Wine Tip of the Week #7

Tasting wine in a restaurant. It’s amazing how many people are confused about what to do when a waiter offers a taste of your wine prior to pouring. Do I sniff the cork? Do I touch the bottle? Swirl? Sniff? Send it back? Do the hokey pokey and turn myself around? So, let’s take a step back here.

The purpose of tasting your wine prior to pouring is to check quality and temperature. You want to taste the wine to be sure it is free from cork taint and oxidation. A corked bottle of wine has been infected by a pesky mold called Trichloroanisole (TCA) and an oxidised bottle of wine will have been exposed to excess oxygen, rendering it undrinkable. So how do you know?

Please do not smell the cork. Smell the wine. Taste the wine as you normally would- swirl- sniff-sip and look for off-aromas like wet newspaper, mustiness, or even a complete lack of smell. These are all signs of a bottle that is suffering from one of the aforementioned problems. If you feel that you’ve got a sick bottle, send it back without hesitation. You should never pay for a damaged bottle of wine.

Then decide if your wine is at the appropriate temperature. Hopefully it has been stored at the proper temperature at the restaurant but if not, have them chill it down if need be. If everything tastes right, give the waiter the OK sign, and he will pour around the table.

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Wine Tip of the Week #6

In the world of wine, oxygen is both your friend and your enemy. Wines are decanted or aerated so that friendly oxygen can slip into your wine in small doses. The oxygen, in effect, allows your wine to breathe and release newly developed aromas and flavors.

Oxygen is your enemy when you let an open bottle of wine sit on the counter and heavy doses of oxygen attack the wine, stripping it of its essences. Everything in moderation.

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Wine Tip of the Week #5

Temperature is everything. If your wine is too hot or cold, the flavors may be completely masked. People often serve their red wines too hot and their white wines too cold. The key is remembering the difference between storage temperature and serving temperature. Both red and white wines should be stored at the same temperature which is room temperature or 55 degrees F. However, when the wines are served you’ll want your white wines to be a little colder than room temperature and your reds to be a little warmer.

If you store your wines in a temperature stable wine refrigerator (at 55), a good way to achieve optimal serving temperature is to pop your white wine into the fridge about a half hour before serving and remove your red wine from the wine refrigerator about a half hour before serving.

If you’ve kept your white wines in a regular refrigerator (not ideal, but OK if you’re not storing for a long period of time), you’ll want to remove them from the fridge for about a half an hour before you serve them. A normal refrigerator temperature is generally too cold for serving white wine. Any questions?

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Wine Tip of the Week #4

Cooking with wine. People often wonder which wine to choose when a recipe calls for just “white wine” or “red wine.” It seems logical that one would want to use their cheapest wines to cook with- what a waste, right? Not so. Of course you don’t want to use a first growth Bordeaux to make a reduction, but it is never a good idea to use a cheap wine when you cook either. If you don’t want to drink it, why would you want your food to be slowly simmered in it? This will simply make your dish taste as cheap as the wine you cooked it in. Go with a decent, mid range wine. Typically dryer, less aromatic wines are better for cooking. Chardonnay is always a safe bet for white wine because it’s the least aromatic grape and is typically dry. If your recipe calls for red wine, Cabernet is a safe bet, depending on the dish. When your meal is ready, serve it with a similar wine to what you used in the dish otherwise you risk a clash of flavors. Keep it simple.

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