The Butler’s Pantry

The hostess gift is one of the small problems of summer entertaining that polite people never quite solve. In Santa Barbara, where the most casual dinner sits down the road from a working vineyard, the default offering — a good bottle of wine — is rarely the right one. Your host has better. They have a cellar of it. What follows is the note we send to our private clients each year when summer travel begins: a working pâtissier's guide to arriving at someone's home with something they will actually remember by Tuesday. With three notes on etiquette, a few thoughts on shipping ahead, and the box we send most.