Wine is a gift topper this festive season

Moving away from traditional festival gifts like sweets, cakes and dry fruits, Chandigarhians have found a fresh and innovative concept of gifting beautifully-packed wines, scotches and champagnes to their friends and corporate honchos. The trend has picked up fast this festive season and, not to miss the bonanza of cashing in on the sudden shift in gift pattern ahead of the festive season, wine companies are flooding swanky stores with any number of these exclusive gifts.

Ajay Gothwal, marketing manager of a Gurgaon-based wine company, said high-flying professionals and officials had turned big time towards gifting aesthetically-packed wines. "Taking this into account, companies have started making one or two-bottle packs to attract festive buyers," he added.

Another wine company representative said, " Corporate gifting is a big business and wine has been the latest addition to it. Earlier, the most popular gifts included chocolates, scotches, whiskies, but wine is something new in the trend."

Fed up with gifting sweets, fruits, dry fruits and other bakery items to the friends and relatives during the festive season, city's leading industrialist MPS Chawla, said, "People have started disliking sweets due to health reasons. Even dry fruits, cakes and chocolates have gone out of fashion. The time has come to gift low-alcohol wines, scotches and champagnes to your dear friends and corporate colleagues." Another socialite, requesting anonymity, reasoned that wine gifting also reflects a businessman's standing. "If you are planning it in a big way, you can have your logo and a personalized handwritten note on the bottles. Nothing can be more pleasing than a customized message," he added.

According to a city-based swanky liquor store owner, "Gifting of wine bottles can be in different shapes and budgets. You can gift a set of one bottle with one glass and so on."

Gothwal said festival wine gift hampers could be packed in beautifully-designed baskets, boxes or wine bags.

"You can be imaginative in your approach. Silk bags, jute bags, paper bags, wooden boxes, etc, are some of the examples. If you want to be little funny and witty, then there are funny accessories like wine stoppers, in different shapes and sizes."