The holiday season offers a perfect opportunity to give family and friends something special. If you are planning a Christmas dinner or holiday at a friend’s place, it is a good idea to bring a great bottle of wine with you. Besides, good wine can help bring out the best flavors and undertones of your meal.
When you are out shopping for a bottle of wine for someone, it doesn’t necessarily have to be an expensive wine; but if you do want to get fancy with it, there are many options for that too. To help you make a decision, here are some of the finest wines in the price range of $100 and $400 that you can gift an oenophile this holiday season.
Stags’ Leap Winery Ne Cede Malis Petite Sirah
Stags’ Leap Winery is famous for its Cabernet Sauvignon but has also gained immense popularity for its Petite Sirah. The wine contains lots of fruit, delivering blackberry and pine-needle traits, outlined in fine tannins. It has a full-bodied and flavorful character with a tight finish. It can be paired beautifully with braised lamb shank with marbled potato and root vegetables. The wine has all the elements of a bold, meaty, and dark-berry wine. Buy: $150
2008 Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet Les Folatières 1er Cru
Domaine Leflaive is one of Burgundy’s greatest white wine producers. This premier cru bottle has round, almost honeyed density and seductive spice notes. After a year in oak casks, the wine is aged 6 months in a tank where it is prepared for bottling. This wine is an opulent drink that has intense acidity and an edge of minerality. It has ripe, musky aromas of stone fruits and pineapples, dense with flowers, cumin, and a touch of smoky reduction. Buy: $220
Bodegas Roda Cirsion
This knockout Spanish red is a favorite among wine lovers. It is exotically perfumed and elegantly structured to offer a great complexity with black ripe fruits such as blackberries, blackcurrants, and blueberries. The wine comprises aromas of chocolate, mint, sweet spices, Indian ink, and moist ground before rain. It offers the freshness of small black fruits and butterscotch with fine tannins and silky smooth texture. Buy: $249
Cardinale Cabernet Sauvignon
Cabernet Sauvignon has established itself as one of the favorites among red wines. It is the perfect drink to pair with an indulgent holiday dinner. This vintage is full of bloom and ripe tannins with hints of blackberries and Black Forest cake that is balanced with notes of baking spice, menthol, and cigar box. The small berries offer it a rich, purple-black color. It offers an intense floral aroma and is best paired with beef tenderloin, porterhouse steaks, and lamb shanks. Buy: $325
Beringer 8th Maker Cabernet Sauvignon
Produced from California’s most historic wineries, this 99-point wine is well-balanced and full-bodied with complicated layers of flavor. It is a rich, lush, dark and seductive cabernet with stunning aromas of blackberry, chocolate, star anise and espresso crema. With the interplay of fruit and fine tannins, the drink has a great finish and goes well with grilled tomahawk with black truffle. Its dusty baking spice and cocoa powder aromas add to the texture and lasting intensity. Buy: $400