For the first time in years, I’m spending Thanksgiving with a family that’s not my own. I want to bring a bottle of wine to dinner, but I’ve never met these people before in my life and I don’t drink myself. What’s a good “safe” wine to bring? At what price point?
General advice, but since it seems you’re not preparing the Thanksgiving meal and sides, and people’s love of different wines and pairing are highly individual, I’d bring a dessert wine - sweet and suitable for drinking after all the eating is done.
This has the advantage of dodging a lot of preferences for certain subtleties of pairing, and if people are drinking throughout the meal, they likely won’t care anymore by desert. I find a good Riesling or Moscato d’Asti are great for drinking as a traditional wine, but a nice tawny port is excellent for sipping when people are otherwise at the dessert/nibbling stage.
As for price, $20-30 will get you a number of tasty options without any risks, although exactly what you want is going to depend on which of the above (or none of the above) options you might like.
A dry Rosé (California or France) is always a nice choice with turkey.
ETA- @ParallelLines has more practical advice. A bottle of dessert wine like port will give more people an opportunity to try it since the servings are smaller.
Speaking as a non wine drinker, moscato is almost always a pleaser.
I can recommend this one
https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/vietti-moscato-docg-750-ml-b005cjusi8
Please don’t think of this as threadshitting, but no one in our family drinks wine (I would be stunned to see my conservative-right landlord and landlady ever drinking), so we usually end up with sparkling juice. This year, I bought some sparkling non-alcoholic sangria and strawberry daiquiri from Welch’s that I have high hopes for.
Yeah if you don’t drink alcohol, there’s no shame in bringing something that you yourself like drinking.
That’s what I do.
Flowers are a nice alternative to wine, if you don’t know what or if the hosts drink.
Bring something that you don’t expect to be served with dinner. If the hosts are wine drinkers, they’ve already selected the wines for the meal. What you bring might (probably) won’t fit and will mess things up. Give them a nice $25 Cab and tell them that you hope they enjoy it with a dinner down the road.
My wife is a bit of a wine enthusiast. She would not drink a Cabernet or any white wine. She would probably try to give it away. Rather than trying to guess what your hosts like to drink, I think it’s much better to bring something that you like to drink. That way if no one else wants it, it’s not going to waste.
That’s an awfully selfish way to approach the question.
A $20 Cab will be appreciated by just about anybody who drinks wine. Don’t bring a wine for dinner unless specifically asked to. The bottle you bring is a present to the hosts, not your contribution to dinner. If you don’t like Cab, spring for a $25 sparkler. Italian perhaps. Or find a nice Argentinian malbec. Or a South African Pinotage.
Exactly correct. Just as if you were to bring a box of fancy chocolates, you wouldn’t expect them to be served with the Thanksgiving meal. A host/ess gift is a gift for the host. You don’t make them incorporate it into the planned dinner.
Moscato is basically another name for muscatel. (Look at the cheapest shelf at the liquor store or 7-Eleven - it’s moscato.) Don’t bring it unless you know they like it.
Flowers are indeed a lovely gift, but can be a real problem for the busy host who has to drop everything and go rustle up a suitable vase and tend to them. What’s safer is a nice small-ish potted (esp flowering or herb-y) plant that needs no tending to on the spot. Trader Joe’s often has lots of these on hand. A poinsettia would be nice.
This year I got some fancy caramels as a host/ess gift. We’ll see how they go over. Hopefully the hosts aren’t diabetic, but they can always put them out for guests.
This is what I bring if I don’t know the hosts’ tastes very well.
Rather odd to be a wine enthusiast and not drink cabs and completely dismiss all whites, but, hey, de gustibus, I guess.
Here, the culture is to bring a bottle of anything. Nobody gives a shit what you bring, as long as you bring something. I’d pick out a nice Gruener Veltliner, because a lot of people don’t know what it is, and it’s a nice white wine that I’ve found to be a crowd pleaser. I might also try a red like a Blaufränkisch/kékfrankós – something a little on the lighter side. But it really doesn’t matter. I’m more of a beer guy, but if you bring PBR or SIerra Nevada or Heineken or Bell’s, it’s all good. It’ll get drunk.
I emphatically agree with all you’ve said. It’s how I was raised, too, and as someone who has hostessed many well-attended holiday dinners by my lonesome, all true.
It’s such a minefield nowadays. Tastes in wine vary so much, it’s probably best to pass on giving it as a host gift.
I’ve learned to specify to guests, “Please bring something you’d like to drink with the meal!” if I know their tastes run different to what wine I’m planning to serve. As @silenus points out, I’ve got that all picked out and I really don’t want to serve what you bring unless I asked you specifically to bring it. And I won’t ask you to bring it unless you first ask me if you can contribute to the meal in this way.
The bouquet of flowers thing is really a challenge. Just as I’m greeting my guests, trying to keep an eye on finishing touches for the meal, I have to figure out what to do with a bunch of flowers. Now, where is that vase I need? Oh, yeah. It’s already filled with flowers I’ve bought for the occasion.
Definitely bring a plant that doesn’t require immediate tending. I’ve been known to set bouquets aside with enthusiastic thanks and ignore them for the rest of the night. It’s that or let the meal be ruined because I need to pay attention to finishing up.
One hostess gift I really appreciated was a box of tapered candles. A hostess can never have too many of those, and they’re not too expensive.
Whatever you bring, make sure you say clearly and cheerily to your hosts that you intend for them to put the stuff away to enjoy another day, and you don’t expect them to do anything with it right now. They’ll be so grateful!
At every single dinner I have attended, whatever the guests brought were opened and shared with everyone at some point.
In my circles it would be considered rude not to do that. It would imply that what the guest brought was not good enough for everyone to partake of. Or it would be considered miserly not to let everyone present to share and enjoy.
A shared meal is treated by some as a cooperative social act, not a performance by the hosts to be merely observed by the guests like a movie.
Something brought by a guest is considered part of the contribution that the guest brings to the event, and to share with others something of the guest’s own preference.
Don’t think that what happens in your circles is a universal rule.
Also, don’t you think it’s time to retire the term “hostess gift?”
Also if you fear that a guest’s contribution to a meal would ruin your meal plans, then in my view you’re doing food and socialization wrong.
This is my experience as well.
I do think, based on the OP’s lack of direct knowledge of what to expect in this situation, this to be a fair caution to any of our advice. So, in these situations, I’d backchannel - if this is an event with friends / family of a SO / etc, I’d have that intermediary quietly ask for something appropriate to bring. With the proviso that you’re not accepting the ‘oh, just bring yourself, it’s all we ask…’
That way, if you’re asked to bring flowers, they’re ready for them. If they want an extra dish, they’ve made preparations for it, and the like. As a weird but very popular option years ago when we went to a close friend’s X-mas celebration, I offered to bring a bunch of (new) disposable plastic storageware for the family to store leftovers and distribute them to those who were expected to take some home.
ETA - still, if I had no idea of anything else, I’d still bring the bottle of tawny port if I was otherwise lacking, especially since it’s a lot more likely to last even if opened for everyone to taste. Plus, if they don’t want to drink it, it is 
for making amazing sauces.
That is often the case, but it’s not universal.
So don’t talk as if the Miss Manners “hostess gift” tradition is universal.
The point is that the host is not required to serve your muscatel. It’s a gift for the host. What they choose to do with it is up to them.