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1. Which glasses are best for what type of wine?
You can drink wine from any glass, even a paper cup if that's all you have.
It's like anything else, though--as your interest and experience levels increase, you tend to seek out some of the fun toys that improve on the experience.
But some glasses really do offer advantages. Glasses with bigger, tulip-shaped bowls improve red wines by capturing and showing off the aromas. Whites are served cooler, which can tamp down aromas, and are fine in the smaller, narrower glasses with less of a tapered rim. We drink our reds and whites out of the same big tulip-shaped glasses.
2. How much should you pour?
Five ounces is considered a serving for both white and red wine. But people tend to fudge, particularly when they're pouring into enormous glasses. We probably pour 6 ounces into our big glasses --7 on a night when we have a heavy hand. We are constantly swirling our wine before we drink. we like to leave enough room, about 2/3 of the glass, so when we swirl, we don't end up tossing wine all over our shirt.
3. Do I need to bring out new glasses every time I open a different bottle?
Not unless you have someone doing the dishes for you. Admittedly, it can be a nice touch if you're entertaining. But if it's just a typical dinner with wine, what we generally do is toss just a splash of the new wine into the glass, swirl it around to clean it out a bit and then drink it down. It's like creating a sip of my own personal house blend.
4. What's the best way to store wine?
It really depends. If you have half a bottle but you know you'll drink it the next day, just put a cork in it and store it on the counter. But if you know it's going to sit there for several days, you can do a few things to preserve it--because once the bottle is exposed to oxygen the wine begins to deteriorate.
Pour the remaining wine into a smaller container. A plastic water bottle works fine, and you can crinkle the edges to eliminate more air.
Vacuum pump it to draw out the air.
Cork it and refrigerate (which slows down the chemical reaction) but be sure to take red wines out in time to bring the temperature back up before drinking
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5. How long can I keep a bottle of wine for once it's opened?
If you can't manage it all in one sitting, the best bet is simply to pop the cork back in and put it in the fridge. It should still be OK the next day, and might even still be drinkable the day after that. But it will have changed a bit: as soon as a bottle is opened and the wine exposed to oxygen, the steady process of decline will have kicked in. Various preservation devices exist (e.g. vacuvin, inert gas), but these don't really work any better than putting the cork in and keeping the bottle in a cool place.
6. What is 'corked' wine?
Have you ever opened a bottle, and instead of clean, fruity aromas found that it smells of mouldy cellars and damp cardboard? This is what a corked wine smells like. Contrary to popular opinion a corked wine is not one that has bits of cork floating in it (this is totally harmless, fish the bits out and the wine will be fine); instead, it is a wine that has been contaminated by a chemical called trichloroanisole (TCA). The human nose is extremely sensitive to this contaminant (it can be detected at concentrations as low as parts per trillion!), which is a result of a chemical reaction between chlorine and cork. It is a major problem, spoiling between 1% and 7% of all wines, depending on who you listen to. This is why artificial corks are increasingly being used, especially on inexpensive wines not destined for ageing. The degree of cork-taint can vary, but you'll find that almost all retailers will replace a corked bottle without question if you return it.
7. I hear a lot about 'oaked' and 'unoaked' wines: what do these terms mean?
Oak barrels are an important and complicated variable in the production of the majority of serious red wines and an increasing number of whites.
Many white wines, and in particular Chardonnays, are fermented in small oak barrels. This, adds some complexity to the wine, and also imparts toasty, nutty and vanilla-like flavors to the wine, especially when the barrels are new.
Red wines are rarely fermented in barrels, but will often spend a lengthy period of ageing in them. Barrels allow a small amount of oxygen to come into contact with the wine, thus accelerating the development of more complex flavors, and when new oak is used, the wine picks up flavors of vanilla and spice and tannins from the wood. Different effects can be achieved depending on the type of oak used (commonly French or American, but Portuguese oak is quite different and is commonly used in Portugal, and Slovenian oak is often used in Italy). The quality of the wood used is important, as is the size of the barrel. It all gets rather complicated. Oak barrels are expensive, though, and for cheaper wines the effects of barrel fermentation and ageing are simulated by the use of oak chips or even used barrel staves bolted to the inside of stainless steel tanks. This practice is illegal in some more traditional wine-producing countries, and as you might expect, results can be variable. Because oak ageing can add an attractive lift to a wine, some producers have overdone it a bit, and the tasting term 'oaky' is pejorative taste term for a wine that has been given too much oak treatment. An oaky wine will usually taste and smell of freshly sawn wood, or may have sweet vanilla flavors.
8. Why do restaurants get people to taste a small sample of the wine before pouring it?
It's empathically not to see whether the punters like the wine or not. Instead, this tasting exercise serves to determine whether or not the wine is faulty, primarily through cork taint or oxidation. You can't just send a wine back because you don't like what you've chosen.
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9. What differences are there between vintages?
It depends. In cooler climates there tends to be more vintage variation; this is seen particularly in the classic regions of Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Loire of France, for example. In regions such as these.., there will typically be a few really good vintages, several average ones and a couple of real disasters. In warmer climates there's still a difference between vintages, but it's much less extreme. It's worth remembering that vintages vary widely from region to region within each country, and that in any one region there will be producers who did much better (and much worse) than average in a particular vintage.
10. What does the term 'Reserve' mean?
You'll often find the term 'reserve' on the label of a bottle, as it is a term used throughout the wine world. There is no formal definition of what makes a 'reserve' wine: producers usually use this to indicate a wine that is made from selected grapes or has been given lavish oak treatment.
11. Is a 600.000 vnd wine twice as good as a 300.000 vnd wine?
Difficult to answer: it's almost impossible to define wine quality objectively, and for any given sum you can get a range of good, bad and indifferent wines. But bear in mind that for a 600.000 vnd wine, proportionally more of the money will have been spent on the wine (taxes, shipping and duty add up to about half the cost of a 300.000 vnd wine), so the quality may well be much higher. However, as you spend more the law of diminishing returns comes into play, such that higher up the scale you have to pay a lot more for each increment in quality. And with highly sought-after wines you could be paying for the scarcity just as much as the quality.
12. What does the term 'Vieilles Vignes' or 'Old vines' mean?
You'll often find the term 'old vines' (in French 'vieilles vignes') on the label of a wine; it's becoming an increasingly popular marketing term. There is no legal definition, but it's usually used to refer to wine made from grape vines that are over 30 years old. Older vines, so the story goes, produce fewer grapes but those they do produce are of a better quality than fruit from younger vines. Really old vines of 80-100 years old are rare, but can produce some sensational wines.
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13. Why is the standard wine bottle size 75 cl (750 ml)?
Who knows? One attractive explanation I once heard is that this was considered just enough for a Frenchman to consume with his dinner each evening.
14. When and how should I decant a wine?
'Decanting' is transferring a wine from its bottle to another container, most commonly a decanter. There are two main reasons for decanting:
- first, bottle-aged red wines and Vintage Ports commonly have a lot of crud at the bottom, and careful decanting separates this from the wine.
- Second, decanting exposes the wine to air ¾ lets it 'breathe' ¾which may or may not allow the wine to express itself more fully. Received wisdom states that tannic young wines 'open out' (smell better) when they are decanted, although attempts to demonstrate this effect in blind tasting have largely been unsuccessful. If you decide to decant, the first thing you need to do is leave the bottle to stand for 24 h or more. Without joggling it around, pull the cork and try to pour it in one continuous, steady motion: stopping and starting the process will mix up all the gunk again, a bad thing.
15. How long can I keep a bottle of wine for? Will it improve with age?
It all depends on the wine in question and your cellar conditions. Wine is one of the few foodstuffs that can improve with age, and this is also one of its key fascinations. The longevity of different types of wine is a complex and inexact science: Given good cellaring conditions (cool, stable temperature is key among these) fine red wines will improve for many years after release, as will Vintage Ports and certain sweet and dry white wines; indeed, some wine styles (such as classed growth clarets from a good vintage) only begin to show what they are capable of after a decade in the cellar. But most everyday wines are best drunk on release. If you lack access to a proper cellar, a cool, dark area in the house may be suitable for short to medium-term storage.
16. What does the term 'terroir' mean?
Imagine that on your property you have three vineyards, one that has a clay-based soil, one that has a gravelly soil, and one that has chalky soil. Each of these vineyards is planted with the same grape variety, and the grapes are all handled the same way in the winery. Yet when you taste the finished wines from each site, each will have its own unique characteristics. Terroir is a French term which refers to exactly these site-specific differences in wines that are caused by factors such as soil types, drainage, local microclimate and sun exposure. Debate rages about the importance of terroir versus the role of the winemaker, and also exactly how factors such as soils influence the flavor of the wine.
17. What do the terms 'grape variety' or 'varietal wine' mean?
You've seen the words “Chardonnay”, “Sauvignon Blanc”, “Cabernet Sauvignon”, 'Shiraz' and 'Torrontes' on wine bottle labels. These are the names of different varieties of the wine grapevine, “Vitis vinifera”. There are dozens of different varieties commonly used to make wine, either on their own or in blends, and each contributes its own particular flavor profile to the finished product. A 'varietal' is a wine named after the single grape variety it was made from. This consumer-friendly practice began in earnest in the USA in the 1950s and is now so popular that the majority of wines from the new world now have the grape variety (or varieties, in the case of blends) on the label.
18. Why are some wines described as 'tannic'?
'Tannins' is the collective name for a bitter, astringent group of chemicals that are found in skins, pips and stems of grapes, and also in the oak barrels that are commonly used to age wine in. Take a young, dark monster of a red wine and swish it around your mouth. That bitter, tongue curling, tooth-coating, drying sensation you get is from the tannins. Tannins are used in the leather-making industry to turn cow hide into shoes, belts and posh sofas, so no wonder it feels like tough young wines are turning your mouth into leather! However, even though this description doesn't sound too appealing, tannins is a vital component of red wines. They contribute structure, which in turn facilitates ageing and thus the development of the complexity that comes from long-term cellaring. And without tannins to counter the fruit, most red wines would taste flabby and unbalanced.
19. What is 'structure' in a wine?
If you read the tasting notes then you might have come across the adjective 'structured', most likely in relation to a red wine. This rather abstract term refers to the elements of a wine that confer longevity, mainly tannins and acidity. Most Bordeaux style reds will have in their youth a structure mainly comprised of tannins, both from the oak they have been matured in and also the grape skins. In Burgundy and the Northern Rhône, the structure tends to be contributed both by the tannins and also the relatively high acidity.
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