Genuinely our favourite time of year; time to embrace the warmth and joy of the holiday season with some delightful drinks and much more from our team at Ellis Wharton Wines.

Whether you are planning traditional Christmas with your family, friends and loved ones, want the most thoughtful of gifts, or inspiration for your festive celebrations we are returning with our popular team drinks guide to help along the way!

If you do not have time to talk to us or make decisions, we have a premade Christmas Day Trio Gift Box! £65 gets you a bottle of Cremant, a classic Burgundian Pinot Noir and a delicious dessert wine with traditional puddings or cheese and biscuits.

Festive In-store Tastings

We have a long list of free supplier tastings for your enjoyment in the run-up to Christmas once again this year. We hope to see you in-store tasting this fantastic collection providing plenty of Christmas cheer!

Saturday 9th December Mentzendorff 11- 4pm

Saturday 16^th December - Loveday Distillery 12 - 4pm

Friday 22^nd December - Cape Cornwall, 12 – 4pm

We love pairing food and drinks together, for us one of life’s simple pleasures. We are here to help make buying your Christmas selections that bit easier so do come and speak to our team and have a taste.

Before our drinks guide for Christmas day, we are going to include our tried and tested recipe for mulled cider. The perfect accompaniment to Christmas carols and get your guests in the festive spirit.

Mulled Cider Recipe (Serves 12 Adults - 125ml serving each)

Ingredients

1000ml Fowey Valley Castledor Cider (x2 Bottles)

100ml Avallen Calvados

400ml Apple Juice

75g dark sugar

2 star anise

1 large cinnamon stick

4 cloves

10g chopped ginger root

1 orange cut into slices

Apple to garnish

Method

STEP 1

Pour the cider, Calvados, apple juice and sugar into a large saucepan, and gently heat for 10 mins.

STEP 2

Add the orange and all the spices, bring to a simmer, then turn down and keep on a low heat for 30 mins. Ladle into heat proof mugs to serve. Garnish with an apple slice.

Team Christmas Drinks Guide

Especially if you have a young family, it is essential to remember to leave some fortified treats out for Father Christmas on Christmas Eve! We have an extended range of sherry from the Rapier dry and delicate to the sweet and luscious and everything in between.

Now for Christmas morning, breakfast is essential to set the tone for your special day. We would recommend a proper bacon sandwich and a glass of Wild Idol Alcohol Free Sparkling Rose Wine, bucks fizz or pet-nat depending on your preference, it is Christmas morning after all.

After a flurry of presents and hopefully lots of fun, elevenses are essential to refuel. This might be time to reach back to the fridge for the sparkling wine of your choice you opened earlier? Hopefully you have not stuck a spoon to keep the bubbles in because it doesn’t work (that’s one myth debunked!). Lost in a Field “Frolic” would be our perfect pet-nat choice here.

Traditionally with turkey and all the trimmings we often recommend a lighter bodied, lower tannin red such as a red Burgundy or Beaujolais Cru, or a full-bodied bold white such as a white Burgundy or New World Chardonnay. These are classic ideas, and we have many classic options depending on your budget, so please come and talk to us in-store!

It is our busy time of year, but we have managed to interview most of our team to find out what they will be drinking and eating which we will share in this blog, our festive drinks guide. Some fun for the festive season and an introduction to our team and hopefully to other corners of our extensive range which you may not have explored yet or may enjoy to revisit!

Victoria, our Finance Director is very partial to a good pudding wine! She is planning with Charles a home family Christmas with five of their six (all quite big!) children and one grandparent, so a very full house indeed! They are planning to celebrate Christmas Eve with a magnum of Maison Saint Aix Provence Rose to go with smoked salmon from Chalk Stream Farm. On Christmas Day, Charles will be roasting the chickens on his egg BBQ with full accompaniments, washed down with Casina Bric Mesdi Vino Rosso NV and followed by the wonderfully reviving Nyetimber rose for when they finally sit down!

Charles our Owner / Director who is a hard man to pin down, especially in the run up to Christmas because he has a very full schedule! His day sounds brilliant, but lots of fun with his family is firmly on the schedule. Lets hope it is dry while he is cooking the chickens! Nothing says Christmas more for Charles than Taylors 20 year old Tawny Port , which once again “he is not sharing”!

John our Warehouse Manager was asked in between receiving pallets of Christmas wines about his Christmas festive choices. He has a young family, so his day will start very early he is certain! His most important thing to remember this Christmas is to leave a glass of Lustau East India Solera sherry out for the big man on Christmas eve!

They will be starting Christmas morning with a bottle of Wild Idol Alcohol Free Sparkling whilst opening presents they are driving later and need to stay sharp with their young kids!! They will be having a traditional Christmas of Roast turkey with the family accompanied by Ayala Brut Majeur and Oliver Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc Les Setillies. To finish the day, they will probably have some cheeky espresso martinis made with Atlantic's cold brew coffee liqueur.

Paul our Assistant Warehouse Manager is planning a two-day family extravaganza to celebrate this year which starts on Christmas Eve with a roast pork joint turned into pork sandwiches with lots of crackling and a cold buffet with friends and family! Paul will be pouring Long Barn Reserve Chardonnay with its ripe fruits and buttered toast flavours to accompany the buffet. What a combination! Christmas day will be beef wellington with potatoes and trimmings. Paul will serve one of his favourite reds which he discovered on his WSET Level 2 course, our Gavanza Rioja Reserva which is full of red and dark fruits, ripe tannins and classic sweet spice profile which will be a perfect combination. The evening is for picky bits and cheeses including a Lancashire Bomb with a bottle of Kopke 10 year old Tawny Port too, lucky guests!!

Jim our Retail Manager will be hoping his new kitchen is finished in time to host the family for Christmas this year, fingers crossed! With his young family it is important to keep active in the morning. He plans to join friends on the beach with their families for a traditional Christmas morning sea swim / body board / play on Porth beach washed down with a few bottles of Salasar Crémant de Limoux. His family will be enjoying Christmas with a traditional turkey and all the usual trimmings and family friendly wine choices in magnum format to keep all sipping gracefully during the meal. With a fondness for good Beaujolais, we will also be branching out and sipping a Barbera d’Asti Superiore DOCG and keeping his fingers crossed that Santa got the memo and has delivered a Kopke Colheita Port 2002! Perfect for sipping with Christmas pudding and into the afternoon and evening!

We will bypass the tidying up, hopefully you have left someone else that delight and have finished your presents and are lazily watching some Christmas evening telly or playing a board game with your loved ones. A perfect accompaniment to this stage of proceedings would be a sipping rum. We have many artisanal options from Cornwall, but for Christmas, we will be sipping Trevethan’s Triple Oak Rum. Incredibly small batch, limited to 500 bottles only!! This is Cornish distilled rum aged in ex-sherry and ex-bourbon casks and with virgin Cornish oak for 8 months. It has spices and is basically Christmas in a glass.

On those notes, Merry Christmas from all at EWWines, we hope to see you soon.