage, snacks, whatever.  I really enjoy doing it and often I want all the individual pieces to add up to a coordinated whole.  But since I’ve been taking time off over the last several months I have, on occasion, asked people to bring their own wine.  Sometimes leaving it open and sometimes asking for something within a parameter – for instance, when I did the Tapas Parties last summer I asked people to bring Spanish wines. 

When a host asks you to bring your own beverage be generous in what you bring. 

What I find happens is that the single people bring a bottle of wine.  Perfect.  The couples bring a bottle of wine.  And that’s where my rant begins.  I can tell you that during the course of an evening, two people will almost certainly drink more than one bottle of wine – even if they plan to be "good".  They may not (or they may!) drink two whole bottles but they will definitely be well into the second bottle. 

I mean think about a normal evening and the number of hours you will spend at your host’s house.  As people are arriving everyone sits around, gets introduced or caught up on news and has a glass of wine.  Depending on the type of appetizer or snack some people will probably pour a second glass.  If you are part of a couple your first bottle of wine is basically now gone.  Next comes dinner – everyone has the next glass of wine or adds to their glass to bring it up to level.  Since dinner is normally a social event, it’s not uncommon to need to fill a glass a second time during a meal.  And even once dessert and coffee or port have been served, people often linger at the table talking and laughing and having one more glass of wine.  Or even two.  It’s not uncommon for dinner parties to last 6 hours from beginning to end.   Do you really think you’ll only have 2 1/2 glasses of wine in a 6 hour period?  Or even a 4 hour period?

Since I normally have a mix of singles and couples, the singles end up picking up the slack for the couples.  This is just not fair at all!  Or I end up pulling out a few bottles when the donated stash runs dry.  Which, in some ways I don’t mind, but sort of defeats the request to bring your own.

So if you have been asked to bring wine to an event, please bring one bottle per person.  I mean what it the worst thing that could happen?  You don’t drink it all and have to leave some for your host?  Hmmm, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. 

This is an end to this Public Service Announcement!