Bone-Chilling Wines to Enjoy This Halloween
By
October, 09 2025
After all, Halloween and wine share much in common — both are full of mystery, invisible transformations, unseen forces, and a touch of the unknown.
This Halloween, I’ve unearthed three wines at Dubai Duty Free that are perfect for spooky season — each with its own ghostly, freakish, or deadly backstory. Whether you’re hosting a haunted soirée or just want a bottle that makes your spine tingle, here are three hauntingly good wines.
At the southernmost tip of Africa lies Elim, a remote coastal region where fog rolls in like ghostly shrouds and the ocean crashes with relentless fury. It’s so treacherous that, within an 8.6-kilometre stretch of shoreline, there are 131 shipwrecks — their broken hulls resting silently beneath the waves.
Sailors once whispered that their compasses spun wildly in these waters, confused by unseen forces. Today, winemaker David Nieuwoudt channels that eerie energy into Ghost Corner Sauvignon Blanc — a wine as sharp and bracing as the wind that howls off the sea.
The grapes grow in bone-chilling conditions, giving rise to pure, zesty flavours and a minerality that bites. Even spookier, the winemakers let the wild yeasts do the work — no commercial strains, just the super and natural forces that linger in the atmosphere here. The result is hauntingly fresh, wildly expressive, and perfectly named.
There was always something a little sinister about those shows: that tension between wonder and fear, marvel and madness. That same drama is bottled up in this big, brawny Cabernet.
If Ghost Corner is ethereal and ghostly, Freakshow is its opposite — loud, muscular, and gloriously over the top.
And finally, we meet the skeletons. But fear not — these ones are here to guide you.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of both France and Britain, stands for Malbec’s birth in the Old World.
- The Immigrant carries Malbec across the ocean to Argentina, where it finds new life in the Andes.
- Death represents phylloxera, the microscopic pest that wiped out vineyards across Europe and nearly killed Malbec for good.
- And finally, Adrianna Catena, the modern pioneer, embodies rebirth — the wine’s resurrection in Argentina’s high-altitude vineyards, where Malbec now touches the heavens.
It’s a deadly serious wine — structured, elegant, and profound — but there’s beauty in its darkness. These skeletons don’t haunt; they celebrate survival. They remind us that even after death, there’s always a chance for rebirth — and maybe another glass.
So whether you’re drawn to ghostly seas, circus strongmen, or skeleton spirit guides, these bottles promise a Halloween experience far more sophisticated than spooky punch. Each tells a story — and together, they make a killer lineup for your next costume party or horror movie marathon.
