7 best wine advent calendars to savour in December 2023

Back when chocolate advent calendars were about as exciting as December got, Virgin Wines did us all a favour and introduced the UK’s very first wine advent calendar. The retailer has since expanded its range to six calendars, including ones containing gins and beers instead of vino, but this original mixed wine calendar remains the perfect choice for anyone who wants a bit of everything. We loved the classy holly wreath design on the box, too.

There’s a fantastic selection of wine inside from smaller and more unusual producers, rather than bog-standard names you’ll know from the supermarket. All of the bottles are 187ml, and our favourites included a zesty French sauvignon blanc by Le Zeitgeist; a spicy, moreish shiraz cabernet from Borrowdale, and a surprising Australian sparkling option from Woolundry Road – it’s a dead ringer for champagne. No need to feel sad opening the final door on Christmas Eve, either – the calendar has an extra 25th door hiding a full-size bottle to go with Christmas dinner. It may be one of the largest calendars we’ve tested, but it’s one of the best value buys too.

There’s no avoiding the fact wine advent calendars don’t come cheap, but this is the least expensive of the ones we tested. It comes in an attractive – albeit fairly large – box that’s around 53cm tall, so you will need to find somewhere to stash it throughout December. There is a plastic handle on top, so it’s not too difficult to move around. Be aware that a list of all the wine inside is printed on the outside of the box too, so you might want to avoid that, if you’d prefer a surprise.

There’s a real mix of wine in this calendar– while the majority of vinos included are from France, there are also bottles from Chile, Germany, Italy, Australia and the US. In general, they are easy-drinking crowd-pleasers – such as JP Chenet cabernet sauvignon syrah and Badger’s Creek shiraz cabernet – that will work well with food.

It was great to find a more unexpected selection, too, including El Emperador cabernet carménère, plus two very welcome – and decent – bottles of fizz, with Brut Dargent chardonnay.

The calendar is particularly good value for money, as more than half of the bottles inside were a generous 250ml, instead of the usual 187ml. A real festive find.

There’s nothing boring about Brixton Wine Club. Established by friends in a South London flat in 2017, it aims to demystify the world of wine and introduce drinkers to independently produced canned wines, which can be easily stored and drunk without the faff. It now offers a subscription service and even hosts a monthly tasting club in London. This advent calendar is a great introduction to the company’s excellent, unpredictable wine choices, and comes with brief but helpful tasting notes.

As each wine comes in a can, the calendar is considerably lighter than the others we tested, and the golden outer box was easy to store. We also loved that the cans were easy to recycle, and we were genuinely excited to discover what was behind each door, as there were no dull fillers included here. Some of our favourites were the Defy organic Italian red wine and the Nice sparkling white from La Mancha, Spain. There’s even a pre-mixed gin and sparkling wine cocktail hiding behind a door, as an extra festive surprise.

This feels like a real festive treat before you’ve even opened any of the doors. We loved the look of this calendar from Freixenet, which is a midnight blue box decorated with gold Christmas trees and tied with a black ribbon. Inside, each ‘door’ opens like a small box, with a simple tab closure, compared with most other wine calendars, which have nail-breakingly stiff cardboard doors that need popping open. If you’re careful, you could even reuse this one next year.

The bottles inside have a real celebratory feel, as there are plenty of Freixenet’s glamorous stippled bottles, plus wines from big-name brands, including I heart, Mionetto and Mouton Cadet. Half are 200ml, the remaining half are 187ml and wines include the ever-popular pinot grigio, merlot and sauvignon blanc. There are also white and rosé versions of both cava and prosecco, so it’s easy to toast the Christmas season as you go.

More unusually, there are four bottles of alcohol-free bubbly inside, too. We welcomed the chance to try them before investing in full-size bottles come Dry January, but some people may feel a touch disappointed, if they’re hoping for a well-earned glass of wine that day.

OK, so there are no actual doors to open on this calendar, but if you’re looking for something you can use year after year, this is perfect. This wooden tree comes in four separate sections that slot together easily and the whole thing looks more like a Christmas decoration than an advent calendar when assembled – you could even paint it, if you really wanted it to match your décor.

It comes with 24 187ml bottles of wine, but these can easily be replaced next year with your own choices. There’s nothing too daring about the wine selection but this one is less about discovering new producers and more about receiving a go-with-anything tipple to brighten each day. Think fruity pinot grigios, food-friendly merlots and cheerful zinfandels. All this and a wine advent calendar for life.

There’s no better time to indulge in some bubbles than during December, and, with this calendar, you’ll get 24 mini bottles of fizz to make every day feel festive. Though large, the calendar is lovely to look at, in a cream and gold box with bauble decorations on the front. It doesn’t give away the contents on the side, which gets a major thumbs up from us, but the doors are heavy-duty cardboard, so quite tricky to open.

Finding fizz every day really makes this calendar feel extra special, though, and it would make a great gift to treat a loved one. Inside, there’s a range of prosecco and sparkling wine, including Bottega casa prosecco DOC, Trevisana prosecco and the rose-scented Bottega Il vino dell’amore petalo moscato. We reckon it would bring a sparkle to any Christmas countdown.

Get ahead and pre-order this wine advent calendar from beer club Wine52 and it will be yours for £75, a whopping £15 less than the RRP and excellent value. Arriving in a neat navy blue box that won’t have you rearranging your house to find room to store it, it features 24 187ml bottles of red, white and rosé wine, none of which are repeated.

Best of all, there’s a range of unexpected vinos included rather than the same-old-same-old plonk that pops up in plenty of wine advent calendars. We were particularly intrigued to find wines from Hungary and North Macedonia behind some doors which will add a twist to the festive season for any curious wine buff. Other bottles we rated included a juicy valpolicella DOC and a lively, lime-laced sauvignon blanc from Chile’s Casablanca Valley which beat a daily chocolate hands-down.