Tasting, tasting, one, two, three!

Christmas is a time for celebration and few things are more acceptable than gifts of wine, chocolates or other goodies to help make the festive season particularly special. But what's available? And, just as importantly, how do you get it to your clients in time for them to enjoy it?

Seasonal gifts needn't wait until the end of December. Chocolate advent calendars are growing in popularity and Sweet Concepts (www.sweetconcepts.com) has a range to suit all budgets. Its most luxurious calendar contains bite-sized bars of Ritter chocolate in six assorted flavours (hard to tell which is the yummiest). The firm also offers one which it claims to be 'the smallest advent calendar in the world'. Measuring a mere 113mm x 77mm, the tiny advent calendar is filled with small sweets and slips easily into standard-sized envelopes for mailing - very clever!

A surprise gift loses something of its attraction if the recipient has to trek to an out-of-town sorting office to collect it. Geneiva Chocolates (www.geneivachocolates.co.uk) and its sister company Hotel Chocolat (same website), which specialises in chocolates by post, have come up with a good solution. Not only do the firms offer an impressive range of boxed chocolates, the special postal packs have been designed to fit through a standard letterbox.

Personalised mailing boxes are available from Belgium's Best (www.belgiumsbest.com) in which to send its chocolate telegram. Chocolate squares, each carrying an individual letter of the alphabet, are arranged to spell a message. Gaps between words are indicated by blank squares of white chocolate. Forget remembering to include seasonal messages: with the chocolate telegram, the message IS the gift!

Hampers are traditional at Christmas, but traditional doesn't mean boring. Brown and Forrest (www.brownandforrest.co.uk), for example, offers boxes packed with produce smoked on their own premises using traditional methods. The firm produces a variety of unusual smoked items including ostrich, venison, boar and apple sausages, and a variety of cheeses. The mouth-watering Christmas Box includes smoked salmon, trout, eel, duck, bacon, chicken, ham and cashews or almonds.

Good quality hampers needn't cost the earth. Harrods (www.harrods.co.uk), for example, is famed for its hampers and yet some prices are as low as £30. Hampers often contain items new to the recipient, which is part of their attraction. Many hampers contain items which can be retained and used after the edible items have been consumed, and the container itself is often highly desirable. In Spicers' (www.spicersofhythe.co.uk) 'Golden Glow' hamper for example, items are packed within a fully-fitted picnic basket.

Hampers make a great group gift. Thorntons www.thorntons.co.uk, for example, offers a Corporate Christmas Party Box which is packed with party poppers, indoor sparklers, balloons and wine as well as chocolate, Turkish delight, toffee, fudge, truffles and even a model chocolate santa and Rudolph. It's a nicely-designed, fun gift.

Within the UK most hamper suppliers use 24-hour couriers to ensure that their produce arrives in peak condition, and can also arrange for delivery to individual addresses from a mailing list. The weight of hampers can make sending them overseas expensive and certain of the contents can cause problems. As a general rule of thumb if the hamper is acceptable to send to Australia (which has some of the toughest import regulations), it's acceptable to go to most places.

Liquid gifts are well received at any time and most suppliers have a price range which is flexible enough to suit any budget. Specialist firms despatch everything from a single bottle of £3 wine to cases of top Champagne costing many thousands of pounds.

Customers can, for example, send a two-bottle pack of wine to their chosen business contacts, but vary the contents and price according to the tastes and status of the individual recipient. Most good wine merchants carry stocks large enough for all but the most exacting orders and can source particular requirements. Great Western Wine (www.greatwesternwine.co.uk) for example, carries a range of over 1,500 wines and has more than 3½ million bottles in stock! Surely enough to cater for even the most unusual taste!

The Vintners Selection (www.vintnersselection.co.uk) offers a choice of 200 wines which can be packed as special gifts for orders of 12 or more, while Waverley Direct (www.waverley-direct.co.uk) selects over 100 products to group into gift collections. Food and wine sets are extremely popular gifts and many suppliers, including Great Western Wine, Groovy Chocolate (www.groovychocolate.com) and Ultimo Chocolates (www.ultimochocolates.co.uk), have a variety of tempting gift ranges.

Packing wine for safe shipment is a specialist task and most companies use double-skinned packaging to ensure that the wine in its seasonal giftwrap remains in pristine condition. The Wine Schoppen (www.wineschoppen.co.uk) offers particularly innovative packaging symbolising co-operation. Interlocking partnership bottles are strapped together and the "bi-bottle", with a cork at either end, gives the impression of two people shaking hands. Shipping alcohol abroad can be problematic and very expensive so, rather than importing wine merely to export it again, some suppliers offer to organise wine shipments to recipients within the country of source.

Christmas gifts are an annual and perennial problem, but gifts of specialist foods and wines are a great idea, particularly at a time of year when people celebrate with family and friends. Treat your recipient to a little luxury and leave them to decide whether they indulge solo or share it with others!