What's Inside the Mumm Sparkling & Gourmet Finest Hamper, Item by Item

There are seven things in the Mumm Sparkling & Gourmet Finest Hamper: a bottle of Mumm Marlborough Brut Prestige at 750ml, cocoa dusted Belgian truffles, Kangaroo Island honey popcorn, sea salt mini artisan crackers, Mediterranean olives, roasted peanuts and a fig and almond fruit pyramid. All of it sits in the French Blue box with the gold ribbon, and none of it needs a fridge.

The bottle: Maison Mumm, made in Marlborough

Mumm Marlborough Brut Prestige is made in New Zealand, not in Reims. It is Maison Mumm working with Marlborough fruit under Méthode Traditionnelle, and it is a Brut, so it pours dry rather than sweet. That is the reason it sits beside salty food instead of arguing with it.

The distinction matters when you are buying for someone who knows the difference, so it is worth being plain about it. If the recipient is expecting Champagne from Champagne, the G.H.Mumm Champagne & Gourmet Finest Hamper at $249.95 holds the same six foods around a bottle of Cordon Rouge NV from Reims. The bottle is the only thing that changes between the two boxes. If all they want is something cold and good on Christmas Eve, the Marlborough bottle is the one we reach for most often, and this box is one of the most popular we pack.

The Mumm Sparkling & Gourmet Finest Hamper sits in the $100 to $150 part of the range, the band worth looking at when one bottle and a spread of food is the whole gift, and it is a fixture on our best selling hampers page.

The seven things, and what each one is

Seven items, plus the box they travel in. Here is what each one is, and what it is there to do.

1. Mumm Marlborough Brut Prestige, 750ml. The one item in the box that is not food: Méthode Traditionnelle sparkling from Marlborough, dry rather than sweet, and the thing the other six are chosen to sit beside.
2. Mini Artisan Crackers with Sea Salt, 110g. Valley Produce Company, crisp and light, and small enough that one cracker is a single mouthful. The base: once the box is open, the olives, the peanuts and the fig paste all behave like toppings.
3. Kangaroo Island Mediterranean olives, 185g. A mixed variety of seasonal olives, picked across the harvest window. Drain them into a bowl before they go anywhere near the crackers.
4. VPC Luxury Nuts roasted peanuts, 100g. Whole Australian peanuts, roasted and lightly salted. The bowl nobody makes a decision about. It empties anyway.
5. VPC fruit pyramid, fig and almond, 75g. Black mission figs and crushed roasted almonds pressed into a block, and the hinge between the savoury end of the box and the sweet one. Cut it into thin slices rather than serving the block whole.
6. Kangaroo Island honey popcorn, 80g. Honey popcorn from Kangaroo Island Produce Company, made with Ligurian bee honey from the island. Where the sweet end of the box starts.
7. TCE Belgian dusted truffles, cocoa, 150g. Creamy Belgian chocolate lightly dusted with cocoa, and the one item to move somewhere cool the moment the lid comes off.

The eighth thing is the box itself: the premium hamper box in French Blue with a gold ribbon, which in most houses outlives the food by several years and ends up holding something else entirely.

Why nothing in the box is chilled

That is deliberate. A parcel sent in the second week of December can spend several days in transit, and a delivery van standing in the sun in December is warmer inside than the day outside. Every food item here is sealed and safe to sit on a doorstep until somebody gets home. Nothing in the box is chilled, fresh or short dated, which is the whole reason it is built the way it is.

The truffles are the one item worth a thought. Cocoa dusting is more forgiving than a chocolate shell, and the whole thing ships in an insulated shipper box, but they are still chocolate, so the recipient should put them in a cupboard on arrival rather than leave them out. That is the only piece of handling this box asks for.

Tipped into bowls it becomes a grazing board in about two minutes, which is the way to serve it if people are going to be standing around it.

Who it suits, and when to size up

This one is built for a household of two or three: a couple, a set of parents, a client you know well enough to send food to rather than wine alone. There is a bottle to share, a savoury half and a sweet half, and it is finished in one sitting without anything left over that feels like leftovers.

For a house of five, or the house hosting Christmas Day, treat it as the opening act rather than the whole gift and size up instead. The wider Christmas hampers range holds the bigger boxes. If it is the bottles you want to read about rather than the boxes, start with our post on the G.H.Mumm and Mumm Marlborough range.

Common questions before you send it

Is the Mumm in this hamper Champagne?

It is sparkling wine. Mumm Marlborough Brut Prestige is made in New Zealand by Maison Mumm using Méthode Traditionnelle, and Champagne can only come from Champagne. If the label has to read Champagne, the G.H.Mumm Champagne & Gourmet Finest Hamper carries the same six foods around a bottle of Cordon Rouge NV.

What happens if one item is out of stock?

Very occasionally a single component runs out between your order and the packing bench. When that happens we substitute a product of equal or higher value, and in almost every case we keep it in the same category, so a swap usually means a different variety of the same thing rather than a different kind of thing.

Does it arrive ready to give?

Yes. The hamper is hand packed in Corio, on the northern edge of Geelong, finished in the French Blue box with a gold ribbon, and sent inside an insulated shipper box so the contents are protected in transit. A personalised gift card is included at no extra cost, and every parcel is tracked.

Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100, which this box clears on its own. Write the card message at the checkout rather than after, because it is the part people forget and the part the recipient reads first. Enjoy responsibly.

Have a look at the Mumm Sparkling & Gourmet Finest Hamper with the item list above open, and you will know exactly what lands on their doorstep.