Look, we all love a great bottle of wine. Don’t we?
At least I do.
So do many of my friends and family members (especially my wife who has expensive tastes according to everyone we know!), especially my mother in law. She loves a great Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon or even a Pinot Noir from Santa Barbara, among others like French wines. Unfortunately, she has made really, really good relationships with our local wine stores, so finding her a couple of bottle of wine she has never tried before (but are truly great quality) is incredibly difficult.
More generally speaking, how do you find a wine gift for someone, like my mother in law who knows much more about wine than you (or I) do?
You can’t always go to a local wine shop, but you can shop online. The site Wine Searcher allows you to search every retailer in the United States (or worldwide if you need to) for a specific bottle. When you combine that ability with a great wine magazine like Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator or even the best in breed review magazine of Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, you stand a chance to find a truly memorable bottle of wine for someone who knows a lot more about wine than yourself.
Lastly, I should mention that there are a ton of wine clubs out there, some of which do a good job at finding lesser known bottles from small wineries which would make a good gift as well. Careful though, not all wine clubs are created equal and some are more concerned with profits than they are with quality. For someone like my mother in law that simply is not going to work. She will never drink a bad wine and I hate to be the one who has to give her a wine she doesn’t want to drink!
