Offering a bottle of wine as a Christmas gift is nothing new; people have been giving each other wine for many years as a sort of gesture of appreciation and a well-wishing for the future. Whether you have another personal gift for the person or not is irrelevant, a bottle of wine is a sufficient gift, although if the recipient is close to you personally a second, more personal gift might be a good addition to the wine itself. However, if you’re giving wine as a Christmas gift to an acquaintance or holiday hostess, you might consider enhancing the gift in some way to make your gift of wine original. Since everyone is giving wine nowadays, making your gift original is sometimes desirable.

Originality in Giving

There are many ways to make a Christmas wine gift more special and more pre-meditated than simply offering the bottle of wine itself. Depending on the recipient of the gift, you can add some food or snack addition to the wine itself, or you can add some sort of wine accessory to the bottle. In either case, the effect will not be lost on the recipient; it could never be imagined that you stopped and bought a bottle of wine on your way to the social engagement instead of picking it out as a true gift a few days beforehand.

Some ideas for adding food to a Christmas wine gift are cheese or chocolate. Pairing wines and cheeses is easier for some than for others, but if you know the recipient well, the process should be fairly straightforward. An even more elegant Christmas option for wine gifts is to add chocolate to the bottle of wine as a box of gourmet chocolates complements a bottle of wine well. Again, pairing can be difficult in some cases, but always match the strength of the chocolate to the strength of the wine; the drier the wine, the darker the chocolate should be.

Another option for making Christmas gifts of wine more personal and more thought out is adding a wine accessory such as wine charms, a cork stopper for bottles, glasses themselves if you know the person is just setting up house, an ice bucket or perhaps a new corkscrew. Special coasters related to Christmas or not, are also a good option for embellishing a bottle of wine that’s a Christmas gift. In any case, let your imagination suggest what’s best for the circumstances of the gift-giving and the person to whom you are giving it.