Your crappy wine related gifts

WINE TALK
#1

Your friends and loved ones know you are into wine and get you wine related gift. Sometimes it is a hit, but often it is either unusable, ridiculous, undrinkable, etc.

What is the worst wine related gift that you’ve ever gotten?


Mine was a bar code system that was not compatible in any useful way with Cellartracker. It was sold as an alternative. It was expensive and unreturnable.

#2

I had one gift I thought was crap at first - a motorized wine bottle opener - but it turned out to be a wonderful tool (until it broke, sadly), so I won’t discount the intrinsic value of any more wine gifts!

#3

got a pair of these last Christmas

#4

For christmas i got from my sister a board game called Winenerd

http://www.winerdgame.com/

I don’t like board game and this game looks really lame. That is the worst I got…

Jeff in PDX

#5

People buy me crap all the time. I have at least two knitted bottle smocks. What the heck am I going to do with them?

#6

Protect your favorite bottles, of course!

#7

Got the candle stick (not bad but we never have them on the table)
Got the stupid wine trivia game (never even opened the box)
But the WORST are those stupid little charm thingies…
Nobody ever remembers which one is theirs!

The only wine gift I want are 6 packs of white wine glasses EVERY FREAKING YEAR
due to someone’s habit of breaking a stem about once a month

#8

My secretary once bought me a bottle of Charles Shaw merlot for my birthday, and she gave it to me in a new wine gift bag which costs $4. It was entirely well-meaning and I took it as such, but it struck me as a strange thing when the gift wrap costs 200% of what the gift costs.

Though I’m sure the bag did me much more good than the bottle – it’s always nice to have those lying around for wine gifts on short notice.

#9

For the wife…

#10

Agreed. We have gotten some of them where the wires were already tarnished. So we couldn’t even use them if we wanted.

But the crappiest wine related gift we often receive is — wait for it ----



CRAPPY WINE.

Sometimes a bottle that is just cheap crap, and sometimes a bottle which has apparently been sitting over someones refrigerator for a few years.

#11

I agree. Bottles of bad wine take up a lot more room, and it’s harder to know what to do with them – you don’t want them yourself, you don’t want to give them to others because it will reflect badly on you (particularly as someone everyone thinks of as the “wine guy”), yet I feel too guilty and wasteful opening them to pour down the drain.

I once brought in a mixed case of such wine to the office, placed the box in the office kitchen after hours while nobody was looking, and left an anonymous note saying “please help yourself to a bottle to take home.” When I came in the following afternoon, they were all gone. I’m not sure if the janitorial staff took them, or company employees, or whatever, but at least they were out of my house and off my conscience. There’s a good chance that whoever ended up with them thought they were great.

Things like wine glass markers you don’t want take up hardly any room, and they’re much more easily discarded or given away than bad wine.

#12

Do they offer a motorized version of the screwcap opener?

#13

tasting note books. lots of them. always.

#14

Have you checked the masturbation thread?

#15

[winner.gif]

#16

I once received a wine thermometer (it looked a lot like a rectal type) with a wood handle with ideal temperature suggestions to tell the temperature of the wine. Silly gizmo.

#17

[quote=“Chris Blum”]Your friends and loved ones know you are into wine and get you wine related gift. Sometimes it is a hit, but often it is either unusable, ridiculous, undrinkable, etc.

What is the worst wine related gift that you’ve ever gotten?


All of them!

#18

Gotta agree that the worst gift of all is lousy wine…it is hard to write a thank-you note for something that you wouldn’t even want to cook with.
[barf.gif]
BTW, I too received the Winenerd game a few years ago…it’s still in shrink wrap. [suicide.gif]

Colin

#19

Last time I looked a gift was something given without any strings attached as a gesture of thanks or goodwill.

To disown or look down upon the gift belittles the giver. Those, whose grasp ( using the word advisedly ) at material things
outdistances their ability to accept a well meaning gesture, really aren’t worth the effort the giver had in mind.

I hope that each of you who received gifts that weren’t up to your lofty standards, communicated your seeming annoyance
directly to the giver. I didn’t think so. [oops.gif]

Hank [cheers.gif]

#20

Well, the middle finger is also a gesture…

Bruce