Ideal dinner party wines

A couple of years ago, I was hosting a dinner for a senior official in one of China's regulatory agencies and his colleagues. As we prepared to embark on the first of a multi course Chinese banquet, I asked him what he would like to drink, wine, beer, cognac, whisky, etc. "Well", he replied "what I'd really like is cognac... but everyone in China seems to be drinking red wine these days and I need to understand what this is all about." Judging by the copious amounts of Pichon Lalande 1985 that were consumed that evening, he was on a pretty steep learning curve, and we still managed to squeeze in the odd cognac or two at the tail end of proceedings.