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December 23, 2000 Tis the
season to give… Even if
this column reaches your eyes too late for your holiday gifts, you can
always archive it for those occasions when you need to find something
special for a relative, friend or business associate. If
it’s your preference to ship wine to someone, I would recommend www.winebins.com.
An interesting feature of this site is the initial box on the
home page where it requires you to input the destination to which your
wine should be shipped. If
you input a state where it’s illegal to ship wines, the selector will
tell you that and automatically pick the closest geographical state
where it’s not illegal to ship wines.
Hopefully, your brother-in-law lives there.
If you don’t have a brother-in-law who lives there, I would
recommend checking out winostuff’s retail sites and choose one located
in your home state. Of
course, many vineyards sell wine through the internet.
Our wine industry links are among the most extensive on any site
and have been coded for sites that have the ability to send wine.
Unfortunately, some vineyards do not ship in less than case lots
which discourages beginning winos who are not certain they will enjoy a
case of a specific wine (if you have lots of money to throw around, any
of the three of us will be glad to try a case first, just contact Wino
John for our shipping addresses). Other
wineries will not ship to anyone other than their wine club members. The good news is that some of the wine clubs receive
discounts and also the first right of refusal on new vintages. One of my favorite clubs is the Robert Mondavi Ensemble club. Another
interesting site is www.send.com.
While this site does not have the wine selection that
winebins.com does, its packaging can be tailored for the occasion
(birthday, business, congratulations, wedding, etc.) and everything is
upscale. Wino John would be
pleased with the cigars that he could ship through send.com and Wino Bob
would be intrigued by the golf outing that he could give through
send.com (speaking of which, why don’t you guys send me some cigars
and a round of golf or two?). If you
really want to make a hit and send some food to accompany the wine,
there are some additional sites that work out well.
I found www.ethnicgrocer.com
to be an excellent choice for exotic ingredients to accompany some of
the heavy duty Rhones recommended by our Rhone Ranger, Wino Bob.
That site has bundled together five holiday gift packages this
year including a Thai package for the masters of spice. Moving down the food chain, www.omahasteaks.com
has steaks, but also provides lobster tails, salmon steaks, and seafood
chowders. This site will
even ship monthly gourmet entrees (another idea for your brother-in-law,
Wino John). Wino
John told me that I needed to keep my columns focused on wine and not on
other junk that would be more suited to other sites.
So, for those of you who don’t want to take your chances on
shipping wine illegally or just don’t want to pick a wine without an
expert opinion (remember, you can email Wino Bob who will always give
you an opinion), I recommend www.wineenthusiast.com.
At this site, you can find inexpensive gifts such as corkscrews,
wine bottle stoppers, napkins, decorative towels.
You can also purchase premade wine bins, wine racks, and wine
shelving. If you’re
daring, you can even order a custom-made redwood wine cellar (I did and
Wino John will verify that they do a darned good job).
My favorite all time gift for the hard-to-buy-for person in the
$100 category is the Estate Opener (#3146) for $99.95.
It comes in antique bronze, nickel, or pewter finishes and will
open and reseal a wine bottle in less time than Wino Bob can rate a
Rhone. If you have favorite wine or gourmet-related sites that you would like us to review, drop me an email. If I can’t include a writeup, we’ll research it and add it to our retail or wine industry links.
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