Choose Wine as a Gift

Video Transcript

"How to choose wine for a gift. The way to choose wine for a gift is to consider the person you're giving it to, first. How well you know them, and do you know their tastes? If you know their tastes, then, best thing is choose the best wine you can that matches their tastes. For example, you could choose...someone who loves red wine, and loves wines from France, you could choose something like a Cote de Rum. If you don't know what they like, then you could go for the classics, or the surprise gifts. Surprise gifts are always good, if you know the person likes wine, then a surprise gift is often one of the best. The classic type of gifts for wine people give are champagnes, ports, and then, in this case vintage ports. You can go for tony ports, which is more immediately accessible and cheaper. And then you can go for classic regions, like White Burgundy and Bordeaux. So, those are always hallmarks of good, quality gifts. So the thing to do is to make sure the perception of the person receiving the wine you're giving, is that of you've gone to the trouble to give them something really nice. So where you don't have a stock or a careful selection, go for champagne, port, as their classic gifts, people understand as gifts. Go for the branded champagnes, rather than the obscure ones, unless you know the person knows their wines and loves exploring, in which case, try and give them an obscure champagne and they'll really enjoy it. Especially if it's something you know yourself. So, in terms of what people prefer, some people, if you don't know what people prefer, a surprise may be good. You could go for a desert wine, or you could go for a different style of wine, like a German riesling, Alsace pinot gris, or if you've got the sort of fun some people have, you could go for Italian barolo, barbaresco. And then you could go for something like a Californian chardonnay, Californian cabernet sauvignon Napa. Sometimes the geographical regions that are producing the best wines are also hallmark for good quality. But spend as much as you can on a carefully chosen bottle. Always ask the merchant for some advice, but be careful they're not giving you wines that are a bit old, or long in the tooth. That's how you choose a red wine, or white wine, or champagne or port for a gift."