Tires Pirelli or Nokia

Mine wore 11 year old nokians untill its rusty demise in january when i had to say farewell. They where rock hard but boy it was fun going sideways everywhere

My recommendation would be the nokian hakkapeliitta. These are by far the best snow tires I've ever used. They're also reasonably priced.

I do a decent amount of gravel or clay road driving with some but less sand too. Decided to go Pirelli Scorpion A/T plus and there's been no issues at stock hieght.

Nokian Hakkapelita’s … used to run pirelli sotto zero 3 and blizzaks … never going back. Nokians are WAY better in the winter.

Nokian Hakkapelitas. They are expensive, but once you try them you can't go back.

I am on my third different set of 19" M+S tires on my 2017 Golf R - and I am also a Tahoe area skier - first I had the Continental ExtremeContact DWS - they were good. Then I tried the Pirelli P Zero All Season Plus Revised Compound X -- they were better -- actually one time I went over Mt Rose in a white-out blizzard, on top of at least 2" of ice, and the Pirellis gave me great traction and handling.

Just an update, I managed to find 2 sets of Nokian Haka R3 a few hours prior to my trip to Leavenworth, WA. Got out of two snow storms without a problem. These tires are bomb!

I drive the same car and drive in rain seven months of the year and snow frequently when going skiing and the Nokian Hakka R3s take all the fun out of it. The remove the drama of water over the road, and sadly, near completely remove one's ability to drift across snowy parking lots. Even in the worst weather I am limited more by cars around me than I am my own confidence when driving this combination of Swedish and Finnish (I think) brilliance.

when you lose traction, it feels like it will never get to a stop (and that's with Nokian Hakkapeliittas).

Hate to be a neighsayer, but I've haven't been really impressed with the Nokian Hakkas. For all the praise they get on the forums, I was pretty disappointed with how they performed. I live in Central NY so we get tons of snow, so I got to test them out in a variety of conditions and they never really seemed to have traction. I had a set of 195 wide studless tires on my Golf. Upgraded to a GTI and the previous owner threw in a set of 225 studded Hakkas with the car. So I've tried these studded and studless, and have tried narrow and wide tires. I'm looking to try some Blizzaks this year if I can get my hands on them. A family member had them on their FWD Audi and the traction on them seemed really impressive; we were driving on a road that was completely covered in snow and he was swerving left and right and the car rode like it was on rails.