Ideas for gifts from under £5/$12 that should bring joy and can be ordered with ease without leaving your home.
Well, the most obvious gift of course is a year’s membership of JancisRobinson.com! Starting from £85 for access to:
- A team of international wine experts including seven Masters of Wine
- 200,000+ fully searchable tasting notes with many a wine recommendation
- 13,000+ independent, objective, well-informed articles on the wines of the world
- Two new articles most days
- The entire, searchable, most up-to-date Oxford Companion to Wine
- All of the maps from the latest World Atlas of Wine
- A genuinely informative, courteous Members’ forum
All you need do is click here and choose between regular and gold gift membership (the latter giving the recipient the same 48-hour preview of the site that our professional members enjoy). Once you’ve completed the purchase, you’ll be sent a code which you can pass on to your recipient whenever you like and they can activate their 12 months’ membership when they wish.
Alternatively, you could order a good book from bookshop.org, the online retailer that allows you to buy from independent bookshops rather than you-know-who. Here are some suggestions. Click on the title for more details of the book and on the prices to buy from bookshop.org in the UK and US respectively.
The World Atlas of Wine (8th edition) 2019 – winner of both James Beard and André Simon awards £46.50 or $59.80. Please note that in the US the jacket is red rather than sea green but the contents are identical.
The 24-Hour Wine Expert 2016 – everything you need to know about wine in the slimmest of volumes £4.64 or $11.91
The Oxford Companion to Wine (4th edition) 2015 – winner of a James Beard award £41.85 or $59.80
Wine Grapes 2012 – the most comprehensive (1,000+ pages) guide to wine grape varieties, winner of every wine book award going. Amazon.co.uk are currently listing it at £100.57 while the bookshop.org prices are £139.50 or $183.99. Please note that in this case, as with the Atlas, the US publishers have chosen an alternative, dark-red jacket and, perhaps more importantly, are currently offering the book at the specially discounted price of $159.99.
On the Menu 2016 – Nick’s handsome, illustrated guide to the world’s favourite piece of paper (out in paperback any minute) £17.65 or $18.35
The Quality Chop House Cookbook 2019 – Will Lander and chef Shaun Searley’s beautiful collection of recipes and wisdom so beloved by Sunday Times restaurant reviewer Marina O’Loughlin. The FT’s Nick Lander likes it a lot too £27.90
Another tangible and beautiful gift would be some of my dishwasher-proof wine glasses and/or decanters. I tell the story of them here. A single gossamer-thin glass has been carefully designed for every sort of wine in a versatile, classical design beloved by some of the world’s most admired winemakers. See the collection and/or place an order via the website of my partner in this enterprise Richard Brendon here.
Glasses are usually £70 a pair and decanters from £95 (in rather beautiful, and strong, packages) but first-time purchasers from JancisRobinson.com are offered a discount of 10% if you use the code JRCHRISTMAS10 at checkout. The Richard Brendon team can also organise a special gift card embossed in silver at an additional charge of £5.
If you're in the US, you could order from Skurnik Hospitality. Glasses are usually $112 a pair and decanters from $160 but the code JRCHRISTMAS10 will get you a 10% discount here too.