MacGourmet News

I thought I'd throw out a few low-cost Christmas/Holiday ideas for current or beginning wine lovers in your lives. I've purchased or given all of these items and despite the cheap price, they are really useful gadgets to have or give.

First up is the Vacu Vin Wine Saver system. Cook's Illustrated rated this system highly, something I found to be true throughout my own long use of this product. A gift of the Vacu Vin Wine Saver Gift Pack will help someone keep those opened bottles of wine fresher much, much longer. It's a pretty simple system to use too, just pop in one of the rubber "corks," affix the pump to the top, and work the pump a bunch of times, the number depending on how much wine is left in the bottle. The pump will remove the air from the bottle, which will make the wine last longer. This gadget works.

Here is a gift that I am going to give many times over this Christmas, the Admiral Craft Equipment Deluxe Wing Style Cork Screw. None of my family members seem to own even a decent wine opener. Every time I visit one of them, I'm forced to use some fragile, plastic device that makes the simple task of opening a bottle of wine a real chore. If you can relate, why not do what I'm doing, and give one of these. They are cheap, but they work well. Personally, I think that's all you need. The $40 (or more) wine opener is more for show than for go. A couple of other similar, but pricier options are the Cuisinart Wing Corkscrew or the Pedrini Satin Finish Corkscrew. Whatever you give, make sure it's not made of plastic.

Finally, there's this cool way of saving the labels from your favorite wine bottles, Label Savers from The Wine Enthusiast. I use this to save labels for my MacGourmet wine notes. These are also good for people who might be interested in doing a physical wine scrap book for special occasions, etc. The label savers are pretty easy to use, and overall, will work well for most wine labels you'll come across.

Hopefully that gives you some ideas!