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The question
Could you advise me on how to handle a dinner guest's proud gift of homemade Château Plonk?
The answer
One good way would be to pretend that you lost your corkscrew and can't open it. But I suspect that excuse wouldn't fly for long, given that your guest is likely to return at some point, "helpfully" brandishing his or her own corkscrew.
Me? I'd give the wine a try. One never knows, even if most homemade wine is like an ugly baby – beautiful only to the proud parents and to heaven.
You could, if so inclined, treat it as an educational exercise, the way I do with inferior commercial wines. It could help hone your palate. Analyze its potential faults. Is it tainted with too much volatile acidity? That's the vinegary aroma and flavour common to some poorly made wines. Is it spoiled with brettanomyces, the manure-like essence often associated with poor sanitation and bad barrels? Is it simply too thin and simple, with no mid-palate oomph?
Recently, my neighbour's father, originally from southern Italy, presented me with a bottle of his red, pressed from California grapes. (Getting asked for homemade-wine flattery is an occupational hazard in my line of work.) You know what? It was soundly made and free of technical flaws. I could imagine enjoying it with hearty, robust fare, such as grilled sausages. Not painful at all, if not up to the standards of most wines I review. It also seemed to me much more successful than most cuvées produced at u-brew outlets, the ones fermented from stored pails of imported must crushed from factory-farmed fruit. I tend to dislike those wines, though many happy customers and owners of such facilities would be up for a lively debate.
If you're more reticent than I about subjecting your tongue and gums to a potential assault, then remember that standard wine etiquette places you under no obligation to sample the wine under the solicitous eyes of the guest. Typically, a gifted wine is meant not for the dinner at hand, but for the host's cellar. Ask him or her what food would go best and gently insist that you'd like to honour it with the most appropriate pairing at some future date. Then nose the wine on your own time and decide privately how to empty the bottle. In my experience, the guest won't ask about it again. If that does happen, offer kind words but try not to be so disingenuously enthusiastic as to encourage more u-brew bounty at the next dinner. Tell the guest that it's a rare honour to receive something direct from "the winemaker."
The Flavour Principle by Lucy Waverman and Beppi Crosariol (HarperCollins) recently took home top prize for best general English cookbook at the Taste Canada Food Writing Awards.
E-mail your wine and spirits questions to Beppi Crosariol. Look for answers to select questions to appear in the Wine & Spirits newsletter and on The Globe and Mail website.