Sunday Family Dinner

Every Sunday night, a bunch of my friends from college get together for a “Sunday Family Dinner.”  Last night was my first opportunity to host.

I had not planned on hosting a dinner last night.  I just wanted to watch football and take it easy, but hosting did give me an excuse to drink some good wine.  As is my usual practice when cooking, I opened a niceish bottle to drink while cooking, and then moved onto the Chuck and other selections for sharing with a large group.

The pre-meal wines last night were a Bordeaux and a Sangiovese.  My roommates all preferred the Bordeaux, but I thought the Sangiovese was better.  But, admittedly, we were cooking pasta, so I was biased a) because Sangiovese is my favorite and b) it went with the food I was cooking.

Since we were making a pasta dish with pesto sauce, the wine of choice with dinner was any white varietal of Chuck and a Torrontes from Argentina (while it lasted- it’s amazing how quickly you run through wine with 16 people drinking).

We had our dinner and played our board games as is our tradition and called it a night fairly early.  Overall, I’m glad we hosted the dinner because it brought a few things to mind.  First, I like hosting because people frequently bring you wine, meaning you get to try said wine at some point.  Secondly, as host, you get to steer the wine drinking in any direction you choose meaning you can get rid of bottles you don’t like (I did that with a white Zin that had been sitting untouched for 6 months) or that you want friends to try, you can open a variety and try a bunch of wines without wasting any, and if people bring wine, you can try things you might not normally try.

All in all, a good night with good wine and good people.  Can’t ask for much more than that.