Luxury Finest Hampers Compared: Choosing the Bottle

The six Luxury Finest hampers hold an identical selection of ten gourmet foods. Only the bottle changes, and the bottle is what moves the price from $149.95 to $329.95. So the real choice is not between six hampers. It is between a Barossa shiraz, a sauvignon blanc, a Marlborough sparkling and three French champagnes.

That makes the decision smaller than a page of six boxes makes it look. You are not weighing up which hamper has the better food in it. You are answering one question about one person: what do they open, and what would they open it for.

The ten things that never change

Whichever bottle you pick, the box underneath it is the same, whether that is the $149.95 shiraz or the Luxury Finest with Mumm Sparkling Hamper in the middle of the range. The savoury four are VPC sea salt mini artisan crackers, Kangaroo Island Mediterranean olives, VPC roasted peanuts and Hunter's Gourmet black truffle potato chips. The sweet five are TCE Belgian cocoa dusted truffles, buttermilk caramel sea salt fudge, Scottie Dog Shortbread Co. butter shortbread fingers, Pimlico fruit jellies and Kangaroo Island honey popcorn. The tenth item, a VPC fig and almond fruit pyramid, belongs to both halves: fruit paste for the crackers, caramelised figs for the chocolate.

Two things about that list matter before you spend anything. None of it needs a fridge, so a box that lands while nobody is home is not a problem and nothing has to be dealt with in the first week. And it reads as a board rather than a chocolate box: four savoury items, five sweet ones and one that joins them, with crackers, olives and the fruit paste doing the jobs a cheese board needs done. Add a wedge of hard cheese on the day and it becomes lunch.

They also arrive the same way, in the French blue hamper box with the gold ribbon, packed inside an insulated shipper, with a personalised gift card at no extra charge and tracking on the parcel.

The six bottles, side by side

Here is the range in one table, cheapest first. There is no food column, because it would say the same thing six times.

The ladder has three steps rather than six. Two Australian table wines at $149.95, one sparkling at $189.95, then three champagnes between $279.95 and $329.95. The step that costs the most is the $90 between the sparkling and the first champagne, and it buys a French appellation plus a bottle that turns up in its own presentation box. The $50 spread across the three champagnes buys a different label and very little else, because the ten things packed around it do not move.

Sparkling, and why it sits above the wine

The Mumm Sparkling box is the one people misread. Its bottle is Mumm Marlborough Brut Prestige, made in New Zealand's Marlborough region by the same house behind the Cordon Rouge, using the traditional method. It is not champagne and does not claim to be. Champagne is a French appellation, so a sparkling wine made in Marlborough cannot use the word, whoever made it.

What it carries is the Mumm name on a bottle $80 below the Cordon Rouge box, in a style built for the same job. For somebody who opens sparkling on a warm afternoon rather than saving it for an announcement, this is the sensible middle of the range, and it is one of the most popular hampers we pack. Enjoy responsibly.

The two table wines at $149.95 are the other honest answer. If the food is the point and the bottle is the accompaniment, they hold the same ten things in the same box and leave $180 in your pocket against the top of the range. Our guide to how much to spend on a Christmas hamper sets that trade-off out across the catalogue.

How to choose, in four questions

What do they already open? The bottle in their fridge door is the most useful signal you have. A household that pours a red with dinner on a Wednesday gets more out of the Barossa shiraz than out of a champagne that waits eighteen months for an occasion big enough. Champagne is right when it will be opened, not when it will be admired.

A meal or a moment? The shiraz and the sauvignon blanc are table wines and belong beside food. Sparkling and champagne belong to the first twenty minutes of something, poured while people are still putting their bags down. The food in the box works either way. The bottle decides which hour of the day the gift lands in.

Does the label have to be legible across a room? Some gifts get read as well as opened. A Veuve Clicquot yellow label or a Moët gift box tells a client or a set of in-laws roughly what you spent without anyone saying a number, and that recognition is most of what the top $180 buys. If it would go unnoticed, put the money into a second gift.

How many people are opening it? A 750ml bottle is about six champagne flutes or five glasses of wine. For a couple, a $329.95 champagne becomes a bottle they have to find an occasion for, and a table wine is kinder. For a household that hosts, it is gone in the first half hour. If it is landing on two people, our Christmas gifts for couples piece covers what else works at that size.

Questions about the Luxury Finest hampers

Is the food different in the more expensive Luxury Finest hampers?

No. All six hold the same ten items: sea salt crackers, Mediterranean olives, roasted peanuts, black truffle chips, a fig and almond pyramid, Belgian truffles, caramel sea salt fudge, butter shortbread, fruit jellies and honey popcorn. The whole $180 between the cheapest box and the dearest is the bottle.

What is the difference between the Mumm Sparkling hamper and the G.H. Mumm Champagne hamper?

Same house, two countries. The $189.95 box holds Mumm Marlborough Brut Prestige, made in New Zealand by the traditional method. The $279.95 box holds G.H. Mumm Cordon Rouge NV, a French champagne in its own gift box. Both are dry sparkling wines poured at the same point in an afternoon. One carries the appellation.

Which Luxury Finest hamper is the best value?

The two table wines at $149.95, if you judge value by what is in the box: the same ten foods, the same presentation as the $329.95 one. The champagne boxes earn their price for a different reason, which is being recognised on sight, and that is worth paying for only when the person opening it will recognise it.

Do these hampers need refrigeration when they arrive?

No. Everything packed around the bottle is shelf stable, so the box can sit beside a front door until somebody opens it. Chill the sparkling or the champagne for three hours before pouring, and give a Barossa shiraz half an hour in the fridge in summer, because a red left on an Australian bench in December sits well above the temperature it was made for.

Which one to send

The Luxury Finest with Mumm Sparkling Hamper at $189.95 suits the widest set of recipients, and it is where most people land once they know the food does not change. Send the Barossa shiraz or the sauvignon blanc at $149.95 when the meal matters more than the toast, and the Veuve Clicquot when the label is doing part of the talking. Every box in this range clears our $100 free shipping threshold, so delivery Australia-wide adds nothing to the price. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post.

To see the rest of the range beside these six, champagne and sparkling wine hampers lines up every bottle we pack into a box, and Christmas hampers covers everything else we send in December.