Another holiday season is upon us, and I’ve been dreaming about the food and drinks since the leaves began turning to gold in September. It’s time to think about gifts and about which wines will be adorning the yuletide table cloth. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

The Seneca Lake Wine Trail offers a first-class selection of Finger Lakes wines in their 12 Days of Wine pack, an annual holiday special available at all Wine Trail-affiliated wineries (senecalakewine.com). This limited edition case includes a magical array of dry, sweet, and sparkling wines for $199. A variety of styles is important to have in your holiday tool box in order to accommodate a range of tastes and cuisine. Pop the bubbly for toasting and canapes, uncork those brisk whites for cheese and veggies, and break out the reds for heavy-hitting stews, roasts, and game. If you’re unlike me and love caroling, pajama parties, and girls’ night, this one-size-fits-all party pack promises to keep the yule times rolling long into the wee hours of 8:30 in the evening.

You can’t do Christmas without sweets, and the rule with dessert pairing is that the wine must always be sweeter than the dessert, otherwise the wine’s nuance is lost. Dessert is the time to experiment with all of those stout and skinny bottles of fortified wine. I’m talking about port. I’m talking about cream sherry.

Available in gift-sized 500 ml bottles, Barnstormer Winery’s Nosedive dessert wine ($28) makes for the perfect end-of-day indulgence. This Blaufränkisch/merlot blend undergoes nine months of maturation in ex-cognac barrels, the seasoned oak lending gravitas and a touch of spice. Blueberry, fig, and Bing cherry notes contribute to a broad, mouth-filling palate. The heat of the alcohol comes through on the back-end, italicizing the fruit without overpowering, and concludes with a long, toasty finish. Pair the Nosedive with strong cheeses (Cambozola, anyone?) and extravagantly wrapped boxes of Whitman’s chocolate truffles.

New from Barnstormer is their off-dry vermouth ($45), made from fortified Finger Lakes riesling and infused with select botanicals. Winemaker Taylor Stember’s preference is to serve over ice with a slice of orange, as the fruity, herbaceous profile of this vermouth makes for a perfect cocktail all on its own.

It can also moderate boozier drinks while taking center stage in a low-alcohol spritz. Hints of mint add a freshness that would nicely support a gin cocktail, such as a white Negroni. Vermouth is a staple ingredient in any mixologist’s wheelhouse and makes for a truly practical gift for the home bartender of any experience level.

That brings me to Hazlitt 1852 Vineyard’s solera sherry, a wine garnering serious attention after winning the Best of Show in the 2022 Governor’s Cup and the gold medal at the 2024 Atlantic Seaboard Wine Competition. Solera sherry is a non-vintage cream sherry. The “cream” moniker is rooted in the wine’s sweet and velvety profile and not from any dairy. While Spanish sherry’s oxidative, austere flavors have long struggled to win over the American palate, Hazlitt’s sweet solera sherry has won acclaim for its rich and accessible profile.

When Hazlitt acquired Widmer Wine Cellars in 2011, the Naples facility came equipped with a solera sherry system already in place. The new owners readily kept the tradition alive, making and bottling sherry under their own label.

Solera sherry is raised in a nursery of ex-whiskey barrels called a criadera. The casks are stacked in tiers with the solera, or “floor layer,” at the bottom. The solera contains the oldest, most mature sherry, just half of which is drawn out annually for bottling—something in the range of 175 cases. The younger wines from the criadera above are used to top up the solera below. This downward cycling of the wine is how the sherry develops its character and richness. Since the solera is never fully emptied, a small portion of the first wine from the Widmer era still exists in the barrels. That means that every new batch of sherry will always contain a whisper of the original recipe dating back to 1988.

An uncommon wine for the region, Hazlitt’s solera sherry clocks in at $29.50, and makes its mark as a genuine stand out in category, quality, and rarity. It abounds with nutty, butterscotch, and golden raisin flavors. Sea-salted chocolate caramels and pecan pie are dessert pairings that come to mind, but cured Iberico ham and hard aged cheeses make fabulous candidates for a savory experience.

I snagged a bottle of this sherry for myself and plan to lay it down for a few years to see what happens. In the meantime, I’ll check in on other sleeping beauties, relishing any chance I can get to visit the cool and quiet gallery of my cellar. Remember, if time’s running out to find a great gift, you can always choose a cellared wine from your collection. Which dusty bottle should you select? Fortified wines and brawnier reds hold up well when properly aged, but fruit-forward riesling from the Finger Lakes can reward cellaring, too. In fact, one of the best wines I’ve ever tasted from the region was an off-dry riesling from 2009. It’s been my experience that gifting an older bottle never fails to create a memory not soon forgotten.

If you don’t have any aged wines at your command, check in at your favorite Finger Lakes winery and ask about library wines. Sometimes the tasting room staff will let a back-vintage bottle go to a loyal customer. Choose a quiet time to ask, be friendly and polite, and delightfully delicious things can happen. It is, after all, the most wonderful time of the year.