Gourmet Goodies Hampers: Pick Your Pour

Every Gourmet Goodies hamper holds the same four treats in the same French blue box, finished with the same gold ribbon. The bottle standing in the middle is the only thing that changes between them, and it is what moves the price from $99.95 to $299.95. Pick the drinker first and the hamper picks itself.

That is worth knowing before you start comparing photographs. In most hamper ranges the food shrinks as the price comes down, so the cheaper box is often simply smaller. Not here. The Gourmet Goodies with Mumm Sparkling Hamper at $149.95 and the Veuve Clicquot version at $299.95 arrive holding an identical selection of popcorn, truffles, brittle and truffled nuts.

None of that food needs a fridge. All of it is packed to sit in a cupboard, which matters more than it sounds when a gift lands in the third week of December and the recipient's fridge is already full of somebody else's ham. The bottle goes cold when they want it cold. The rest waits.

The part that never changes

Four things go into every box in this range, alongside the bottle.

• Kangaroo Island Honey Popcorn, made with honey from the Ligurian bees the island is known for. The sweet thing in the box that still works next to a dry wine.
• Cocoa dusted Belgian truffles, 150g, and the item the box is quietly built around.
• Caramelised cashew brittle, 140g, roasted cashews set through thin crisp pieces.
• Mr Filbert's Italian Black Truffle Mixed Nuts, 100g, the savoury corner of the selection. What a filbert actually is, we have written up separately.

Two sweet, one sweet and salty, one savoury. It is a short list on purpose, because that is about as much as one bottle wants beside it, and nobody has to find bench space for a second box of biscuits.

Heat is the risk for the chocolate rather than the wine. Truffles that spend a December afternoon in a hot van come out chalky and grey, and that is only cocoa butter rising to the surface rather than anything spoiling, but it is not what you want somebody to open.

Two of them say Mumm, and they are not the same wine

This is where most people stall, because two hampers in the range carry the Mumm name at prices $100 apart.

The $149.95 box holds Mumm Marlborough Brut Prestige, a sparkling wine made in Marlborough. The $249.95 box holds G.H. Mumm Cordon Rouge NV, which is Champagne, made in Champagne, and it comes in the house's own gift box before it is packed into ours. One family name across the two labels, two different wines from two different countries.

Which one is right depends on whether the person opening it will notice, and whether you want them to. Plenty of good drinkers will pour the Marlborough on Christmas morning and think about nothing beyond how cold it is. Someone who buys Champagne for themselves reads the label in the first two seconds. Enjoy responsibly.

The ladder, bottle by bottle

One row behaves differently from the rest. At $99.95 the Château Tanunda box sits five cents under our $100 free shipping line, so sent on its own it carries $14.95 of standard freight. Adding one more item of any size takes the order past $100 and the freight comes off, which is worth doing before you reach for the next hamper up.

What the bottle arrives in

The Cordon Rouge comes boxed by its own producer before it goes into ours; the Château Tanunda Shiraz and the Marlborough Brut are packed as bottles. On a specification list that is a footnote. On the day it is not, because a boxed bottle reads as a present in its own right and can be lifted out and handed to somebody else without looking like a piece of a gift.

Which one to send

They are cooking, not celebrating. A household hosting lunch wants the bottle that gets opened with the food and finished four hours later, beside cold meat and hard cheese. The Château Tanunda Barossa Shiraz box is theirs.

It is a thank you and it should feel like one. Sparkling wine signals that today counts before anyone has taken a sip, which a still bottle cannot do. The Mumm Sparkling box at $149.95 sits in the middle of the range and is the one we would put in most people's hands.

The label is doing part of the work. Client gifts, a long service milestone, a parcel arriving in an office where other parcels are arriving too. That is when Champagne earns the step up, because the recognition happens across a room rather than in the mouth. Our champagne and sparkling hampers line up every bottle we pack into a box.

You have no idea what they drink. Then go to the food and treat the bottle as the bonus. The selection is identical across the range, so the cheapest box here is not the lesser gift on the food side. If you would rather spend on more to eat than on what is in the glass, the wider Christmas hampers range and our guide to how much to spend on a Christmas hamper work through that trade off.

Getting it there

Every hamper is packed by hand in Corio, on the northern edge of Geelong, into the French blue box with the gold ribbon, with a personalised gift card included and tracking on the parcel. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day with Australia Post, so the date you order matters more than the postcode you are sending to. Australia Post publishes its Christmas cut-off dates closer to the season, and regional and interstate addresses always close earlier than metro ones.

If the hamper is going to a couple, put both names on the gift card.

Questions about the Gourmet Goodies hampers

What is the difference between the Gourmet Goodies hampers?

The bottle, and nothing else. Every box holds Kangaroo Island Honey Popcorn, 150g of cocoa dusted Belgian truffles, 140g of caramelised cashew brittle and 100g of Mr Filbert's Italian Black Truffle Mixed Nuts, in the French blue box with the gold ribbon. What changes from $99.95 to $299.95 is the wine standing in the middle of it.

Is Mumm Sparkling the same as G.H.Mumm Champagne?

No. The Mumm Sparkling hamper holds Mumm Marlborough Brut Prestige, a sparkling wine made in Marlborough. The G.H.Mumm Champagne hamper holds G.H. Mumm Cordon Rouge NV, which is Champagne from France and arrives in its own gift box. The hampers sit $100 apart and the gap is the wine, since the food is the same.

Which Gourmet Goodies hamper is the best value?

On food alone the $99.95 Château Tanunda box, since it carries the same selection as the $299.95 one. Above about $150 value stops being the right question: you are choosing a bottle rather than buying groceries, and the test is whether the person opening it will recognise what you sent.

The Gourmet Goodies with Mumm Sparkling Hamper is $149.95 and the one we reach for when a gift has to feel like an occasion without becoming a statement. To see the pours side by side, champagne and sparkling wine hampers and red wine hampers hold the rest of the range.