If this is your designated time of the year to knock back nogs, toddies and punches, go and have your fun. But amateurs, beware: These sugar bombs can pack a wallop. Forget about remembering what you had for dinner, even if you do have any taste buds left. And the morning after… It might be wiser to take a polite sip, conveniently misplace your glass, and switch to wine, a much better partner to the food.

But what wine to serve at your next holiday dinner? A host's biggest challenge, so it seems, is to find a wine versatile enough to go with the kinds of varied menus that are heaped on the dining room table this time of year. An easy and common solution is to offer a choice, one red and one white, but this is really an unimaginative solution, and it unfairly transfers the job of matching the food to the wine from the host to the guest. There are more than a few surefire match-ups, such as grilled meat with big, tannic reds like cabernet sauvignon or the wines of northern Italy, and shellfish with sauvignon blanc. But not many holiday meals are so focused.

Many wine lovers have wandered just slightly astray from the traditional red wine/meat, white wine/fish axis by taking a lead from great cuisines that demand less doctrinaire patterns. In the Rhône Valley of France, for example, red wines predominate (although there are a number of regional whites, not to mention rosé), even though the cooking style has considerable range. Rhône vintners, therefore, have fashioned the native syrah grape into supple and accommodating wines, including the widely available and reasonably priced Côte du Rhône. Syrah, it should be noted, can also be made into big, chunky, long-lasting collectibles, such as the mighty Hermitage, but at the $10 to $20 range for Côte du Rhône, you are not likely to find wines of such character.

No one ever accused German cuisine of being too light, and yet, conversely to the situation in the Rhône Valley, there is hardly any red wine to be found. The great white wine of Germany—indeed, in the view of many experts, one of the most neglected great wines in the world—is Riesling. The myth about Riesling, and surely the reason that it is not more popular with American wine fanciers, is that it is too sweet. It is true that almost all Rieslings contain more residual sugar than traditionally dry whites (and, therefore, lower alcohol levels), but it is all relative. At the extreme, there are late-harvest Rieslings that might even contain the noble rot that endows expensive dessert wines, including sauternes, with a dizzying, syrupy sweetness.

The most common category for Riesling, designated Kabinet, is not really sweet on the tongue, however. Instead, the extra sugar gives the wine a remarkably robust body, and enhances the inherent fruit and mineral elements of the grape. The magic of Riesling lies in the wonderful balance of ripe, naturally sweet fruit and ringing acidity. With food, the wine is a chameleon, crisp and bracing for fish, light poultry and many vegetables, but with enough substance and backbone to handle the bigger flavors of meat and sauced dishes. Riesling even works surprisingly well with spicy foods from Mexico and Asia. And because Riesling has not been embraced by collectors with the same enthusiasm as French and Californian wines, they are still reasonably priced, with excellent choices in the $10 to $20 range, and as-good-as-it-gets wine for another $10 or $15. Unfortunately, the Stalinist State Stores carry a limited range of Riesling, but Moore Brothers, in Pennsauken, N.J., is a terrific source.

There is yet another highly versatile white wine that can serve as the sole beverage for the evening, from opening toasts through dessert, and it is especially suitable for this festive time of year: champagne. That term is, technically, only applicable to specific wine made in a specific way in a specific area of France, but other sparklers from around the world work as well, including Prosecco from Italy and Cava from Spain. Champagne works just fine as a dinner wine for all but the hardiest fare (grilled steak, say), but it should be as dry as possible. The designations can be tricky; "sec" champagne (the word means dry in French) is actually semisweet. The true dry stuff is called "brut," which is dryer than "extra-dry." And none of them are as sweet as eggnog.

Peter Burwasser is sweet as eggnog.