If there’s anyone around who hasn’t noticed, let me be the first
to clue you in: the holiday season is upon us.
All those lights around town aren’t there to make the streets
safer, and that white-haired guy in the red suit is not an
advertising ploy by the diet industry or the Just For Men
people.
If there’s anyone around who hasn’t noticed, let me be the first to clue you in: the holiday season is upon us.
All those lights around town aren’t there to make the streets safer, and that white-haired guy in the red suit is not an advertising ploy by the diet industry or the Just For Men people.
For businesses, the holidays mean just one thing: survival. Retailers in particular pin their hopes on the all-too-short months leading up to December, which is why we’re bombarded with commercial messages and images earlier and earlier in the year. Those clever marketing and advertising agency wonks are as busy as little elves devising new and improved ways to separate us from our hard-earned greenbacks.
As the joyous gift-gathering season is now entering the phase that marketers like to call “panic mode,” I thought it might be interesting to explore some gifts that might be perfect for that wine connoisseur on your list – some of which are downright weird.
Since I harbor a known preference for the odd, the “weird” category is as good a place to start as any, and for that, we turn our attention to that fine, informative and fascinating publication devoted to helping folks while away the hours at 35,000 feet, SkyMall.
If a being from a distant galaxy were to visit Earth, and the first thing he came across was a copy of SkyMall, that creature would surely pack up and go home, concluding that there is nobody here to have an intelligent conversation with. What a bunch of weird stuff! Some of the retailers represented in the catalog are familiar names with brick-and-mortar stores like Smarter Image and Orvis. But others are seen nowhere else, such as Swiss Legend and Stacks and Stacks HomeWares. Do people really buy this crap? Here are some wine-related examples from the “Holiday Gift Guide 2004.”
That perennial catalog favorite, Hammacher Schlemmer (say that five times fast) offers an “Exclusive Hammacher Schlemmer Wine Bottle Puzzle.” This fiendish, $24.95 device is a Rube-Goldbergesque contraption that promises to “amuse a room full of party guests as they free the bottle from the wooden enclosure by untangling the wood and rope pieces.” Sounds like a pretty dry party to me. My friends would either give up and open up something else (if available) or smash the damn thing to smithereens with a hammer.
For $229.95, Hammacher will sell you “The Wine Preservation Steward.” This handy item (made of “high-impact polycarbonate” which is Catalogese for “plastic”) “greatly reduces oxidation in opened bottles with a layer of harmless, high-purity, inert argon gas.” Maybe it’s just me, but you could buy an awful lot of wine for 230 bucks and just stick the cork back in it like everyone else. Besides, if any of my aforementioned friends are around, the odds of having any wine left in a bottle would be roughly zip.
By far the most bizarre item in this particular edition of SkyMall is the “Vintage Express Aging Accelerator” from our good friends at Traveler’s Selections. This little marvel of modern technology claims that “the Earth’s magnetic field aligns liquid particles much like tiny compass needles and that this alignment is destroyed in the manufacturing process. The traditional slow aging process realigns these particles, but it is an expensive, time consuming process.”
“Wow,” I think, “can Traveler’s Selections help me out of this horrible dilemma?” Indeed they can. For only $29.95 they’ll happily ship you the Vintage Express that uses “sixteen Neodymium magnets to accelerate the natural aging process by exposing beverages to a powerful replication of the Earth’s magnetic field.” It will magically “open” the flavor in a bottle of wine in only five minutes, and as an added bonus, it dramatically improves the flavor of Scotch, Whisky, Bourbon and other spirits “in as little as ten seconds!”
But wait, there’s more. If you act now, Traveler’s Selections will send you – absolutely free – the “Shooter Buddy,” a smaller, shot-glass-size version of this modern miracle that “duplicates the taste of ten years of slow aging.” Wow! I wonder if it works for cheese?
However, not all of Traveler’s Selections offerings are so questionable. They also sell “The California Wine Club’s Signature Series,” a wine-of-the-month-club that offers hand-selected, “library” wines from small, boutique wineries. This is a great way to sample the wines of producers that don’t have wide distribution and therefore remain less well-known.
As many wine lovers know, it’s just that kind of winery that often produces the best wine. Discovering these producers offers the thrill of feeling like you’ve stumbled on a rare gem that no one else knows about. Many of these Mom-and-Pop wineries operate their own wine clubs – in some cases, club members represent the majority of the label’s sales. Several local wineries operate wine clubs, among them Pietra Santa, Léal and Guglielmo. A membership to these or any of the other excellent producers in the South Valley area will make a gift that will be appreciated for many months to come.
And who knows? The lucky recipient may have part of a bottle left over, and finally find a use for that “Wine Preservation Steward” they also discovered under the tree.
