
When planning your holiday entertaining, the addition of wine to the table is sure to liven up any occasion. Matching wine to food need not be a chore or a challenge. Ignore the complex formulas and books on the subject; they offer too much information and over-complicate matters.
The truth is, there are very few wine and food matches that can go horribly wrong. What is most important is to have enough wine, to have a varied assortment of wine and to stay within your wine budget.
Before getting down to specific choices, do some pre-party planning. How many guests are you expecting? As much as possible, try to determine who among them will want wine. I generally plan to open a bottle of wine for every two wine-drinking adults; more if there are serious imbibers among the guests.
Purchase the wine at least a day or two in advance, so it's not a last-minute dash-and-grab. Have a pitcher of drinking water for every bottle of wine consumed. And mix up your choices. It's much more fun to serve six different wines than six bottles of the same wine, and it also ensures that every guest will have at least one or two choices that they know and like.