If you put me in charge of the wine for dinner, I’m bringing my A+ game. Delicious, compelling and broadly-appealing wines that not only suit most palates, they elevate even middling chef skills to the stratosphere. Potent quality from a special, flavor-packed red Burgundy, a “how-did-you-even-know-about-that” Northern Rhone with a special backstory, and a traditionalist Barolo with soaring aromas, silky texture and beguiling complexity. Your dinner party will be so fucking legendary you might be forced to do an encore performance. Better buy two.

Includes one bottle each of:

2023 Hudeot-Baillet Bourgogne Rouge - The 2023 Bourgogne Rouge is a blend from two lieux-dits. It has a vibrant nose with cranberry and wild strawberry fruit in good concentration for a regional wine. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannins that frame the fleshy red fruit. Enjoy this well-made red over the next four or five years.(NM)

2019 Cascina Fontana Barolo - 93Vinous

The 2019 Barolo is absolutely gorgeous. Bright and lifted, with striking inner perfume, the 2019 is an absolute charmer. Rose petal, blood orange, mint, spice and new leather develop with a bit of time in the glass, adding to the wine's charm and sensuality. The 2019 is delicate and alluring. It's everything Barolo should be, especially at this level. Best of all, the 2019 should be a fabulous value in the world of Barolo.

2022 Guillaume Gilles Cotes du Rhone “Les Peyrouses” - Hailing from the flats just to the east of the Cornas appellation, “Les Peyrouses” Rouge is a remarkable and unique wine: pure Syrah planted in the 1870s, during phylloxera’s initial outbreak, and in fact comprising the very first grafted vines in the area. The soil in this vineyard is a mix of sand and clay, with loads of large limestone pudding-stones, and the wine Guillaume coaxes from these astonishingly old vines is so powerful in its fruit that he gives it 12 months élevage instead of the 18 months he gives to his Cornas.