Pocket-friendly drinks, hampers and subscriptions to gift on Father’s Day

Today’s drinks recommendations suggest pocket-friendly treats for wine, spirit or beer lovers this Father’s Day. For tight budgets, even a small gesture of a token-sized gift can feel very thoughtful. A sipper of a barrel-aged brew for the curious beer drinker, for example; a dram-sized (30ml) tasting bottle for a whiskey lover; or a bottle of wine to introduce a new-to-them region.

These gifts are all scalable so, for deeper pockets, you could extend to a pair of barrel-aged beers for a comparative tasting, a bundle of personally selected drams for an adventure through styles, or a gift set of wines that celebrate the stages and ages of the wine and its growers and makers. If you pool between siblings, you could scale up with gift sets, hampers or subscriptions.

A mixed box of craft beer is a smart gift for adventurous palates. Ardkeen’s 12 Irish Craft Beer Can & Snack Selection (€50, ardkeen.com) makes a great-value introduction to Irish craft breweries and styles — and comes with quality snacks like Blanco Nino Tortilla Chips. For monthly beer subscriptions, try Molloy’s, O’Briens, Lotts & Co or thecru.ie: these typically cost around €30 per month for six beers of varied styles with tasting notes.

Molloy’s and O’Briens also offer wine subscriptions, as do boxofwine.ie and winesdirect.ie. Most cost €55-€60 for a curated monthly delivery of three wines with tasting notes. Wines Direct’s monthly subscription offers are particularly strong, and its ‘Vines’ plan (€90 for six bottles, including bubbles on your birthday) is great value.

For a few years, several distilleries also ran excellent subscription services with regular deliveries of limited releases (a silver lining of pandemic lockdowns). The Celtic Whiskey Club delivered exciting whiskeys, including cask samples, limited editions and exclusive bottlings every second month, with live Twitter tastings. Sadly, these have been largely concluded — or suspended (there is talk of a Celtic Whiskey Club relaunch).

Happily, threedrams.com is still going strong, organised by Irish whiskey website irishmalts.com, with monthly live tastings presented on various social media channels by Matt Healy of potstilled.com along with featured distillers. It’s a versatile model, starting with a one-month tasting box of three 30ml samples plus a whiskey journal (€36.95).

A digital gift card (from €94.95 for three months) allows recipients to kick-start their subscription anytime, with the option of monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly deliveries. For tight budgets, there’s currently a sale on previous months’ sample boxes at just €13.97, and some of the live tastings are still viewable on X (formerly Twitter).

A fun alternative, if without the communal tasting aspect, is to peruse the broad selection of 30ml drams in Dublin’s Celtic Whiskey Shop or its online off-shoot, dramsdelivered.com. Choose a tasting pack from a favourite whiskey brand, or pick and mix distilleries and styles, with tasting-size bottles ranging from €4 for The Busker Triple Cask Blend to €400 for the 2004 cask-strength release of Midleton 20th Anniversary.

Of the tasting packs, the Spot Range Whiskey Sample Pack (€48.50) features six 30ml drams from this historic collaboration between Mitchells and Irish Distillers. For whiskey fans with an analytical bent, the Bushmills 16-Year-Old Deconstruction Tasting Pack (€37.50) includes samples of each cask-strength, single malt element in the final blend, finished in bourbon, Oloroso sherry and port casks respectively, plus a dram of that final result too.

Drinks of the week

Bodega Matsu El Recio Tempranillo, Toro, Spain, 14.5pc, €25-€29 This bold red wine is one of a trio of biodynamically grown, old-vine Tempranillo, available individually or in a set (€90). El Recio (or ‘tough guy’) is the reserva wine, aged in French oak for 14 months. There’s also the younger El Picaro (or ‘rascal’) and the older El Viejo (or ‘old guy’), aged for 16 months. Mitchells, Molloy’s, Pinto Wines, DrinkStore, 64 Wine, The Wine Centre, Carry Out, thenudewineco.ie

Dot Wild Four-Year-Old Barrel Aged Wild Raspberry, 7.2pc, €14.95 (375ml) Sweeney’s D3 (along with other independents) carries fascinating barrel-aged beers from Dot Brew, such as this intense ale, aged for four years in bourbon casks with fresh raspberries for complex fruit, balsamic, liquorice and yeast notes, or its Barrel Aged Barley Wine, aged in Oloroso with a Riesling single malt finish (17.6pc, €13.95). Sweeney’s D3; sweeneysd3.ie

Blue Spot Single Pot Still Seven-Year-Old Cask Strength, 58.9pc, €11.50 (30ml) The youngest and feistiest of the historic Spot family, this cask-strength limited release is aged in bourbon casks, sherry butts and Portuguese Madeira casks, for tropical fruit, spiced apple, nutty and toasted notes. Go a full bottle (€100) or a tasting dram (30ml). A bundle of specially chosen drams would be a fun gift. Celtic Whiskey Shop, dramsdelivered.com