  Bose-Einstein condensation in alkali atoms has materialized quite an
interesting system, namely a condensate with a spin degree of freedom. In
analogy with the A-phase of the superfluid $^3$He, numerous textures with
nonvanishing vorticity have been proposed. In the present paper, interesting
properties of such spin textures are analyzed. We propose a remarkably simple
method to create a vortex state of a BEC in alkali atoms.
