It’s that time of year, again, holiday gift-giving season, that is. For me, it never fails that year in and year out, I get a lot of requests for suggestions for the ‘perfect bottle,’ followed by qualifiers, like, ‘for the boss who has everything,’ or ‘for the best mail carrier,’ or ‘for the mother-in-law who’s never satisfied.’ Funnily, nobody ever asks me what I’d like (read on—I’ll let you know!). As someone who is fortunate enough to taste a lot of wines, spirits, cocktails and beers in the name of work, I might be the first to tell you there is no perfect bottle for anyone, rather, only the perfectly thoughtful gift. What I mean by that is unless the object of your thoughtfulness or gratitude comes out and tells you exactly what they love/want, it’s always going to be a guess, like, ‘If they like white wine, try this’… or ‘if they love Bourbon, try that.’ Then there are those who you want to impress with something expensive, or those who have expensive taste. Ultimately, I could make a zillion recommendations to satisfy every qualification. Instead, this year I’m going with a high-low approach, suggesting something relatively affordable and something not-so-affordable in the categories I get asked to recommend most. You’re the first to read this, and you didn’t even have to ask!

Each of my recommendations below are offered in both ‘universal’ (think affordable) and ‘splurge’ options. But before you start shopping, please know that the prices listed are suggestions based on national averages. Please also know that the odds of you finding any of these are heavily factored by where you live, and what I mean by that is that we live in 50 separate federal republics, all hellbent on protecting their own turf, taxation, and distribution channels. That’s why I shy away from making recommendations, because you will likely come back to me to say, ‘they don’t have that… what else?’ To nip that in the bud I’d suggest you show this list to your favorite and fairest retailer to see what they have. If they don’t have what you need, I’m hopeful you can trust them to recommend something just as good.

Oh, for me? I’ll take as many bottles as you’d like to buy me from the list below, or whatever your retailer suggests. Happy Holidays!

Anthony Giglio is a longtime Contributing Editor at FOOD & WINE Magazine, and the founding Wine Director for The American Express Centurion Global Lounge Collection.

---