My Secret Weapon for Hosting? This $11 Bottle
A crisp, crowd-pleasing bottle I’ve been pouring for over a decade.
There are few wines I’ve loved as long—and as affordably—as Arca Nova’s Vinho Verde. I’ve been drinking this wine for over a decade, and it has always hovered right around ten bucks. Ten bucks! That kind of price consistency feels borderline nostalgic now, like dial-up tones or being able to afford eggs. But Arca Nova hasn’t changed, and that’s exactly why I keep coming back.
This is my go-to bottle for summer, and truthfully, for any gathering year-round. I love to pull it out as a starter, whether it be for a pool party, dinner party, or meeting the-guy-I-guess-you’re-dating’s-sister at noon.
There are many wines I like to label as drinkable but thinkable™, but this isn’t one of them. Arca Nova is simply drinkable, and I say that in the best way possible. It’s light-bodied with bright citrus, a faint spritz, and just enough salinity to make your mouth water. At 10.5% alcohol, it’s the kind of bottle you finish without realizing, and feel financially stable opening another without blinking.
And because I’m not serving it for anyone to get cerebral about. I’m not trying to get into a conversation about notes of rare fruit from a tree that only blossoms once every four years when one fifth of the guests have arrived and I’m still trying to get my charcuterie on the table, or when I’m figuring out how to casually mention to a man’s siblings I’m Italian—not Jewish—before their family finds out I’m a shiksa and stage an intervention.
(Yes, that has happened, and yes, I was dumped. And no, I can’t really blame them because “Marissa Ross, former comedy writer from Los Angeles” does sound pretty damn Jewish. But I also do not want to get dumped out of nowhere right before Hanukkah again.)
But I love that I can serve the Arca Nova to casual wine drinkers and they fall in love with it, and I can serve it to wine nerds and they don’t hate it. It sets the right tone of “easygoing and fun” that all good parties and conversations should start with.
Ten bucks, no tech sheets, and just enough sparkle to make small talk easier.
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All collages © Marissa A. Ross. Do not reproduce without permission.