The Best Gifts for Wine Lovers, According to Sommeliers

Nothing immediately ups your home wine game like acquiring some nice stemware. Damn if it doesn’t make the wine taste and smell better, but there’s also the inestimable vibe factor—having real wine glasses makes sipping and swirling feel pleasurable, and puts you in the mood to enjoy the whole experience. “I loved gifting someone two nice Glassvin stems,” says Charlie Fu, an LA-based moderator for the seminal message board Wine Berserkers and creator of some of my favorite wine content on social media. “You can break these stems out for a nice meal, and add in a decanter to make it a presentation piece. For the holidays or as a housewarming gift that’s my go-to.”

If the person on your gift list already has some nice stemware, but might enjoy moving up from the village to the Grand Cru, there is nothing quite like the Josephine No. 3 red wine stem. It’s an absolutely huge glass with a large surface areas for maximum levels of swirling and sniffing, and it has a trademark design around the middle section that looks sort of like an extra rim or wobble— ”a nice big booty”, in the words of Eric Wareheim, the wine-loving author, producer, and comedian. “These glasses are so gorgeous,” Wareheim adds. “Anything you drink out of this glass is gonna taste great.” This includes Wareheim’s own Las Jaras wine label. (A club subscription there would make a ripping gift for the bottle-inclined.)

Wine needn’t be so stuffy and uptight all the time, and young wine drinkers are increasingly embracing wine for its idiosyncratic and memeable qualities. At the forefront of this trend is UK-based wine writer Hannah Crosbie, whose 2024 book, Corker: A Deeply Unserious Wine Book, would make a fine gift for anyone on your list. But when queried for her own gift suggestion, Crosbie offered up this truly batshit, absolutely perfect decanter from Maison Balzac, which comes adorned with a glass-blown hyperrealistic cluster of red grapes. “I possess a perhaps unhealthy obsession with this decanter,” Crosbie says. “It’s tricky to do glassware with character that doesn’t feel gimmicky, but this is high camp incarnate.”

If you’re going for something more understated on the decanter front, Annie Shi from King strongly recommends the Zaalto No. 75, which conserves space and looks smart without sacrificing on decanting prowess. “Our dining table is not big,” says Shi, “and when filled with friends and family there isn’t much room. This decanter doesn’t take up precious table space while still doing its job beautifully — plus it can serve as a water pitcher in a pinch.”

Designed in collaboration with sommelier and winemaker Andre Hueston Mack, the Craighill wine key is that rarest thing in wine and life: a truly better mousetrap. Its unique ratcheting system offers a distinctly pleasurable, oddly addictive bottle opening experience; once you get the hang of it, you won’t want to use anything else. The more I talk to somms about wine keys, the more this device keeps coming up. Annie Shi, the co-owner and beverage director at King, says the Craighill is her number one recommendation for wine gifting. “I usually like a pretty straightforward corkscrew,” Shi says, “but the ratcheted swingarm” — that unusual levered opening motion unique to this key — “is super smooth and actually makes opening bottles really fun and even easier. Plus the design is beautiful.” This is the ideal gift for someone in your life who may already have a nice wine key or two, and wants to have their mind blown — or at least that’s what happened to me.

I am in awe of The Durand, a purpose-built wine owner that effortlessly plucks even the most decrepit and troubled corks from vintage bottles of wine. With a curious history and an ardent following in the wine industry, it’s no surprise that multiple interviewees recommended the Durand as a gift, but none more ardently than MJ Towler, host of my favorite wine podcast, The Black Wine Guy. “I learned about wine by tasting wine,” Towler tells me, “and so when I go to a wine tasting, I keep my Durand close.” This device — a combination of a corkscrew and a pair of cork removal tongs — is like a passport to enjoying the world of vintage wine, and should be your go-to for any bottle of wine more than ten years old.

Board games are absolutely huge right now — by some projections, it’ll be a $4 billion industry by the end of this decade — and so of course there’s a very fun wine-themed game for your next wine night with friends. Based around the concept of Death! At The Elite Wine Tasting (that’s my emo band), this board game is called A Wine Tasting Murder, and it comes recommended by Julien Moreno, sommelier & GM at Benoit NYC, the very fun and tres chic Midtown brasserie from Alain Ducasse. “It’s sort of a bit like a wine themed version of Cluedo,” says Moreno, “and alongside a nice bottle this is a perfect gift for someone who likes drinking wine with friends.”

There’s thousands of years of history when it comes to wine writing. The Bible contains wine writing. Thomas Jefferson was a wine writer. It can be hard to know where to start, so why not jump in with both feet on what’s looking like this fall’s hottest new tome? That would be the long-awaited cookbook from The Four Horsemen, the seminal Brooklyn wine-focused restaurant from LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy. Written by Murphy, chef Nick Curtola, journalist Gabe Ulla, and the wine team at Four Horsemen (including founding partner Justin Chearno, who died tragically earlier this year), the book is already earning considerable buzz, and comes recommended by Jorge Riera, wine director at the recently re-opened (and also extremely buzzy) Le Veau d’Or. “This book covers both food and wine in all their aspects,” says Riera, “and it’s a great gift idea for the holidays this year.” 

Before I knew Coteau from coteaux, before I knew Cramant from cramant, there was the wine writing of Jay McInerney. The celebrated “Brat Pack” author (they were brat before Brat was brat) worked a side gig starting in the late ’90s, writing a lavishly funded world-touring wine column for Home & Garden complete with a full-time traveling editor-slash-driver (truly it was a different time for journalism). Excesses aside, the work McInerney produced for this column — and collected across three books, with this being the first — is staggering in its accessibility, and astonishing for its lyrical use of language and mise-en-scene. It sounds logical now, but back then it was wildly risky; turns out giving a serious novelist a wild-eyed wine column was a very, very good idea indeed. Nothing I’ve read before or since convinced me quicker that actually wine was kind of cool, and that maybe it could be something for me. Buy two copies, one for your giftee and one for yourself, and thank me later.  

There’s so, so many wine books to choose from, but that’s also an opportunity to zero in on the sort of books your gift recipient already digs, then find a wine book that pairs well with those interests. For the person on your list who loves history, Don & Pedie Kladstrup’s “Wine and War” comes highly recommended by Juan Valencia, sommelier at Omo By Jont. “This book is an incredible adventure through the struggles of winemakers during World War 2,” says Valencia. He recommends pairing the book with a bottle of Domaine Huet Vouvray, a winemaker whose story is featured in the book itself.

The wine lover who truly has everything, knows everything, desires for nothing is actually an incredible gifting opportunity, because chances are they’ve been so focused on their wine hobby they’ve ignored most every other kind of drink. At Millay in San Francisco, founder Angel Davis has created a new kind of context for wine drinkers, placing an incredible selection of small production sakes alongside wine bottles, and offering both wine and sake together side by side on a glass pour list. For wine drinkers who have never considered sake before, there’s revelation in store, and many commonalities. ”Both wine and sake attract people who geek out over beverages,” Davis says, “and both are worlds that go so deep.” She suggests starting with books, including Nancy Matsumoto’s James Beard Award winning “Exploring The World of Japanese Craft Sake.”