Picking the perfect wine for your Christmas Day festivities can be a tall order, especially if you’re keen to match your salmon blinis to a celebratory bubbly, your turkey with a mouthwatering red or white and your plum pudding with a delicious dessert wine.
But Christmas Day wine shopping doesn’t have to be stressful or expensive and with the right advice, can actually be incredibly satisfying, especially when you wow your family with a fantastic drop as they tuck into their Christmas dinner.
World Champion Sommelier and French wine superstar Gerard Basset OBE has years of experience when it comes to wine and food matching and he’s on hand this Christmas to help you pick the perfect bottle (or two) for the big day.
At this time of year with christmas almost upon us i’m sure you’ve got a million and one things to think about i know i do perhaps wine is last on your list let alone worrying about how to match wines with your christmas lunch or that all-important cheese board now i’m
Joined now by gerard basse who is a top similian he’s going to talk us through what we could be drinking with our christmas lunch this year so uh welcome thank you for joining us uh gerard that’s really nice to have you here obviously champagne is a must at
Christmas yeah i think i would say you know to start it’s a special today you want to really start with something you know festive so champagne yes definitely and what time is it okay to have champagne on christmas day anytime really actually it’s quite nice you know you
Put our bike first you open a bottle of champagne you don’t have to have a lot but you still eat on glass and and you can put 200 but i think it’s better to put it just straight natural you know good champagne wonderful so what do you look for in a
Good champagne like good champagne you want something maybe it was a bit of character so slightly brady on the nose you know slightly so just show a little bit of maturity and on the palette quite creamy yeah that’s not too sharp is it it’s nice and creamy yes as you said
Uh so we’re moving on then i suppose a lot of people have smoked salmon for starter what would you drink with a smoked salmon you can drink many type i think what you want is a fresh crisp drywall so if you don’t want it to uh perfume to
Aromatic then maybe go with something like a chablis you could go but here we’ve got a reesing so what the wrestling will have information okay so here you have a try but a lot of flavor quite you know you get slightly floral slightly limey you get all this a lot of fruit like
Says tony fruit quite perfume and also sometimes you get a slightly white truffle when it’s a bit more evolved yeah because that’s a great thing with christmas isn’t it you can have a bottle per course and everybody gets to try a different wine with a different course mixing up
The wines a little bit exactly because normally your family or guest or friend suddenly you are at least you know six eight maybe more yeah so a good white good riesling to start what about for maine then what do we move on to do we
Keep it white or do we then move on to a red or do we keep the red for dessert maybe no i would go for red with the main course or you can do you know um for christmas but obviously the turkey but you could have some you know kind of
A roast beef you could have also maybe a duck goose you know you want something with a bit of flavor and power okay and i think there so what have you got for us here i have got a wonderful bordeaux all right so many smells of christmas smell of
Cidar box you know tobacco cigar also a lot of fruit of course quite a lot of black fruit and then now taste it i think quite a powerful wine you can fill the tannins they are ripe so obviously a wine you need food you need food because it’s
Going to cut through so if you’re having beef you’re having turkey you know excellent wine so this is a really lovely red would you carry this through to mince pies and say christmas pudding no i think with mean spice and christmas pudding you would want really a desert wine
And france probably see some lovely dessert wine so you could go for instance for wine like sayo sociniak sauter of course from the loire you could have wonderful sweet wolverine you could have some cotto de leon i mean just wonderful wine and for the cheese then
You know you could stay with a red wine but i prefer to move maybe uh something like a mori which is a red fortified wine from there okay a version that would be also or even some of the street wine i mentioned could go with the cheese definitely especially if you
Have a blue cheese for instance it’s it’s just like a journey isn’t it so we go from the champagne to the white to the red then moving on to the cheese it is a christmas journey ready to sleep in front of a tv yeah um just in general are there any french
Wines that stand out that you could enjoy over christmas oh there are plenty i mean you know advice and if you wanted to go for um to start with a white wine something a bit special then you could go for a shabi gran crew you could move maybe
Something like a white hermitage or even a white chaton of dupa which is a bit unusual because they don’t produce many and yes for the red wine and maybe a cot roti maybe a generation berta maybe a top bordeaux from pojaks and julia so release it unless really endless list of
Brilliant french wines thank you so much for joining me today gerard you’ve really cleared up my christmas wine woes thank you cheers