Chris BerryFounder, Wine Underdogs — chasing the world’s overlooked grapesThe easy person to shop for is the beginner. Any decent bottle impresses someone who doesn't know better.
The hard one is the drinker who knows too much. The one with the cellar, the opinions, the bottle you were going to buy them already lying down in the rack. For that person, a nicer Cabernet is a shrug. You have to give them something they can't give themselves: a tool, an experience, or a grape they've never met.
Here's what actually lands.
For the one who never finishes a bottle: a Coravin
A Coravin pulls wine through the cork without removing it, so a single bottle can be poured from over weeks, even months, without spoiling. For the serious drinker this isn't a gadget — it's the thing that lets them open a great bottle on a Tuesday without committing to the whole thing.
It's the rare gift that changes a daily habit. The person who has every bottle usually doesn't have this, because they'd never quite justify it to themselves. That's exactly what makes it a good gift.
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For the one who's bored of their own cellar: an experience
There is a ceiling on objects. There is no ceiling on a morning spent in a vineyard. A tasting tour — in their own city or wherever they're travelling next — gives the over-supplied drinker the one thing more wine can't: a memory and a story.
Book it somewhere with grapes they can't get at home. The point is the surprise, not the souvenir.
For the one who has every famous bottle: an unfamous one
Here's the contrarian gift, and the one this whole site is built on. The drinker who owns every blue-chip Bordeaux has, almost certainly, never had a great Baga, a serious Xinomavro, or an Alicante Bouschet with its strange red flesh. The famous shelves are full. The interesting ones are wide open.
Giving an expert a grape they don't know is a quiet kind of flattery — it says I think you're curious enough to be surprised. Pull a few from a deep retailer and you've given them a flight of things their cellar lacks.
For the one who treats wine as a discipline: glassware or a journal
Good glassware does change the wine — geometry is not snobbery, it's physics. And for the drinker who takes tasting seriously, a proper tasting journal turns scattered impressions into a record they'll actually keep.
These are modest gifts that signal you understand how they drink: deliberately, and with attention.
For the specifics — glassware, a decanter, the right corkscrew, a way to save an open bottle, a tasting journal, and a book to fall down the rabbit hole — see The Underdog Cellar Shelf, the running list of gear worth owning.
The principle behind all of it
The mistake with the expert drinker is buying up — a more expensive version of what they already have. The move is to buy sideways: a tool that changes how they drink, an experience they can't bottle, or a grape that isn't on their radar.
Khrushchev once banged a shoe to be remembered in a room full of diplomats; you don't need theatrics, just the nerve to give the unexpected thing. The famous bottle is the safe gift. The interesting one is the memorable gift.