The SEDIMENT Xmas Wine Gift Marketplace

Here they are, the ideal Xmas gifts for wine lovers! 

Of course, our entertaining book is the best possible present for anyone who drinks wine – or, indeed, doesn’t. But whatever you do, don’t just buy wine lovers a bottle of wine, however much they might like it, oh no – not when there are these super Xmas wine-related gifts out there!

Wine Monkey
This sock-like, monkey-like woolly wine bottle cover will bring laughter and merriment to any dinner party. Just look at the happy faces of these dinner guests as Wine Monkey arrives at their table! They’re not arguing about Brexit any more! Conveniently disguises any embarrassingly cheap supermarket wine*. Keeps red wine tepid and white wine…tepid. *Not suitable for Mateus Rosé.

Upside down wine glass
Bored with drinking out of normal wine glasses? Well, “bottoms up!” This looks as if it’s a regular wine glass – but upside down! Endlessly amusing! It’s all fun and games – just wait until someone stands it the other way up, and accidentally pours wine on to the sealed end, whence it cascades across tablecloth, guests’ laps etc! 

Wine Markers
Just as you’ve always wanted, your guests can now write on your wine glasses! Avoids those heated dining-table arguments over whose glass is whose. Will definitely not come off on to guests’ hands, napkins, shirt-cuffs etc.

Wonky wine glasses
Bored with drinking out of normal wine glasses? Enjoy the distortion of a second bottle from your very first glass, with these wonky wine glasses! Tipsy – or what?? It’s all fun and games – just wait until you try and put them in the dishwasher!

Wine-scented candles
Save your friends the trouble of spilling their wine all over their carpet in order to scent their room! These candles not only “evoke the scent” of wines like Pinot Noir or, er, Mimosa – they smell like a specific vintage! And as a remarkable liver-relieving bonus, they evoke wine’s “soothing effect” too! Not included: matches, respirator.

Moustache corkscrew
For that brief moment of amusement as you hold it to your upper lip, and possibly go “haw-hee-haw”, followed by many happy years in a kitchen drawer. Guaranteed to last until the plastic moustache bit detaches itself from the thread. Not suitable for removing corks.

Winestein
Bored with drinking out of normal wine glasses? If your oafish friends all drink beer, enjoy your wine in this clever wineglass/beer mug, and feel like one of the loutish crowd! It’s all fun and games, until you get beaten up.

Santa’s stocking flask
Don’t you wish you were at this party? Wine in plastic cups from a plastic bladder-like contraption, vaguely reminiscent of a Christmas stocking. Comes with an accompanying freshers guide to a non-Russell Group university. Warning: not a pinata. 

Wine storage box
Yes! Now you can store four bottles of wine, upright, in an old wooden box! Fit for any table! This genuinely French authentic Bordeaux storage box has travelled straight “from cave to table”, pausing only to translate the words on the side into English. Bottles sold separately.

Guzzler wine glass
Bored with drinking out of normal wine glasses? This glass jams into the neck and allows you to drink straight from the bottle, in a way that’s amusing rather than socially unacceptable! Laugh? You’ll wet yourself. Indeed, it’s all fun and games – just wait until the wine rushes into the glass, over your mouth and nose and down over your clothes! Choking hazard.




 

Cork shadow box
This is so much more than just a picture frame box with a hole through which you can poke your old corks. This is the ideal way of displaying your excessive consumption to visitors with a jumble of partially stained old corks. Relive those special occasions, when the corkscrew thread went just through the side of the cork! Comes with one (1) partially stained cork to start your collection. Not suitable for screwcaps




 PK

Xmas Wine Gifts – you cannot be serious…

Want to give the wine lover in your life a rubbish gift instead of an actual bottle of wine? Why on earth do that? But if you must, we’ve done the searching for you. Yes, it’s the Sediment Xmas Wine Gift Mart. And hurry – these wine gifts may be like sediment itself – left behind when everything else has gone…


 

Time to redress that rocky relationship between drink and driving, with these gearstick bottle stoppers. Ideal for the designated driver in your family. Available in vintage white, classic rosewood, racing chrome and breath test crystal.

Here’s a bright idea – literally! These rechargeable lights fit into the neck of any empty wine bottle, and magically transform it, into an empty wine bottle with a rechargeable light in the neck. Say goodbye to flaming torches and impress your guests instead with a garden or patio glittering with old wine bottles.

Ding-a-ling! It’s time for wine! Ding-a-ling! Just tinkle this amusing little “ring for wine” bell whenever you fancy a glass. Ding-a-ling! Also a keyring, so your front door key will be conveniently at hand when your spouse throws you out.

What a handy way for cyclists to carry their wine! Now they can keep both hands free for gesticulating at close-passing motorists. Fits all bicycles (with a male crossbar). Warning: the bike wine holder is not recommended for sparkling wines.

      

Well, you said you only wanted half a glass!! Be prepared for the next sanctimonious guest with this precision-made half glass. Also suitable for guests who are half cut.

This “happy man” corkscrew and bottle stopper set will add a touch of class to your dining table. Carefully designed to suit all Premier Grand Cru Classé clarets.

Well, you said you only wanted “green” wine! Be prepared for the next sanctimonious guest with a wine that’s clearly “greener” than the rest. Warning: not a natural wine.

 

If you’ve watched the winelover in your life struggling with stubborn corks, then here’s the ideal gift. There isn’t a cork around which this Bosch IXO with corkscrew attachment won’t remove, or shred. Accessories available separately for screwdriving, sanding, drilling and anglegrinding. Ideal for sommeliers. 

 

No more confusion over whose glass is whose! These attractive “mr and mrs” wineglasses mean you can say goodbye to those nightly mix-ups and arguments. Now there’ll be no more rows – you’ve finished yours, this one’s mine! Not suitable for same-sex couples.

      

You won’t need to spell out the quality of your wine to your guests, when you serve it with these practical and stylish alphabet bottle stoppers. Letters not available: D, R, C.

You know the precise temperature at which your wine ought to be served, don’t you? Of course you do! So simply strap this stylish wine thermometer to your bottle and it will tell you the temperature of the wine. Or, possibly, the temperature of the bottle. Not suitable for Mateus Rosé.

 

Start with these grape vines – one red, one white – and it surely can’t be long before you have your own mini-vineyard producing quantities of your own wine. It could even be better than the stuff you buy in the shops! You only need around 600 grapes to make a bottle – so let’s get started! Does not include yeast, fermentation vessel, filter, finings, tank, barrel, bottle or cork.

 

It’s back! It wouldn’t be Christmas without Wine Monkey, this woolly wine bottle caddy thing which supposedly looks like a monkey. Invaluable for warming up bottles of red – or white for that matter –  and hiding embarrassing own-brand labels. You can see how it incomprehensibly continues to amuse and entertain these guests! They’re still not arguing about Brexit!!

Finally, the ideal gift for anyone who doesn’t have an old man or two around this Christmas to complain about the price, look, taste, quantity, order, and nationality of the wine they’re serving. Warning: this SEDIMENT book may cause readers to choke on their cornflakes (Julian Barnes). Click here to order now in time for Xmas. 







PK

Yule Booze

So while PK speculates on the perfect Xmas wine gift, I've decided to dream big about what drink I am actually going to consume over the festive period. It's not pretty, but it is seasonal. Therefore:

- Begin Christmas Day with a White Christmas Martini, made of vanilla vodka, white chocolate liqueur, half-and-half milk and cream, coarse sanding sugar, whatever that is, and some other things. Accompany it with a fried egg and I've got my starches, fats and proteins all dealt with in one dazzling white and yellow cataclysm of breakfast sweetness. Now I'm ready for the fray. Apparently this drink is not Christmas specific, which makes it even more huggable.

- Mid-morning, once the presents have been unwrapped and the Yule log lit, allowed to go out, re-lit and keep alight with spent wrapping paper, I set the turkey to C160° and fortify myself with a Cinnamon Candy Apple festive fun shot, comprising apple schapps, tequila and red food colouring. It's that simple, as long as you have the food colouring. Poster paint might do if you're stuck. It's non-toxic, right?

- Which then gives me time and energy to check my supplies of Asda Prosecco Extra Dry, brought in at a genuinely festive £5.00 a bottle; as well as my stash of Three Mills Reserve Red - a British wine made from imported grape juice and only offering 10.5%, but at £3.18 a unit, I can afford to layer the entire floor with generous deep-hued bottles and still have change for a North Pole Cocktail: vodka, Kahlua, chocolate syrup, molasses, regular cream and whipped cream. And vanilla extract. After that, I'm going to baste the turkey with Prosecco and boil the sprouts in vanilla vodka because, frankly, isn't that what this Holiday Season's all about?

- The Xmas dinner is consumed with gusto. Bulging audibly with a mixture of turkey, cream, vodka, sprouts, Prosecco, Kahlua, sugar, cheap red white, mince pies, molasses, more cream, roast potatoes, more vodka, tequila, bread sauce and red food colouring, I now reckon it's time to ease back a little as the shadows lengthen and the Queen's Speech dissolves into unintelligibility. What better, at this juncture, than a Blackberry Ombre Sparkler - a drink for Valentine's Day, but equally suited for Christmas Day, or, apparently, any other time of the year? Versatility is what it's all about and I'm feeling alarmingly versatile. For a Blackberry Ombre, all you need are fresh blackberries - in December? Seriously? - champagne, sugar and some rosemary sprigs to garnish, because rosemary is definitely on-trend as something to stick into a drink. It looks super-festive, is all I can say, the rosemary acting as a visible pointer to the sheer playfulness of such a cocktail. Do I take the rosemary out before drinking? Or do I just let it stick itself it in my eye, quite negligently, as if that's what I meant to do all along? Decisions!

- But if I'm all cocktailed out - and there's no shame in that - how about a raid on the heavy materials? I'm talking bramble & berry rum, marzipan brandy, mince pie vodka, spiced clementine gin - anything basically fruity and annihilating, accompanied by a solemn vow of thanks to whichever presiding deity saw fit to give us such astonishing choice, provided we can be bothered to get the ingredients together beforehand. Mince pie vodka sounds unmissable; and if I've left it too late to mix the bits and pieces together and allow them to infuse for a week, what's wrong with simply dropping a pie into a glass of neat vodka and letting nature take care of the rest?

- It's getting late. The Yule Log has gone out again, the last of the tinsel has been eaten, the turkey drumsticks are hung festively around the smoke alarm, the hall carpet is full of presents and crushed sanding sugar, the family has gathered round the harmonium to sing old German drinking songs. Now's the time to bring out my secret stash of Londis whites, just a little something to wind the day down. They're all Australian because who doesn't like Australia at this time of year? After all, Christmas Day dawns a whole day later in Australia, thanks to the rotation of the earth, which is tough if you live in Adelaide, so let's toast our friends down under with a glass of delicious Aussie sauvignon blanc. A whole day later or a whole day earlier, one or the other. Goodnight, everybody.

CJ

Pump Up The Volume: Xmas Drinking Songs

So let's cut to the chase: I'm talking about songs with the word wine in the title and which contain numerous references to that drink, such that I can play them festively over the Christmas period in order to get me through that particular nightmare. That's all I'm interested in. No, not quite - Days Of Wine And Roses, for instance, the Henry Mancini/Johnny Mercer classic, is a great tune in its way, but not what I'm after. Ditto Little Old Wine Drinker Me - sung by Dean Martin, it passes the time and there's never a good reason not to listen to Dean Martin, but all the same: it's too effortless, it lacks urgency. To say nothing of Paul Anka's A Steel Guitar And A Glass Of Wine. Or, for that matter, UB40's take on Neil Diamond's Red Red Wine. No, in these troubled times I need something up, something elemental. And these are my top six up, elemental, wine songs. Or seven.

Wine Woogie - a tearaway 1952 r'n'b swinger from Marvin Phillips & His Men From Mars, jam-packed with sax and containing the line I can drink wine, baby, like no-one else can, a commitment we can all, I think, relate to. Likewise the legendary Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson with their magesterial Wine-O-Baby Boogie from 1949. First thing Big Joe says is When you see me sleeping, baby, please don't think I'm drunk. About the last thing is Better stop stealing my money baby, and buying that bad green wine. There you have it: the human condition in the space of two and a half minutes, and when Big Joe puts it down, you better get hip and pick up on it.

Something more recent? I'm going to go wide and choose PassThe Wine (Sophia Loren) an out-take-that-made-it from The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street of 1972. If you can stand Mick's cheesy Americanisms, this boils down to Pass the wine, baby, and let's make some love, all things being equal in an imperfect universe. Is it that close to being one of The Stone's more half-assed numbers? Yes, but I like to think there's enough horn section and sassy female backing singers in the mix to get it across the line into sheer dumb good-time listenability.

No doubts, however, about Drinkin' Wine Spo-dee-o-dee, in all its manifestations. This hymn to excess, with its half-gallons of cheap red wine, its references to constant fistfights and wanton destruction of property, its New Orleans setting, has everything the lifelong wine drinker needs to celebrate his or her favourite beverage. So many great versions to choose from, but I'm going to stick with Winehead Swing by James 'Smokestack' Tisdom (1950). This begins with him yelling Aw, you winehead fool and Gimme a drink so I can play this thing and spreads outwards from there, with the assistance of James's intense guitar work and a harmonica player in the last throes of delerium. The YouTube version's a bit fuzzy, but it gives you a sense. Him, or The Sugar Creek Trio. I have a feeling the trio aren't playing these days, but a couple of years ago they were hardcore Rockabilly madmen of the most uncompromising kind, playing both Las Vegas and the greater Oxford region. Their take on Drinkin' Wine defies you to sit still for longer than five seconds, if at all. Drinkin' that mess with delight is the essence of the encounter and the guitar player is on fire. Stick this on while you're basting the turkey and everything is going to turn out fine. Oh, and I'm going to capriciously throw in The Moonglows' Hey Santa Claus, just because it's so good - and, yes, I know, it doesn't use the word wine once.

To calm down? The conversation-stoppingly lachrymose Tears And Wine from Dusty Brooks & His Tones, recorded in 1953. Tears and wine to help forget, they groan, because laughter and love are uneasy bedfellows at the best of times and if you can't be depressed at Christmas, when can you? Equally, if you're like PK and your Christmas is spent wearing a quilted smoking jacket and an Edward VII beard while inhabiting a world where certain timeless verities apply whatever else is going on outside, then you might decide to celebrate your largely insane otherness with, say, The End Of Me Old Cigar, the Harry Champion music-hall classic. Not wine, no, but a related activity, and I'm going to include it. You can get Harry himself performing the song, but I've got to confess to a partiality for the version by the great Adge Cutler & The Wurzels. This is, in fact, what PK listens to non-stop from Christmas Eve through to Boxing Day; and it pretty much captures the essence of the man. Seriously, it does.

CJ

A chocolate teapot in anyone's language

What is the most useless thing you can think of? A chocolate teapot, perhaps? A chocolate fireguard? A pair of spectacles for a one-eared man? Append your own – but I think I have found a new and singularly useless thing, and it’s in the world of wine.

The world of wine has, of course, been responsible for some spectacularly stupid items, many of which we have highlighted in our annual Xmas Gift Marts.  But surely this takes the (chocolate) biscuit.

It is an augmented reality app, which translates wine labels.

Created by two immensely hairy men, their spiel suggests that this app might ultimately provide users with a load of the other stuff which a winery often wants to show you, but you really don’t need to see; probably sunset over their vineyard, or gnarly old peasants picking their grapes, or a trendy-looking winemaker swirling, sniffing and tasting their own product with smug satisfaction. Rather like a dog. But let’s focus on this translation business.

Why oh why would you want to translate the name of a wine? Surely the name of a wine is its brand – you don’t want it translated. A bottle of Sides of the Rhône, anyone? Vineyard of the Sun? Écho Cascades? Would anyone, anywhere ask for a bottle of Latour as a bottle of The Tower? Or for that matter, La Torre?

Translating a wine’s name strips it of its authenticity. There may be some people challenged by pronouncing Casillero del Diablo, but that’s its name, and there’s no reason to translate it into The Devil’s Cellar. And if you did, no wine merchant would have the foggiest idea what you were asking for. If you asked a wine merchant for holy wine, would he give you a bottle of vin santo or just a very funny look?

No, this app is of no use to consumers, partly because you need to have the label, and therefore bottle, in hand in order to scan it. You can’t just point the app at a distant bottle behind a bar, or up on a shelf, in order to discover how to ask for it. In fact, even if you could, why not save the download time and point at it with a finger?

And by the time you have it in hand, why would you need to translate its name? No further discussion is needed. Brandishing a credit card is usually sufficient for a perceptive retailer to grasp the idea that you wish to purchase something. Or you can do that traditional mime of someone signing a cheque, surely due to be replaced by a mime of someone keying in their PIN.

At most – at most – a winery itself might want to translate the name of their wine once, in order to communicate with markets unfamiliar with their native alphabet. But if we wanted apps we would use only once, we would all have installed iBeer.

Also, I’m afraid it’s not even very good at translating. I’m no multilinguist, moi, but even I know that if Pinot Noir appears on a Spanish wine label, it should remain exactly that on a French label – and not be “translated” into the utterly meaningless Pilote Noir. You had one job…

Heston Blumenthal did actually create a chocolate teapot, for Easter last year.  It was, said his Fat Duck Group, “filled with whimsical wonder”, which I suppose makes a change from sweets.

(“A surprise awaits chocolate lovers,” they said, “who are able to actually eat the sweet teapot.” In what sense is that a surprise? What are you supposed to do with something made of chocolate – drive it? A far greater surprise would have awaited chocolate lovers if it had been made out of bacon…)

Anyway, a chocolate teapot (not one of Heston’s) was actually tested for its efficacy, by filling it with teabags and boiling water (as opposed to whimsical wonder). It was found, perhaps not surprisingly, wanting. “The first evidence of loss of containment was observed at approximately T+5 seconds,” it was reported. “This had reached catastrophic proportions by T+15 seconds, with total loss of H2O containment.”

The researcher concluded that, “On the basis of this test we felt it safe to conclude that, in respect of its suitability for the role that its design suggests, a chocolate teapot is of no use at all. As such, such an item should serve as an excellent baseline of uselessness against which to compare other, similarly dysfunctional, items.”

Like this app.

PK

Xmas Reading: Waitrose v. IKEA v. Empire of Booze

So now, just to add to my habitual and highly personal sense of grievance, I have the Waitrose Christmas wine catalogue, which addresses itself to some fantastical speculative human being, a person actually 'Looking forward to sharing great company, great food and drink' over the holiday period. Everything about this beautifully-produced, 122-page graveyard of irony is excruciating: from the first picture of Phillip Schofield in a sweater (two more to come, ladies!) to the news that for at least one writer 'My boyfriend and I start Christmas Day, still in our pyjamas', to the recommendation that you chuck £4.49 at a 300ml bottle of AquaRiva Organic Agave Syrup in order to make yourself an AquaRiva Tequila Ding Dong, to the crazed assertion that 'With a price ceiling of £30, Champagne is well in range.'

Is it worse than the IKEA catalogue, the current heavyweight champion of vacuity? Of course not. The 2017 IKEA catalogue is a masterclass in denatured language, insistently mechanical in its upbeat formulations, everything it describes purged of the realities of human experience. 'Being together is what we care about'; 'Eric really embodies the essence of a digital nomad'; 'Adding a nursery in your bedroom doesn't have to mean giving up your meticulous wardrobes'. I could go on. Waitrose is bad, but IKEA has a genius for meaningless feelgood pap that takes it out of this world and into some other realm entirely. I sometimes read extracts out loud to my wife, just to annoy her.

Actually, it's the combination of supersmiley prose and Waitrose price policy that really sets me off. After all, I have had dealings with some of the wines it promotes: the crummy Canaletto Montepulciano d'Abruzzo ('an area known for its rich, robust reds') at £7.99; Les Dauphins Côtes du Rhône Villages (apparently 'generously perfumed' but also routinely indifferent in actual taste) for £8.99; Vasse Felix Cabernet Merlot, which I was trying only the other day, a hairy little bastard, although Waitrose cries up its 'great depth of colour', at £12.99; Cuvée Royale Crémant de Limoux ('wax and honeysuckle'), which, to be honest, I quite like, is up there, but at £11.99. All these wines are overpriced by approximately two quid a bottle, even though the rubric advises you (assuming you've got people coming round and you're not spending Christmas alone in front of the microwave) to 'go for mid-price wines that offer both quality and value'. This, accompanied by a picture of a Les Dauphins CDR at an almost satirical £11.99 a bottle. 'All the wines are terrific value,' says Schofield, apparently quite unflustered by the idea that nothing in this terrible magazine is worth anything like the price demanded.

To get the world of Waitrose out of my head, I look for something altogether chewier and more involving: and find it in Henry Jeffreys' just-out Empire Of Booze (Unbound Books). This is an ebulliently-written, fact-stuffed account of the relationship between the British and the world of drinks they consume - and have consumed - ranging across the centuries from Roman times to the present day. Brandy, port, claret, champagne, beer, gin, whisky, marsala, rum - all bear the mark of some kind of British intervention. Empire Of Booze unpacks their stories, bringing in such heroes as Sir Kenelm Digby, George Orwell, Arnaud de Pontac, Captain Bill McCoy, Jean-Antoine Chaptal and Samuel Johnson; while reminding us at the same time of the Blucher shoe and John Mytton's bear. There is drunkness and poverty. There is imposture, crookedness and fine wine. There is some killing. There is, as far as I can tell, no mention of Phillip Schofield's idea of what makes a perfect Christmas. On that basis alone, it would be worth a plug.

CJ