Choosing a good wine can be a nightmare, especially if you’ve got someone to impress. You’re having a dinner party – you’ve planned the menu thoroughly, dusted off your best tableware and crystal glass, and got everything prepared – except for the wine selection. There’s just too much to think about, and it always seems like everyone else knows so much more about it than you do. You stand there for ages looking at the endless shelves of different bottles, and the more you wonder about it the harder it gets. That’s why we’ve put together a few tips for what to watch out for and how to choose the perfect wine to compliment your meal.
Firstly and most importantly, you should match the wine to the meal you will be eating. Everyone’s opinion is different when it comes to which wine will taste good with different foods, but there are a few basic rules that you can follow if you’re not sure. The easiest way is just to match the colour of the wine to the meat. So if you’re eating red meat select a dark red like Cabernet or Syrah. For lamb or pork dishes a medium bodied red like a Merlot will be less heavy whilst still having a rich flavour. Chicken and fish dishes can often be overpowered by reds so it’s best to go for a white instead, perhaps a Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc. If it’s a special occasion or celebration, you might be better off with a sparkling wine, served in fancy Champagne flutes.
Once you know what kind of wine you are looking for, look at where it was made. Wines from different regions are hugely different in quality, so it pays to do a bit of research into the best regions. If you’re not sure, France is always a good choice and has been producing good quality wines for hundreds of years. Italy is another good choice, and Chilean wines are also very popular at the moment, particularly reds.
Another thing it’s worth checking is the vintage of the wines you’re choosing from, or the year they were bottled. A real wine buff will already know which were the good years for each region, and will only buy vintages they know came from a particularly good crop. For the rest of us non-experts, it can seem like a lot of guesswork, but if you know the basics you’ll at least be on the right track. That all wines get better as they get older is a common misconception. It’s true that most red wines do improve with a little aging, but most wineries won’t distribute these reds for a couple of years after bottling to give them time to mature. This means from the minute they appear in stores they are ready to drink and will taste good. Most white and sparkling wines don’t need aging, and taste good if drunk straight away.
How many of us really know anything about wine? Most people are probably familiar with that feeling you get when you stand there looking at the rows and rows of bottles, and have no idea what it is you’re actually supposed to be looking for. We assume that expensive wines cost more because they’re better and cheap wines should therefore probably be avoided, but is there really any truth to this? I have tried cheap wines that have tasted fine, and expensive ones that have been horrible – not all of them by any means, but they do exist and how are we supposed to know which ones to choose?
It’s like the theory that drinking from crystal glass makes wine taste better than regular glasses. It’s true that it is definitley nicer to drink out of a crystal glass, they feel nice to hold and they make that lovely sound when you tap them, but I’ve yet to see any evidence that it actually affects the flavour of the drink. A nasty wine will taste nasty whatever you drink it from – just think of the familiar grimace on people’s faces when they take a sip from their posh celebratory Champagne flutes, only to be reminded that they’ve always hated Champagne and are only drinking it because it’s what you’re supposed to do. So maybe think about presenting it in posh decanters and wine glasses.
A true wine buff would tell you they can tell the vintage of a good wine and the region where it was bottled just from tasting it. However in the opening episode of BBC4’s recent mini documentary series entitled (rather inventively, I thought!) Wine, an interesting scenario arose. A group of professional wine experts were given a taste from a mystery bottle and asked to guess its vintage. Most of them placed it somewhere in the 1980s, with the exception of one French expert who said 1928. It turned out it was from 1870, proving that they really didn’t have a clue.
So do factors like the age and vintage of a wine really make any difference in terms of the quality of wine? If even these knowledgable experts can’t tell the difference then it would seem that no, they probably don’t. Older wines are likely to be more rare, which might go some way to explaining why they cost more, but I bet those experts could have bought a whole crate of good 1980s wines for the same price as that one bottle from the 1800s would have cost. And in these times of the credit crunch do people really want to be paying so much more for fancy wines when it’s entirely possible they could get one just as good – or maybe even nicer – in Threshers for under a tenner?
Choosing a wine is hard enough, even with the aid of websites or books out there to help. Choosing the right wine glasses to go with your wine sometimes seems much harder!The correct glass brings out all the right stuff in the right wine. A good wine should be appreciated for its looks, its smell, and its flavour and so should be appreciated by the eyes and nose as well as the mouth.
if you’re in a bistro or bar, the only choice you’re likely to be offered is “large or small”?Professor Claus J. Riedel (as in the famous glassmaker) who was the first glass designer to realise that wines are affected by the shape and size of the wine glasses from which they are drunk.That shape will determine the depth of the aroma for different wines or direct wine to specific parts of the tongue.Different shapes and sizes will enhance fruitiness and others will emphasize tannin. Some shapes will keep Champagne from going flat.
Whatever wine glasses you choose, avoid the contemporary cone-shaped variety.It’s impossible to swirl the wine and the wide rim does nothing for appreciating the bouquet. There are those who claim fine lead crystal wine glasses are the only way to appreciate the aroma, colour and taste of a fine wine.Lead crystal wines glasses are beautiful, but can be expensive (unless you get them via an Internet retailer for example) but if you can afford them, they are well worth the extra.
So, do you really need dozens of different wine glasses and other specialist glasses such brandy glasses to be socially acceptable? Of course not! The four basic shapes that are good to have in any serious wine drinker’s cupboard:
1. Good white wine glasses should have a wide bowl and narrow rim.
2. Decent all-purpose red wine glasses should be shorter and wider than the white wine glass to allow better swirling and more surface area for maximum air contact – especially good for well-aged red wines.
3. Off-dry to sweet wines (like Piesporter) should be served in wine glasses with a slightly flared rim. This shape helps to guide the wine to the “sweetness” area of the palate much more quickly.
4. The classic champagne flute is the best style for sparkling wines as the long, narrow body concentrates the bubbles in a small surface area, intensifying the aroma and taste.
The right glassware is an integral part of the wine appreciation. Its true that you can get wine in cans or cardboard cartons and there may come a time when we drink wine through straws.Hopefully that day is a very long way off, because that would ruin many excellent wines!
Good glassware (not necessarily expensive glasses) is central to the enjoyment of a good wine.In fact, very expensive glassware is often not a sensible choice as they tend to have long stems and a high centre of gravity.A glass filled with wine is inherently unstable and there cant be anyone who drinks wine who hasn’t tipped over the occasional glass at some time. Wine glasses will break and theres nothing you can do except to buy glasses that are fairly sturdy and reasonably priced.
A good wine glass ideally it should be made of glass. It should be perfectly clear with no tints or opaque colours because apart from just holding the wine, glassware should also display it. The true deep colour of a wine can be a beautiful sight in a clear, clean glass just as a range of bottles can be impressive in a well constructed wine rack.A decent glass should also enhance, or at the very least preserve, the wine’s bouquet. Good wine glasses are narrower at the top than at the bottom to concentrate the aromas of the wine. Experienced wine drinkers swirl the wine in the glass to release more of its bouquet.
So if you plan to buy a wine gift this Christmas, any decent collection of glasses will do the trick. The only truly unacceptable wine glass is the one most associated with the high life in popular culture and the cinema – the saucer-like champagne glass – guaranteed to make the wine go flat in record time. It is perfect for a shrimp cocktail starter, but otherwise for champagne and sparkling wines use a flute.
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