McGarvey’s Words

Stumped for this year's holiday gifts to give? Economists are counting on us for the big spend as 2003 closes, so get ready, set, start buying In this column I'm pointing you to my personal favorites -- the gifts I give and love getting, from a delectable wine to spam-proof email. It's an eccentric, eclectic list -- that even includes a stop at Apple (gasp!) -- but whether you want to present folks with tasty Irish mustard or the Ramones greatest hits (admit it: you loved "Cretin Hop" too), this round-up will get you buying.

O Club Delectus. There is no cooler wine club -- give yourself the gift of membership or wow a business acquaintance whom you really want to impress. This boutique Napa winery is located down valley in a warehouse district but wine maker/owner Gerhard Reisacher comes from an Austrian family of vintners with hundreds of years of experience. Visit Gerhard (onetime vineyard manager for Clos du Val) and you’ll drink some of California’s finest reds – several of his Delectus bottlings have gotten over 90 points in Wine Spectator ratings. I’ve lived in California’s wine country, I’ve visited hundreds of wineries, but never before joined a wine club. An hour of sips at Delectus persuaded me to sign on the line that is dotted. Members get four shipments per year for around $125 apiece. For Thanksgiving Delectus sent out a magnum of the ‘99 cab; no one but the 90 club members will ever see that magnum. Yes, I said 90 members. If you want mass produced wines, gargle Opus One or Rubicon...but if you want handcrafted reds made by a guy who’s happy to talk wine with you, drink with you, even give you his mother’s potato salad recipe (recently sent out to club members), Delectus is the wine club to join. Tell him I sent you. Delectus is running a contest where the member who brings in the most new members gets a three liter bottle of the ‘97 cab – and, definitely, I want that big red.

O Gateway Digital Music Player ($149.99) Not much bigger than an old Zippo lighter, this 1.5 oz device does three things – it stores and plays MP3 tunes (up to two hours worth will fit on the 256MB drive); it functions as a tiny digital voice recorder for dictating notes on the fly; and it also will hold important data files for taking on the road (pix of your kids, maybe a scanned love letter from your significant other, perhaps that PowerPoint show you have always wanted a backup copy of). Connection is via the USB port and Gateway says you’ll enjoy Plug-n-play start-up. Way cool. It's a perfect stocking stuffer for techies who already have everything.

o iTunes. Apple’s iPod still reigns supreme as the king of the MP3 hill but it’s pricey and you gotta ask – do I really need to carry around 1000 songs? If you don’t, check out the Gateway gizmo above particularly if you use a Windows computer (who doesn't?) because synching an iPod with a PC is a painful excursion into poorly written code, worse documentation, and flat out lies (Apple says an iPod will mesh with Win Me boxes...but its service reps say it won't). All this makes me, on closer inspection, wary of iPod – but the one Apple service I still say is worth a look is iTunes, the online music service where songs are 99 cents apiece and available for download 24/7. My musical tastes are more narrow than Margaret Thatcher’s world view; probably $100 songs from iTunes will fill my pipe because that will buy me the best of the Stones, the Beatles, the Ramones, the Clash, the Who, and a little bluegrass for my hillbilly moments. Does a person need any other sounds? Give a pal -- or yourself! -- a $100 credit at iTunes this holiday season and really get into the holiday jingles.

o Treo 600 ($250, after Amazon rebates). This is it, the converged device. We all wrote about the coming of converged devices that would deliver voice and data (i.e., email) in a tidy package and, at last, this Treo 600 does the job. It offers Sprint PCS service coupled with a Handspring running the Palm OS, for easy use of all those cool Palm apps you’ve squirreled away. There’s a QWERTY keyboard, a color web browser, even a built-in camera (and, yeah, I agree that Handspring could have dumped the camera and made the unit a little cheaper and lighter, but it’s here so let’s not whine). This gadget is light years snazzier than a BlackBerry. Don’t fancy Sprint cellular service? The Treo 600 currently also is supported by AT&T and Cingular. Handspring says T-Mobile service is coming soon. There is no more cutting-edge wireless gift for your very special recipents.

o Yahoo email. I pay Yahoo $59.99 per year for its premium mail service and the big reason is a four-letter word: Spam. After trying many alternatives, I’ve settled on Yahoo’s spam filters as the best available to the likes of me (small, independent business people). Big companies buy high-priced filtering services but that’s out of my league and what I can buy doesn’t seem worth the money. Except for Yahoo. All mail that goes to my personal email at mcgarvey.net is automatically forwarded to my Yahoo account which sorts it – and this a.m. there were 83 spam messages (tucked in a Bulk folder) and three emails that actually required my attention. Yahoo premium mail comes at various price points – starting at $29.99 – but I’m using the costliest option because it includes massive storage (a 100 MB mail box). Give a subscription to anyone who grumbles about too much spam.

o Bewleys. This is where I do my heavy-duty holiday shopping and have done so for years. Bewley’s of course is Ireland’s legendary coffee shop, and its holiday hampers (baskets) are stuffed with Irish cheese, mustard, Christmas pudding, brandy butter, and of course Bewley’s coffee and tea. This year I’m eyeing the Galway Bay – about $100 US. Is it worth it? If you want to give gifts that are uniquely, distinctly, deliciously Irish, this is the gift to send because, unless you live in Dublin, Cork, or the environs, your local mall has nothing at all like a Bewley’s hamper. On New Year’s Day, often I’ll make a fire of Irish peat – – put the kettle on, drink Bewley’s tea, and I’ll know the coming year will vibrate with glorious surprises.

Want more suggestions of more conventional gifts? A few months ago, I wrote up a gifting column for syndicator Content That Works. The focus is on high-tech gifts and prices range from cheap to a splurge. Here’s one iteration of that column: http://tucson.com/holiday/giftguide/tech.php. Read on and shop smarter.

Happy holidays.

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About Robert McGarvey

Author of How to Dotcom (Entrepreneur Press), McGarvey is writing a book on Brain Wars, the rise of cognitive science and the search for truths about thinking. A onetime columnist for BizTravel.com, he is a frequent contributor to dozens of magazines, ranging from American Legion to Selling Power, American Way, and Rutgers. He has also contributed to Harvard Business Review. For the past five years, he has served as "The Ombudsman" for PORTHOLE Cruise Magazine. Still curious about McGarvey? Read up on him here.

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