And The Ultimate Holiday Gift For The Wine Lover On Your List Is…

…wine from “someplace else.”

On the hook for giving a wine geek a holiday gift this season? Here’s some advice for ya.

Skip the books.

Skip the gimmicky wine gizmos that take up way more kitchen drawer space than they’re worth in actually, tired-and-true utility (trust me on this one, I get samples of all of that sh*z and most of it isn’t worth the amount of air molecules it displaces in your home).

Skip all of it.

You really want to make an impression on your wine lover’s holiday season? Then don’t give him/her/it something that they’ll probably never actually use. Give ‘em something that they’ll drink, and will remember for a long time to come.

Give them something truly different: give ‘em wine from an off-the-well-trodden-path wine region…

The secret spice in this soup is the simple fact that no wine lover has tried it all. No way. Not by a long shot. I don’t care how much wine he/she/it happens to have in the wine cellar, you’re beloved wine geek has NOT tried vino from every wine-producing region in the world. Not yet, anyway.

And so, you have, for most intents an purposes, a near-infinite number of choices from which to draw for your splendid holiday surprise. Don’t even try to lie to me and tell me that the wine geek on your list has already had juice from…

• Baja California, Mexico
• Arizona
• Missouri (yes, really)
• San Juan, Argentina (here’s a great example)
• Tasmania
• Santorini, Greece (more on that lovely place can be found here in the archives)
• etc., etc., etc.

Need more inspiration? How about this – go local: any wine being made practically in your hometown? Grab a bottle and gift that shiz. And if you must buy a wine book, try something like Every Wine Tells A Story along with a bottle or two of some of the more off-the-wall recommendations offered by the wine geeks profiled therein. That’ll keep your wine geek busy after the jingle bell rings have long since subsided.

The point here is not that the wine you give has to be particularly great (though many of the above areas certainly are producing good stuff) – the point is that the wine just has to be different. It’s point is that you’re giving that wine geek what she/he probably wants most for the holidays: a mind- and palate-altering experience, another step along  their personal journey of wine discovery.

Chances are pretty good that over 80% of the hundreds of bottles in your wine geek’s [cue Darth Vader voice] “impressive…most-impressive!” wine cellar hail from less than 20 wine-producing areas. In fact, I will bet you a copy of my eBook and a wine soiree (ok, so not all of the gadgets suck… I admit it…) that previous sentence is spot-on, Nostradamus-level  accurate.

So be daring. Be different. Be remembered.

Don’t give ‘em more stuff – give ‘em a learning experience!

Cheers – and have a safe and awesome holiday season, peoples!