Host Gift Ideas: What to Bring to a Dinner Party

Brightland's Awake is its most robust oil: early harvest, cold-pressed California Arbosana and Lecciana olives, in a 375 milliliter bottle coated to protect the oil from light. Brightland prints the harvest date and lists a polyphenol count of 290 to 350, which is high for a supermarket comparison.

Good olive oil is the model host gift. It is consumable, so it adds no clutter, but it is a clear step up from what most people cook with, and a host will think of you every time they finish a plate of beans or a bowl of soup with it.

Check the harvest date on the bottle before you buy. Olive oil is at its best within a year or so of harvest and fades after opening. Skip it for a host who is a serious cook and already buys oil by the tin.

The catch. Pricier per ounce than many excellent oils, and part of what you pay for is the bottle.

NEST's Classic Candle is 8.1 ounces of its own blended wax in a glass vessel etched with frosted stripes, made in the United States and rated for 50 to 60 hours of burning. The empty glass keeps its looks for matches or pencils.

Scent is the risk with any candle gift, and NEST's range makes it easier to manage. The fresher scents, such as Sunlit Yuzu and Neroli or Bamboo, are the safest choice for a host you do not know well. Save the heavier holiday scents for friends.

Burn it long enough the first time to melt the whole surface, then keep later burns to a few hours, and the candle will burn evenly to the end. Pass that on if the host is new to good candles.

The catch. Scent is still a guess about someone else's taste. When in doubt, choose the lightest one.

The Paris is Peugeot's classic mill, turned from PEFC-certified French beech and made in France. The u'Select version adds six preset grind settings, chosen by turning a ring at the base, from fine to coarse.

The mechanism is case-hardened steel, which Peugeot warrants for life. It cracks the peppercorn and then grinds it. The 9 inch size, sold as 22 centimeters, suits a table without looming over it.

Skip it for a host with a mill they love, or who cooks with pre-ground pepper and is not going to change. Peugeot makes salt mills that look nearly identical, so check the label says pepper.

The catch. Salt and pepper versions look alike, and a salt mill will be ruined by peppercorns and vice versa.

The Table Model is the design the screwpull made famous, now sold under Le Creuset. You rest it on the neck of the bottle and keep turning the handle in one direction. The screw goes in, then keeps turning until the cork rises out, with no levering and no tug of war.

Keep turning and it pushes the cork back off the screw without tearing it, which is useful if the host likes to re-cork a bottle. It works on any bottle size and on natural and synthetic corks alike.

It is a modest price for a gift, so pair it with a bottle for someone you know well. Skip it for a host who drinks mostly screw-cap wine.

The catch. No foil cutter included, so the host will need a knife or a separate cutter for the capsule.

Coravin's Pivot replaces the cork with its own stopper and pours through it, filling the space left behind with argon so the wine does not oxidize. Coravin says an opened bottle keeps its flavor, color and aroma for up to four weeks. That changes how a household drinks: the good bottle no longer has to be finished the night it is opened.

The Pivot Plus kit includes the pouring device, two argon capsules, two stoppers, an aerator that attaches to the spout and a bottle sleeve. It is a real gift, suited to a housewarming, a thank-you after a weekend stay or a host who drinks wine one glass at a time.

Capsules are an ongoing cost, and the Pivot needs a conventional corkscrew to open the bottle first. Coravin's pricier Timeless models pour through the cork itself.

The catch. Argon capsules have to be rebought, and the system asks a little learning before the first pour.