Christmas wine gifts: can you put a price on love?

Can you put a price on love? Well, when it comes to wine gifts, it seems that actually you can. As Christmas is just over a month away, we started thinking about how people in the UK approach buying wine as a present. Do we spend more money on wines to treat loved ones than what we would spend on ourselves? Or are we more likely to save the better wines for at-home drinking and palm off cheaper bottles on friends and family?

Everyone will have their own opinion on this, but one thing doesn't lie: cold, hard data. We asked premium Italian wine specialist, Independent Wine, to share their sales numbers with us. Here's what we learned.

Up until October, when the festive shopping season kicked off, their most popular reds all across the UK were Nero d’Avola from Sicily (£18.19 a bottle) and a rich, deep blend of Primitivo and Negroamaro (£14.83) from Italy’s Puglia. As for white wines, the most popular options were light and fresh Arneis (£16.60) from Piedmont, and elegant Vermentino from Sardinia (£18.40).

In September, Independent Wine introduced a free gift wrapping service so that customers could order wine online and have it delivered to a different address, already pre-wrapped. Most importantly, this service covers single bottles and there is no minimum order value. This makes it easier for customers to send wine gifts of just one bottle to their loved ones.

It also makes it easier to see how much people spend on wine-based presents.

The immediate observation was that, when someone ordered a single bottle with gift wrapping, they usually opted for a much more expensive wine. The most popular wine gifts include Francone Barolo (£34.92), Demarie Barolo (£33.54), Francone Barbaresco Gallina (£29.92) and Barbaresco Riserva (£34.92). As you've probably noticed, these red wine gifts are far more pricy than the most popular bottles sold by Independent Wine.

The sales data echoes this. It shows that, when a bottle is purchased with gift wrapping, the average price per order goes up by 80-100% in comparison with wine bought for home consumption. This is a very positive statistic indeed. It shows that, generally speaking, people across Britain are quite generous and will happily splash extra cash on their loved ones.

This proves that, despite all the difficulties that 2020 has brought us, we still care for the people we hold dear and want to treat them to truly exceptional wine – even if it is way beyond our usual drinking budget. What a lovely thought for the Christmas season!