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Wine Gift Ideas

The Never-ending Search for the "Perfect" Wine Gift Continues

By , About.com Guide

This year's Top Gifts for Wine Lovers Guide has you well covered with a variety of fresh new ideas as well as tried and true keepers that won't let you down!

1. Wine Club Membership

Wine Clubs are a unique way to explore a variety of exceptional wines with the convenience of door-to-door shipping. There are wine clubs geared for a variety of wine enthusiasts: Red Wine Clubs, White Wine Clubs, International Wine Clubs, Dessert Wines of the month and the list goes on.

2. Wine Gift Baskets

What could be more elegant and all-encompassing than an eye-catching, palate-packing gift basket? Check out these baskets from well-reputed producers like Coppola, BV, Dom Perignon and the like. A premium gift pack with stellar wines, delicious goodies and truly charming baskets - a hallmark gift idea for wine lovers everywhere!

3. Wagner Family of Wine Tasting Kit

Wagner Family of Wine
The Wagner Family of Wines tasting kit brings the "try before you buy" concept to a whole new level for wine lovers. From the Caymus Cab to the Mer Soleil barrel fermented Chardonnay, this innovative kit offers six 50 ml tastes of their well-known labels, with easy access to a mini tasting of each wine.

I love this concept - where the tasting room basically comes to your table, with six generous sips of a producers star-studded lineup giving consumers a healthy overview of the available wines at a very reasonable price.

4. The Artful Winemaker

The Artful Winemaker

One of the wine world's hottest trends is making your own vino. Whether it's at a snazzy urban winery or in your own kitchen, making your own wine will force you to familiarize yourself with the details of the vinification process and ultimately broaden both your education and appreciation of wine.

The Artful Winemaker is an innovative introduction to winemaking, paring down the technical details into a very manageable, engaging and thoroughly hands-on experience. With seven grape varieties to choose from, the kit sets you up for countertop success and only takes a month to bring 12 bottles of wine through the entire vinification process. The instructions are easy to follow, the tools are sturdy and the wine is ready to drink in just 2-3 weeks after its bottled.

5. Good Wine Books

Andrea Immer Robinson
Self-education is the name of the game when it comes to deepening your palate appreciation for wine. These wine books are easy introductions to the world of wine - taking the complicated and breaking it down to bite sized pieces.

6. Wine Gift Certificates

Who doesn't love a gift certificate? An easy option for making certain that the wine lover on your list has the flexibility to garner the wine gift or bottle that they really want.

7. Favorite Bottle of Wine

While, this may be the most obvious gift idea for the Wine Lover on your list, it gets better - often if your wine enthusiast has a favorite wine and you know the name, varietal, vintage and producer you can A) Just get them that bottle of wine or B) Contact the producer to see what they would recommend in either their "special release" selections or get advice on what you could upgrade to in the same or similar palate spectrum as their favored wine.

8. Wine Refrigerators

From six bottles to hundreds of bottles, there are a wide range of wine refrigerators on the market. The selection is large, the prices are good and best of all the wines will be sitting in a more controlled environment.

9. Wine Gift Sets

Wine.com has put together an assortment of classy wine gift sets. Check out the "Trophy Reds" (featuring Napa's Silver Oak), "Golf & Wine Legends," and the "90 Point Rated Wine Trio." Solid wine selections, that will take all of the guesswork out of gift giving for the devoted wine lover!

10. Wine Aroma Kit

Wine Aroma Kit, Le Nez Du Vin
For those wine oenophiles that are looking to take their wine game to the next level, the Wine Aroma kits are a hands-down favorite for accessing the dominant aromas found in red and white wines and expanding out to the prevailing aromatics for rosé, Armagnac, oak casks and even a close-up sniff of the most common wine faults. Working through an overview of the olfactory process and its important contribution to delineating between scent, aroma and flavor in addition to identifying a wine's primary, secondary and tertiary aromas, these unique kits allow users to gain incredible insight on the complexity of a wine's makeup from the ground up.

By training the nose to recognize a varietal's most common aromas, you cast a firm foundation for interpreting and experiencing wine to its fullest with each and every sip. Armed with instant aromatic associations via the multi-sensory, hands-on aroma vials of the most common scents found in wine, the Wine Aroma kit provides a solid reference point for building a cogent wine tasting foundation. Fun, informative and perfect for pairing parties, the Wine Aroma kit makes a tip top gift idea for the wine enthusiast in your life.

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