Unusual Gifts for Wine Lovers: 10 UK Picks for Christmas

The unusual wine gifts worth giving are the ones a keen drinker would not buy for themselves but would use anyway: a one-day wine course, an argon preservation system, an in-bottle chiller stick, an adopted vine at an English vineyard. Novelty glassware and engraved gift sets look unusual and get used once.

How this list is scored

"Unusual" is a trap word. It is easy to buy something nobody else would buy and land squarely on the reason nobody else buys it. So each gift is scored out of five twice: surprise, how unlikely it is the recipient already owns one, and survival, how likely it is to still be in use next Christmas.

The order is set by the lower of the two scores, because an unusual gift fails at its weakest link. That puts a pair of good glasses seventh — a better gift than almost everything above it, and a worse answer to the question you actually asked. Prices were checked on 29 August 2026 at the retailer named in each row. Lindner & Co sells number three.

The ten, scored

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1. A one-day wine course

Nobody has already done the course you are booking, and what it leaves behind cannot be shelved. WSET Level 1 Award in Wines is one day, tasting samples and exam included: £225 at Cambridge Wine School and at Hambledon Vineyard for 2026 dates, £250 at South London Wine School. Book two places.

2. An argon preservation system

For anyone who drinks a glass rather than a bottle, the problem is the other two-thirds by Wednesday. A needle system draws wine out and replaces it with argon, so the bottle is never truly opened. Coravin's entry model, the Pivot, is £179.99 direct from Coravin UK. It runs on gas capsules, and a gift that needs restocking can quietly stop.

3. An in-bottle chiller stick

Every chilling answer in the British gift guides sits outside the bottle — a sleeve, a bucket, an insulated flask. This is the one that goes in: a food-safe 304 stainless steel rod kept in the freezer, dropped into the opened bottle, cooling from the inside with no meltwater in the glass.

Ours is the Lindner & Co wine chiller, £29.99 with a buy one, get one free offer, supplied with an acrylic pour spout that aerates as you pour, plus a stopper. Freeze it 10–15 minutes, or leave it in there. It holds an opened bottle cool for up to about three hours and fits roughly 99% of bottles, screw-caps included; the steel is dishwasher safe.

The limit, plainly: it holds cold, it does not rescue. Four warm bottles before guests arrive is a job for ice and water.

4. An insulated bottle cooler

Huski's double-walled stainless cooler is £49.99 on its UK site and claims up to six hours without ice. It loses on surprise because insulated drinkware is now Britain's most-given category, and it takes cupboard space the other eleven months.

5. Adopt a vine

Holmfirth Vineyard in Yorkshire runs adoption packages from £23.99 for one person to £44.99 for two: a certificate, vineyard entry, a tour and tasting, and a bottle on the upper tier. Survival is the weak half — one certificate, one visit, one year. Buy it for someone who will make the drive.

6. Two very good glasses

Not unusual at all, and the best-performing object here. A thin rim and a tapered bowl change how a wine reads more than any gadget does. Riedel Veritas is sold in pairs, £49.95 at Wineware at the time of writing on a 20% promotion. Give two, not six.

7. An aroma training kit

Le Nez du Vin's 12-aroma kits are £78.00 at Wineware — red, white, oak or wine faults — with the 54-aroma master kit at £310.00. Nobody owns one, hence five for surprise. Two for survival is the whole story: kits are worked through over a few evenings, then shelved. Buy it for someone studying.

8. A magnum

A 1.5-litre bottle reads as an occasion, and English sparkling is the confident choice: Chapel Down's Classic Non-Vintage Brut magnum is £67.00 direct from the producer. Survival scores one because it gets drunk — which is the reason to give it, on a day with enough people to finish it.

9. A cooling sleeve

The Vacu Vin Rapid Ice gel sleeve is £15.95 at Wineware and chills a bottle in about five minutes from the freezer. It works. It is also the least surprising thing you could wrap, and it covers the label — which matters if the bottle was chosen deliberately.

10. The novelty glass

Menkind's bottle-shaped drinking glass holds 800 ml and costs £15.00: maximum surprise, zero survival. Funny once, photographed once, hand-washed for ever after. At that price a corkscrew beats it on every measure except the laugh.

The gap between £20 and £50

Which? sorts its wine gifts into under £30, under £50, under £100 and over £100. The pages ranking for unusual wine gifts use no bands at all: novelty retailers sit under £20 and wine specialists start again around £70. One of the better UK gadget guides this year has nothing between £20 and £33. That gap is where a wine gift stops being a joke and starts being kit, and four of the ten above fall inside it.

What has to survive a British December

Every unusual wine gift is judged in a room with the heating on. UK living rooms sit around 20 °C over Christmas, and a bottle taken out of a 4 °C fridge climbs roughly 2 °C every ten minutes for the first half hour, then more slowly.

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Light red belongs at 12–15 °C and full red at 16–18 °C, where a heated room causes the opposite problem. Our general ranked guide to wine gifts covers the everyday accessories this page leaves out.

This page is deliberately about the unexpected. If the brief is a budget rather than a surprise, two sister pages handle that: wine gifts under £30 for the standard British gift band, and stocking fillers for wine lovers for everything under £16.

Three unusual gifts to avoid

Engraved accessory sets in wooden boxes. They look expensive, contain a corkscrew and stopper the recipient already owns, and cannot be passed on.

Anything charged or paired. App-linked thermometers and smart aerators get used twice.

A subscription they must cancel. A gift should not create an administrative task in February.

When to buy

Christmas Day 2026 falls on Friday 25 December, and Small Business Saturday in the UK is 5 December — the weekend for vineyard and independent orders. Royal Mail had not published its 2026 last-posting dates as of late August and usually confirms them in October, so check before trusting any date quoted now. Courses and vineyard bookings are the exception: a confirmation prints on Christmas Eve.

If you would rather work from the recipient than from the word "unusual", how to choose a gift for a wine lover ranks the same shelf by how much you need to know about them.

Frequently asked questions