Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program If rated on looks alone, this would get five stars, but the items inside ranged in quality and size, with most items having underwhelming portions and an ok taste.
Here's a rundown of each item contained inside:
*Chocolate Chip Cookies: 1 star
These awful, crumbly, dry cookies had no chocolate chips at all. We threw them out for lack of flavor. Ugh.
*Cashew Roca: 3 stars (5 for flavor, 1 for portion)
They had a delicious buttery flavor, both sweet and salty, but the nearly 6 inch tall package came with only THREE tiny two inch candies.
*Chocolate Fudge: 3 stars
Box the size of an index card and 3/4 inch deep comes with only two small 1"x1"x.5" candies. Tiny portion of average tasting fudge. If you've had fudge before, then you've had this. Not bad, not great. Just your average fudge in a less than average size.
*Butter Cookies: 3 stars
Decent size portion with 10 cookies (5 kinds). Cookies are your average butter cookies. Fine.
*Chocolate Biscotti: 2 stars
Comes with one standard biscotto, rather dry and bland, but then again, so are all other biscotti, so par for the course.
*Chocolate Wafer cookies: 4 stars
Nice, light, crispy texture. Better in vanilla, but the chocolate ones offered are pretty good. Decent portion.
*Chocolate Cream Puffs: 3 stars (5 for flavor and 2 for portion)
The texture and flavor of these treats was very tasty, but inside the huge package was one small handful. Incredibly small portion.
*Peppermint Popcorn: 3.5 stars
Tastes strongly like a candy cane. If you like candy canes, you'll like this; if not, then this will have an obnoxiously strong flavor.
*Dolcetto Wafer Rolls: 5 stars!
Delicious--my favorite treat in the basket. The portion was good, and the light crispy outside surrounding a creamy vanilla filling made this the highlight of an otherwise mediocre basket. Very good!
*Truffle Cookies: 3 stars
Two chocolate-covered cookies. They are ok, but they are certainly not the best around. Pepperidge farm, for example, makes far yummier cookies with chocolate.
*Caramelized Belgian Cookies: 4 stars (5 stars for flavor and 2 for portion)
Comes with only 6 thin, individually-wraped cookies. The cookies are delicious, and some of you might recognize them from some airlines that offer them. Sweet, but not too sweet, with a unique flavor.
Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program I really didn't expect much out of a goodie basket bought online but was pleasantly surprised at both the variety and the tastiness of everything: it was all really good.
The packaging is less than romantic (lots of individually wrapped single-servings) but it all came out fresh, and there's quite a lot of food here. For a sensible presentation be prepared to do some unwrapping and setting out. The little boxes you see are just the cover for the individual foil wraps inside.
Incidentally, don't skip the peppermint popcorn. We ate that last because we didn't think it would be very good (there was always something else winning the competition for "oo, let's try that one next!") but when we did finally try it, it immediately became my favorite. It's more of a hint of peppermint than you might expect from the name and was great stuff.
And really, I can't dock it for the packaging either, since what it loses in romanticism it gains in practicality. No need to open one big air sealed bag and have to eat everything inside before it goes stale. With the exception of the popcorn and the wafer rolls, everything being individually sealed meant you could open a box, try something and get back to the rest of it a few days later, as the remaining servings would still be sealed.
Buy Wine.com The Golden Gourmet Gift Basket Now
Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program First off, the gift basket was very well-packed, and surprisingly, most everything fared well in transit. At an initial glance the gift basket is gorgeous. With a beautiful bow and a nice basket holding the goodies along with the coordinating colors the foodstuff is packaged in, it's just a very elegant product. As opposed to having products from one single manufacturer, this gift basket is comprised of eleven separated companies, which I think is a great way to try out new items. While I won't be listing any specifics about calories or portion sizes, I did glance through the ingredients and there wasn't anything too bad for a basket full of sweets.
Here's a list of products rated worst to best:
Torani Chocolate Biscotti (1 biscotti) If you like chocolate and biscotti, you may like it, but I wasn't very impressed.
Cashew Roca (3 individually wrapped) Pretty decent. Has a nice crunch without feeling like your teeth will break off and the toffee had a good flavor to it.
Biscoff European Cookies (6 individually wrapped) They're good, somewhat reminiscent of a shortbread cookie, but I can live without them.
Beth's Chocolate Chip Cookies These did not ship well at all. About a third were broken because they're rather crumbly cookies (about 1" diameter), but I liked them because they're kinda buttery. Can't really taste any chocolate chips though.
Chocolate Cream Puffs Tiny bite-sized cream-filled chocolate wafers that are nice and flaky. A nice treat.
Peppermint Popcorn Crunch This was definitely the oddball of the gift basket. I was a bit tentative when I first thought "peppermint popcorn!" until I saw it was toffee popcorn with flakes of peppermint. I ended up really liking this because the flavors really complement each other and it's a rather refreshing snack.
Classic Chocolate Wafer Cookies (12 square cookies) The name of these cookies is actually misleading, as they are a vanilla wafer with a fudgy filling. A good treat that is low in calories and isn't that sweet.
Claey's Kettle Fresh Fudge (2 individually wrapped) I am not a big fan of non-peanut butter fudge, but I loved this chocolate fudge! Nice and creamy, with a nice texture. Rich, without rotting out my teeth. Sign me up!
Angelina's Sweet Butter Cookies (10 cookies in 5 different shapes) I adore butter cookies and these are probably the best I've ever had. Totally addictive, but oh so worth it!
Dolcetto Wafer Rolls (About 24 3-4" rolls) Described as "Every bite will melt in your mouth," which is so true! Very, very yummy and better than any wafer rolls I've ever had before.
Chocolate Truffle Cookies (2 individually wrapped cookies) To. Die. For. So light and crunchy and delicious! For being dipped into chocolate, these aren't too rich. Utter perfection.
All of the items had the perfect amount of sweetness added, which was great for me as while I have a sweet tooth, I don't like anything too sugary.
Overall, I am very impressed with this gift set, from how it looks to what items were selected and how they taste, it's almost heavenly. Since I don't know what this will sell for, I can't say if it's a good deal or not yet, but I definitely think this would be a great gift for family and friends who enjoy high quality gourmet sweets.
Read Best Reviews of Wine.com The Golden Gourmet Gift Basket Here
As mentioned in the title I bought this gift basket as a retirement present for a coworker. After looking at different gift basket options on amazon and after seeing generally positive reviews I decided to give the wine.com golden gourmet gift basket a try. I am basing this review on how I received the product and how it was packaged (as it was a gift I am unable to rate flavor/quality of the items but I will update if I hear from the person), overall the package itself looks great and is quite impressive as a gift, the basket looks to be of good quality and the items were all intact.The size of the package itself is "just right" in my books and one that neither seems overbearing or lacking. For the price of ~$40 I would recommend you give it a try, from what I've seen from other retail priced gift baskets this seems to be a good way to go.
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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program This "Golden Gourmet" gift basket was, in a word, huge. It arrived on my doorstep in a very large box, and I found it beautifully packaged just as it is pictured here. It looked like it might take at least a month for a single person to work their way through this collection of eleven sweet treats. Once I started opening the various boxes, however, I noticed that the large boxes belied the small sample servings inside. For example, the biscotti box offered only a single chocolate biscotti; indeed most of the boxes were (perhaps deliberately?) far larger than the foil wrappers inside. Or, as with the tiny chocolate cream puffs, the product itself only filled half the foil wrapper. That all proved somewhat disappointing, although since we're provided with eleven separate items, there is still a lot here to taste and enjoy.
It is worth noting that this is an entirely sweet gift basket with no savory/salty items whatsoever. Unlike the various gift baskets out there with wine, cured meats, crackers, and sweets, this is in no way a meal replacement or a "picnic in a box"; it's very much a mini dessert cart that one should dip into between meals or perhaps after dinner.
As for the individual treats, everyone might have a different favorite and least favorite. For me, I personally loved the cashew roca with its crunchy toffee interior and soft, nutty exterior. I was disappointed to discover only three tiny, inch-long samples in the box. My least favorite was, without a doubt, Beth's Chocolate Chip Cookies. That package consisted of around eight small, crumbly, gritty cookies, most of which had no chocolate chips whatsoever. The rest of the gift basket fell somewhere in the middle for me, with perhaps a couple too many filled-wafer-type offerings. The sweet popcorn was a pleasant surprise, which I saved for last.
Having worked my way through this box, largely on my own in pretty small doses, over the course of a week, I am left wondering the intended audience for this type of product. A very small office might enjoy it, but beyond four or five people, there's not going to be much of anything to share. I'm left to wonder how an office, or even a family, could effectively split a single chocolate biscotti. Still, it's a beautiful basket with eleven sweet samplings, and few can argue with that.
I purchased this kit mostly out of curiousity. I have been making wine for a couple years and have only purchased Wine Expert kits which have been ok. This is the first 6week kit of any kind I have done. It is in the secondary aging at the present time but, when I transfered it and tasted it I was suprised at how well it tasted and the amount of body it had. I will do a update once I bottle it but, at the present time I am considering purchasing the Amarone version of this kit. Update on 07/09/2010. this wine has been in the bottle for a while now and is 6 months old from the day I pitched the yeast. Opened an bottle and was very suprised at how good it tasted compared to 3 months. I will let it age for 6 more months now. This is a kit I would do again.
