Winter Dinner Party

Hosting without hovering

The mark of a good host at a winter dinner party is not the variety of drinks on offer but the ease with which they appear. Spend the evening mixing one cocktail at a time and you will spend it with your back to your guests. The better approach is to choose a warm serve that can be made ahead, kept gently warm and ladled out as the night unfolds, so that pouring a top-up never means leaving the conversation.

The make-ahead serve

A pot of mulled wine is the obvious centrepiece, and rightly so — it improves as the spices steep, fills the house with the right scent, and forgives a host who is busy elsewhere. A spiced glühwein does the same work with a slightly brighter, more citrus-forward character. Make either an hour before guests arrive, keep it below a simmer at around 70°C, and resist the urge to let it boil, which dulls the wine and sharpens the spice. A single ladleful poured on arrival sets the tone for the whole evening.

For variety, a warm spirit-forward serve kept alongside gives guests who prefer something less sweet an easy alternative, without asking you to run a second production line.

Drawing the evening to a close

When the meal winds down, shift to something that signals the end of the night gracefully. An Irish coffee made to order is worth the small effort — the one drink it is genuinely better not to batch — while a pot of spiked hot chocolate keeps the sweeter-toothed guests happy with almost no extra work. Keep the measures modest at this hour. By now the warmth in the room is doing most of the hosting for you.