Solid or Liquid Holiday Gifts?

Got that familiar December throbbing in your head? It’s probably nothing serious, just a little worrying about those Christmas gifts you haven’t bought yet.

As always, the cure is right in front of you: In the wine ads. They’re big and there are plenty of them, but, alas, they can be confusing, almost intimidating, to anyone not up on the subject. So here is a guide, made simple, to buying gifts for the wine lover in your life.

Actually, it’s easy enough to buy a wine gift, as there are so many possibilities. There are books, some of them excellent, including The World’s Greatest Wine Estates by Robert Parker, Judgment of Paris by George M. Taber or A Life Uncorked by Hugh Johnson. And there is kitsch. How about some chardonnay-flavored peanuts? Wine print pajamas anyone? Tiny wine-bottle cuff links? My favorite this year is a bottle stopper with a combination lock!

Corkscrews are big this year, including some lethal-looking blade-equipped S$300 Laguiole models from France that appear more suitable for gutting a fish than pulling a cork. Go through an airport with one of these and you may be invited into a windowless room to discuss your travel plans! But keep in mind that if the advocates of screw-top caps for wine bottles ever get their way, and they may yet, corkscrews will go the way of videotapes and vinyl records.

Let’s face it: the only worthwhile wine gift is wine itself. It helps that the world is floating in wine at the moment, and prices are wide ranging and wines from the New World in particular offer great value (unfortunately, it’s not the case for us in Indonesia due to a major dispute between wine importers/distributors and the government).

The simplest wine gift, always well received for the holidays, is Champagne; you don’t have to know much to buy it and even less to drink it. Premium Champagne or “Tete de Cuvée”, can be expensive: Rp 2.5 million for a Dom Perignon 1999, more than Rp 7 million for a Cristal Roederer 1999 (in Jakarta available at Vin+) or about Rp 6 million for a Salon 1995 or 1996 (M.).

Good “Vintage” Champagne like Taittinger Brut 1998 (C.& C. and Vin+) or

Billecart-Salmon Brut 1998 (C.&C.) can be found at around Rp 1.2 million. Excellent

“Non-Vintage” Champagne like Bollinger Brut “Special Cuvée” or Veuve-Clicquot “Orange Label” (Vin+) can be found for less than Rp 800,000. For a slightly sweeter taste, which many Indonesian non-wine drinkers will appreciate, look for an “Extra Dry” rather than “Brut”, like Mumm “Carte Classique” for less than Rp 500,000 a bottle.

Better still, give a magnum: it’s far more impressive than two bottles, and the price is still reasonable, like a magnum of Moet & Chandon “Non-Vintage” for Rp 1.8 million (M.). Champagne is not an integral part of Indonesian life: it’s usually only drunk a few times a year, at weddings and holidays. You cannot learn what you like, let alone what is good, when sipping is so seldom. But now is the time again.

The big-bottle advantage goes for table wines too, like red Bordeaux. Vintages are important in Bordeaux, and the best in many years, perhaps ever, along with 2005 (not bottled yet), was 2000. Prices are as much as 70 percent higher than those from 2001. A magnum of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 2000 will cost you around Rp 29 million (a magnum of 2001’s Bordeaux will cost you Rp 9 million (C.&C.). Lower ranked classified growths like a magnum of Leoville Poyferre 2001 cost about Rp 2.1 million (C.&C.)

Futures – or the contracts for wines to be delivered later, which can be bought in most major wine shops in Singapore -- are just pieces of paper until the wine arrives. But slipped into a Christmas card or tucked in a book, they can be a very special gift. Some 2005 wines can still be bought as “futures” from these wine merchants.

Whatever your idea of holiday gift in the wine department, be sure to celebrate in style, glass in hand! Happy Holidays!

These wines and some of these accessories are available in Jakarta at the following locations:
VIN + (V+)
Jl. Kemang Raya No. 45B (021) 7179 2577
CHEESE and CAVIAR (C.&C.) 
Plaza Indonesia (021) 310 7577
MAGNUM (M.)
Bellagio Boutique Mall (021) 300 66597

Christian Vanneque was head sommelier of La Tour d’Argent in Paris and professor at L’Academie du Vin in Paris. He served as a judge at the legendary 1976 Paris Wine Tasting.
He is the publisher of Bali’s Best Bets Guide since 2002. 

Contact: Christian@TheWineCircus.com

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