Palate please presents
Ξ August 6th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ gourmet gift baskets |
Every year it happens – you need to get a gift for someone with interests completely different from yours and you don’t know what to get them. What are you, allergic to cats and dogs, supposed to get for the cat lady? And what about the cigar smoker connoisseur-of-everything? It’s obvious at this point that he doesn’t want another cashmere sweater. When your friends’ and loved ones’ passions lie in areas you know nothing about, buying them gifts is daunting. And yet buying them a gift that is relevant to them will show them just how much you care about them – that you made the effort to find something in their area of interest that they would appreciate and might not necessarily buy for themselves.
By far the hardest people to shop for are people who are connoisseurs of anything – wine, cigars, or food. Good taste, after all, is only partially learned; it is mostly innate, and if you don’t have it or can’t imagine why people would store decades-old grape juice in a room in the basement, then you probably never will be able to. And yet you know people like this – people whose taste exceeds or even defies your own. For no other group is it harder to buy gifts for than those who relish food – foodies, gourmets – whatever you want to call them.
I can hardly boil water – never mind tell the difference between Russian Osetra and American Hackleback caviar or discern the virtues of Hawaiian chocolate over its Belgian counterpart. That’s why I leave giving gifts to gourmets to a company that makes the best gourmet gift baskets. In the baskets they include jams like boysenberry and huckleberry; vinegars aged for decades; assorted Italian, Greek, and Spanish olive oils; flights of chocolates – comparable product from different regions or made with cocoa from different years; dried wild mushrooms and more. There’s no sense in giving an impersonal gift to a gourmand when another gourmand can assemble their dream gift and charge you a small premium for your ignorance of the food world.
Money spent on these kinds of gift baskets is money well spent. Even though they may not be the cheapest, they ensure that the recipient gets what he or she wants while making you look like a hero of thoughtfulness for giving them something so beautiful and yet so relevant to the recipients’ interests. And who doesn’t want to be a hero?
