Recommended by style.
Sparkling
- Australian Sparkling Shiraz: Deep purple with pink foam, dry to off-dry, and a serious style rather than a novelty. The most theatrical bottle you can open honestly.
- Dry Lambrusco: Dark, foaming, faintly bitter, and about $14. The most fun per dollar in the shop, and it cuts straight through charcuterie.
White
- Skin-Contact Orange Wine (Friuli or Slovenia): Amber, cloudy, and tannic. It looks like nothing else on the table, and it pairs with the awkward party food nobody else can pair with.
- Grüner Veltliner or Picpoul de Pinet: For the guests who only drink white: bright, peppery, cheap, and no fuss on a night when nobody is taking notes.
Rosé
- Tavel Rosé: The deepest colored dry rosé in France. It looks like a light red, drinks like one, and surprises everyone who expects pale and sweet.
Red
- Nero d'Avola or Alicante Bouschet: Alicante Bouschet is a teinturier grape with red flesh as well as red skin, so it pours genuinely opaque and rings the glass purple.
- Côtes du Rhône or Languedoc Red: The volume wine. Soft, warming, and cheap enough to keep opening for a room full of people who are not analyzing it.
- Douro Red or Priorat: Full bodied and warming, which is what an outdoor October party actually needs once the temperature drops.
The best Halloween party wine is an inky red that pours near-black, a skin-contact orange wine that makes people ask what it is, and a pot of mulled wine on the stove. Nero d’Avola, a Friuli or Slovenian orange wine, and eight bottles of cheap Grenache for the pot will cover twenty guests for under $250.
The Halloween party decision table
| Your situation | The bottle | Why it works | Rough price |
|---|---|---|---|
| One red doing all the volume work | Côtes du Rhône or a Languedoc red | Soft, warming, and cheap enough to keep opening | $10 to $16 |
| You want the darkest glass in the room | Nero d’Avola or Alicante Bouschet | Alicante Bouschet has red flesh, so it pours opaque | $14 to $25 |
| The bottle people ask about | Friuli or Slovenian skin-contact white | Amber color and real tannin, unlike anything else there | $18 to $30 |
| Mulled wine for twenty | Inexpensive Grenache or Merlot, eight bottles | Spice and sugar erase nuance, so never spend up here | $8 to $12 |
| Guests are holding cups and costumes | Magnum or three liter bag in box | No corkscrew, no second hand needed, no waste | $22 to $32 |
| Pizza and takeout arriving at 10pm | Barbera or Chianti | Acid and low oak cut tomato and cheese | $12 to $20 |
| Charcuterie and cheese table | Dry Lambrusco or brut Cava | Fizz against salt and fat, and it stays light | $12 to $20 |
| Chili, wings, or anything spicy | Off-dry Riesling | Sugar cools heat, and alcohol makes it worse | $14 to $22 |
| The candy bowl and chocolate | Ruby Port or Banyuls | Sweet fortified red is the only real chocolate partner | $16 to $28 |
| A blood-red rosé that is not sweet | Tavel rosé | Deep colored, fully dry, and it drinks like a light red | $16 to $25 |
| Bubbles with theater | Australian sparkling Shiraz | Purple-black with a pink foam, and it is genuinely good | $18 to $30 |
| An outdoor party in the cold | Douro red or Priorat | Full bodied and warming, which matters at 40F | $14 to $28 |
| Someone only drinks white | Grüner Veltliner or Picpoul de Pinet | Bright, cheap, and no fuss on a night nobody is analyzing | $10 to $16 |
Wines that look dramatic without being gimmicks
There is a shelf of Halloween wine every October that is mostly a black bottle, a skull label, and a mediocre blend inside. Skip it. You can get far better theater from wines that look striking because of what they are.
Teinturier reds. Almost all red grapes have white flesh and get their color from skins. A handful, called teinturier grapes, have red flesh too. Alicante Bouschet is the widely available one, mostly from Portugal, Spain, and California, and Saperavi from Georgia is the other. Both pour genuinely opaque and leave a purple ring on the glass.
Skin-contact orange wine. Fermenting white grapes on their skins gives you a cloudy amber wine with tannin and dried apricot flavors. It looks like nothing else on a table and it actually pairs with awkward party food. See our orange wine guide if you have never poured one.
Tavel rosé. The deepest colored dry rosé in France. It looks like a light red, it drinks like one, and it surprises people who think rosé means pale and sweet.
Sparkling Shiraz. A serious Australian style, not a novelty. Deep purple, dry to off-dry, and the foam comes out pink.
Lambrusco. Dry Lambrusco from Emilia-Romagna is dark, foaming, faintly bitter, and about $14. It is the most fun bottle per dollar in the shop.
Mulled wine, done properly
Count two servings per guest, so eight bottles for twenty people. Use the cheapest honest red you can find, because citrus, sugar, and clove will flatten anything subtle. Grenache, Merlot, and Languedoc blends all work at $8 to $12.
The one rule that matters: never let it boil. Alcohol evaporates well below the boiling point of water, and a hard simmer leaves you with a stewed, tannic, bitter pot. Keep it at the barely steaming stage, add the sugar last so you can taste as you go, and cut the citrus fresh rather than using juice.
Serving wine to people in costume
A Halloween party has a physical problem that no other party has. Your guests are holding a drink, a plate, a phone, and part of a costume, and half of them cannot see properly.
Remove every step that needs two hands. Open all the red before anyone arrives. Use sturdy tumblers instead of stemware, because a stem in a crowded room in the dark ends one way. Put the white and sparkling in a bucket of ice and water in the room where people are actually standing, not in the kitchen at the end of a hallway.
Magnums and three liter boxes earn their place here. A box holds four bottles, has a tap, does not break, and keeps the wine fresh for weeks afterward. If that feels like a compromise, note that plenty of good Côtes du Rhône and Spanish red now ships this way.
Finally, put out water. A jug and a stack of cups next to the wine is the difference between a party people remember fondly and one they remember differently.
Find the strange bottle with Sommo
Scan a label with Sommo and you will know instantly whether that unfamiliar orange wine or Sicilian red is worth the shelf price, what it tastes like, and what to serve with it. Save the ones that got people talking. Download Sommo and be the person at the party who picked well.
Pro tips.
- Skip the skull-label black bottles. Teinturier reds, orange wine, Tavel, and sparkling Shiraz give you real theater and actually taste good.
- Mulled wine: two servings per guest, so eight bottles for twenty. Use an $8 to $12 red, because citrus and clove erase anything subtle.
- Never let mulled wine boil. Alcohol evaporates well below boiling point and a hard simmer leaves you with a stewed, bitter pot.
- Costumes mean nobody has two free hands. Open the reds in advance, use sturdy tumblers, and put an ice-and-water bucket in the room people are standing in.