CAs the Christmas holidays approach, the oenophile’s anxieties return: what will I serve, how many guests will be there, will they appreciate my choices? There are so many doubts for which there is, obviously, no formula that answers them all. However, at the risk of repeating myself, I leave here very good suggestions. Let’s see: we have two champagnes and a Colheita Port. Mailly champagne has been available in Portugal for some years, distributed by Ivin. Mailly is a company that works as an association of producers; It was created in 1929 and since then only two new members have joined. Together they represent 75 ha of vineyards, which, in Champagne, can be said to be brutal. The company takes care of all the members’ vineyards and, it is said, “plot owners don’t need to get their shoes dirty in the vineyard”. They just, we say, stand at the cellar door counting notes. Not bad! The region’s legislation authorizes the replacement of Blanc de Noirs — white wine made from red grapes — with Blanc de Pinot Noir. Without a harvest date, champagne results from a batch of wines from various vintages, carefully stored in cellars as reserve wineand which make it possible to reproduce, every year, the so-called “house style”, which therefore varies from company to company. This category includes the majority of wines made in the region. In the best years we have a dated wine, always rarer and more expensive. It has become widespread to indicate the date on which the wine is corked (disgorgement), something very important, especially in undated wines.