Holiday Gift Guide: Stocking Stuffers
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This November on LAST CALL our Holiday Gift Guides covered Holiday Advent Calendars, Food & Provisions, Drinks & Spirits, Lo Spirito d'Italia, and Cookbooks. Our final official Holiday Gift Guide is devoted to Stocking Stuffers. This is a super-sized dispatch and will likely be truncated in your Email, so be sure to click the “View Entire Message” link to expand.
Today’s LAST CALL Holiday Gift Guide is available to all readers thanks to the generous support of Le Moné.
We’re in the heart of the holiday season and, no matter the occasion, Le Moné’s award-winning, signature Meyer Lemon Apéritif is an all-natural, lighter, livelier, low-alcohol apéritif that’s perfect for any holiday gathering.
The wine-based apéritif is made from a blend of Traminette and Cayuga white wine from the Finger Lakes region of New York state, infused with Meyer lemon peel, Persian lime, and a bit of Italian bergamot for a floral note of honeysuckle. It’s then gently fortified with brandy and finished with lemon juice and organic blue agave, resulting in a snappy acidity with a light sweetness and lemon-lime aromatics, coming in at 16% alcohol by volume.
Le Moné is available in select bars, restaurants, and bottle shops in New York state and can be purchased online and shipped to 34 states and Washington, D.C. And other Le Moné flavors are also available exclusively online—each one built on the signature Meyer Lemon—including Almond & Vanilla, Orange & Lime, Lemon & Grapefruit, Lemon & Cucumber, and Raspberry & Lavender.
Use promo code LASTCALL23 to save $10.00 off your purchase of Le Moné. Limit one use per customer.
Featured Cocktail: Before and After
This refreshing highball is the drink to have in hand at your next holiday party. The equal-parts base plays up the light sweetness and distinct lemon-lime aromatics in Le Moné Meyer Lemon Aperitif balanced with the gentle bitterness and warm orange and honey notes of Amaro Nonino Quintessentia, a pleasing pop of carbonation and minerality from ice-cold soda water.
Makes 1 Drink
1-1/2 ounces Le Moné Meyer Lemon Aperitif
1-1/2 ounces Amaro Nonino Quintessentia
Chilled soda water
Garnish: lemon wedge
Combine the Le Moné Meyer Lemon Aperitif and Amaro Nonino Quintessentia in a highball glass filled with ice. Give it a quick stir to combine. Top with chilled soda water, pouring slowly down your mixing spoon to retain carbonation. Garnish with a lemon wedge.
Holiday Gift Guide: Stocking Stuffers
When it comes to Christmas I’m more into Christmas Eve, mostly for the build-up rather the actual event which is always over before you know it. Some families dig into their stockings on Christmas Eve, but growing up they were the first thing we were allowed to open before tackling any presents. Our personalized stockings (I still have my homemade felt green “Brad” stocking adorned with a little gingerbread man). The stockings were less an amuse bouche than a full-on appetizer, as my mother always stuffed them full of candy, chocolates, a satsuma or two, random toiletries, small wrapped gifts, scratch-off lottery tickets, and a jar of Turkey Joints. Over the years, as the contents of the stockings grew, we were greeted with small baskets with our empty stockings draped over them like a coffin at a military funeral.
My sister Victoria inherited our mother’s love, and appreciation, of Christmas stockings and even when I’m not back home for the holidays she ships me a stuffed stocking as big as a porchetta. I’m a sucker for any holiday-themed candy so there’s usually a few items in that category (always Peppermint Crunch Junior Mints and Reese's Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Trees) along with things like a new toothbrush, some Old Spice Fresh Deodorant, Tic-Tacs, Chapstick, beef jerky, and a big jar of the maple syrup that I love from the local high school’s Future Farmers of America club, and last year there were some disposable insole foot warmers that I think were meant for my brother-in-law. She continues our mother’s traditions with a jar of Turkey Joints, a new ornament for my tree, some jam from the Mennonite farm stand down the road from her house, a few scratch-off lottery tickets, and a gift card to Trader Joe’s or a favorite restaurant. The past few years she’s sent me a gift card for Bamonte’s, the 123-year-old Brooklyn red-sauce joint, which requires her to mail them a letter of request with a check, and they then mail her back the paper gift certificates, which she then sends to me. I love Bamonte’s, and I love my sister.
This is the final LAST CALL: Holiday Gift Guide of the season—I hope you’ve enjoyed exploring these over the past few weeks. But for me the phrase “Stocking Stuffers” doesn’t do justice to the last-minute, hodgepodge of gifts we associate with this festive tradition. What follows is a food, drinks, and restaurant-leaning lineup of items that might not actually fit in your Christmas stocking, but are things that I (and I hope, you) wouldn’t mind discovering in your stocking Christmas morning.
—BTP