Living

Wine is a great gift because the recipient can use it and recycle the leftover bottle either in the recycling bin or into a timeless candleholder. There are plenty of things that make a good wine gift from the inexpensive to the extravagant.

Hardware

A serious aficionado will already own one corkscrew, maybe more. Unless you can find a unique ergonomic corkscrew or some piece of art, you may have to be more creative about your wine gift.

More and more kitchen stores are selling cute corks, decorated with motifs from golf to animals. Some less-expensive bottles of wine come with plastic corks but will keep better after being opened with a real tree-bark cork. Or maybe your friend just likes a kitchen decorated with their college mascot or her favorite flower.

As wine gets more popular, more stores are selling interesting wine racks, even just for a single bottle of wine. Stores that push fine design will have the most creative racks to give as a wine gift. From the inexpensive but chic at Ikea or hand-sculptured racks made by artists, your favorite aficionado will appreciate a stylish way to store wine. Be sure to pick a rack that stores the wine horizontally so that the wine touches the cork from the inside.

Nobody exactly wants to write their name with a magic marker on their wine glass. A good accessory wine gift is a little box of wine charms. These small metal rings clip around the stem of a wineglass – just remember the decoration on your wine charm, and you know your glass.

For the Collector

Many people really “collect” the wines they drink, maintaining a list of their favorite wineries and vintages.

An old jar full of corks may be memory lane for a wine drinker, but you can give a wine gift to incorporate and display the collection. Look for kits that allow people to glue corks into a frame that becomes a bulletin board or tray when it is full.

Stores also sell creative wine diaries. A book with a wine-related cover and pages printed with forms ready to receive information and comments is also a good wine gift. To go all out, pick out matching coasters.

Plenty of people pick out wine by the label – that is, how pretty or interesting the label is. These labels make a nice collection too. People steam the labels off an empty bottle of wine and save them somewhere either as a record or just a thing to look at. Think about a picture album to hold your friend’s label collection.