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Is it rude to take home unfinished wine?

Cathy Gowdie

Unfinished business: If you know your hosts very well, it's probably fine to ask if there's anything they'd like taken off their hands at the end of the night.
Unfinished business: If you know your hosts very well, it's probably fine to ask if there's anything they'd like taken off their hands at the end of the night.Supplied

We were the last to leave a dinner with friends and three bottles of wine were on the table still half full. One was a shiraz we brought with us, which is a favourite of mine. I asked the host if he planned to drink it and he invited me to take it home. In the car, my wife said she was embarrassed. What do you think?

This is hard to answer without knowing what species of friend your host is. If he's a mate you've known for years - who takes a footy season's worth of delight in slagging your team as a bunch of girly-pants no-hopers, and who buys you beers to commiserate when they lose - no problem. But your wife's response leads me to think that he might be more the kind of ''friend'' who is married to your wife's pilates instructor and, even though you have occasional barbecues at each other's houses and get asked over to admire the new reno, more of an acquaintance, really.

For all you know, he may have been keen to see the back of you and your missus so he could make his way through the rest of your shiraz (quietly, in peace, with no one discussing the finer points of pelvic floor failure) while doing the dishes. Perhaps he was thinking it was one of those wines that drinks better the following day, when it's had some air (perhaps you were thinking that, too). He may have planned to use it in the next day's coq au vin. Or maybe he thought it deserved to be tipped down the sink and was more than happy to hand it over.

But hey, when you dropped the brick-like hint, he invited you to take the wine with you. Whether this was an act of generosity or an admission that he didn't like your shiraz we will never know - unless you ask him next time you get together. This seems inadvisable, what with your wife being a mite touchy about the episode.

If you know your hosts very well - enough to be certain they won't be affronted, or mutter about how tight you are as soon as you walk out the door - it's probably fine to ask if there's anything they'd like taken off their hands at the end of the night. Otherwise, wait and see if the offer is made, unprompted: it sometimes happens. If not, bad luck. When you're at other people's houses and you hand over a bottle of wine, what they do with it - opened or unopened - is up to them.

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