There is one person in every family who is impossible to buy for. In mine it's my brother-in-law. He has the good knives. He has a coffee grinder that cost more than my first car.

He hosts every long lunch and cooks the whole thing himself. The one time I asked what he wanted, he said "honestly, nothing." He meant it. That is the least useful sentence in the English language.

So for years I did what everyone does. I brought a bottle. A good one. Sometimes a far too good one. And every time, the same thing happened.

It was opened, poured and admired for about ninety seconds. It was finished before the plates were cleared. The gift was gone before I'd found my seat. By Monday there was nothing left of it in that house.

What changed my mind about gifts was a slim steel rod standing in the neck of a bottle at someone else's table. I want to explain what it does. The way it works is the whole reason it works as a present. Then I'll tell you what it costs. That was the part that surprised me most.

What actually happens to a bottle left standing out

Think about how we actually eat here. Nobody sits inside. The table goes out on the verandah, or down to the beach, or onto a camp table with the sun still on it. And it stays there for hours. The fridge, if there is one, is a long way behind you. That is the whole problem.

A bottle comes out cold. The first pour is perfect. The glass fogs and everything tastes the way it should. Then the bottle sits on a warm table in the open air. It starts climbing back to the heat of the afternoon. Within about twenty minutes it's softer. Within forty it's the wrong drink.

Nobody at the table says a word about it. Everybody quietly stops topping up. The second half of a good bottle gets finished out of politeness, not pleasure.

Every fix I'd tried made a different mess. Running back to the fridge turns the host into a waiter in their own home. That defeats the point of a long lunch.

An ice bucket sweats a puddle across the table. It slides the label off and still leaves the neck warm. Ice in the glass keeps things cold by slowly turning a nice rosé into rosé-flavoured water. Nobody has ever thanked you for ice in their wine.

How the thing in the bottle works

It's a sealed rod of 304 food-grade stainless steel. That's the same grade commercial kitchens use. It lives in the freezer, not the wine rack. ten minutes in the freezer is all it needs. After that, most people just leave it in there. So it's cold before anyone has decided to open anything.

You slide it into a bottle that's already chilled. It goes to work from the inside. The wine comes down to temperature in minutes, not hours. Then it holds that cold for up to three hours on the table.

Three hours is longer than any bottle lasts at a table with more than two people.

Because the steel is sealed, nothing enters the wine. No melting, no gel, no water, no puddle under the base. That's why the last glass tastes like the first, not a watered-down version of it.

The kit also comes with a clear pour spout. Here's the small detail I didn't expect to care about: the aerator sits inside that spout. So every pour gets opened up on the way to the glass. It does quietly what a decanter does loudly.

It pours drip-free too. When it's done, the whole lot goes in the dishwasher. There's a stopper in the box for whatever is left, if anything is.

It fits standard 750ml bottles. That's almost everything you'd take to a table. White, rosé and sparkling are the obvious uses. Red can simply stand there and be red.

Why it works as a present, specifically

Here's the thing I keep coming back to. A gift for someone who already has everything has to clear a strange bar. It can't be something they'd have bought themselves. And it can't be something they'll feel they have to display. This clears both.

Nobody wakes up and decides to research wine gadgets. But everyone who eats outdoors has quietly accepted the warm-second-half problem as a fact of life. The way you accept flies.

And it stays. That's the part that turned me. The bottle I used to bring was a lovely ninety seconds. This sits in their freezer door. It gets pulled out every time the table goes outside.

My brother-in-law has now told the same story about it to at least four different groups of people. None of them were me. That is an absurd return on what it actually costs.

Three things I'd say before you buy

It keeps a bottle cold. Chill the bottle the normal way first. Fridge, esky, whatever you've got. The rod brings it down the last bit in minutes and then holds it there. Put it into a bottle that's sat in the sun all arvo and you'll be let down. It's a keeper, not a rescuer.

It needs ten minutes in the freezer, so don't plan around it. Just leave it there. Everyone I know who owns one stopped thinking about the freezing step within a week. The rod simply never comes out of the freezer between uses. It's ready because it's always ready. That's it.

It arrives as two identical kits, and that's what makes it a gift. Buy one, get one free means a second complete kit in the same box. Same rods, same spout, same stopper, same length.

So the maths of gift-giving changes. One goes to them. One stays in your freezer. And you have not spent a cent extra to keep one for yourself. Most people I know bought it as a present and quietly kept the second one. I did.

None of those are drawbacks. They're just the things I'd want someone to tell me before it turned up in a box.

What I'd do if I were you

If there's one impossible person on your list, take the one-plus-one and be done. Theirs is wrapped. Yours is in the freezer by the weekend.

If there are three or four of those people, the bigger packs cost less per kit and clear the whole list in one order. And there usually are, once you start counting the hosts in your life. That's the entire reasoning. There's nothing clever about it.

What I can tell you is this. It's the only present I've given that people bring up months later, unprompted. They're standing at their own table with a bottle in front of them that is still cold. The bottle I used to bring never once managed that.