Wine tips, tricks & trivia
Compiled from various sources for a more pleasant wine experience.
- Storing wine away from direct light and heat preserves its freshness.
2. Storing wine bottles horizontally is best. It keeps the cork damp and prevents too much air from entering the bottle.
3. Over-chilling white wine closes down the flavour – the ideal white wine serving temperature is around 10-12 degrees.
4. To chill wine quickly, wrap the bottle in a wet tea towel and put in the freezer for 20 minutes.
5. When chilling wine, adding water to an ice bucket increases the surface area contact between a bottle and the cold, bringing the temperature down faster.
6. Decanting red wine before serving can mimic the ageing process, allowing oxygen to flood into the liquid and develop its flavour.
7. Experts only fill their wine glasses a third of the way. This leaves plenty of room in the glass for aromas to develop.
8. ‘Swirling’ a wine glass before tasting aerates the wine and helps to release its aromas.
9. Wine ‘tastings’ are somewhat inaccurately named – top sommeliers agree that smell is by far the most important sense when it comes to drinking wine.
10. There’s a widely accepted tasting process. Start by looking at the colour, then smell before you taste.
11. Moving the wine around in your mouth when tasting allows all of your taste receptors to fire. Sweetness is detected at the tip of the tongue, bitterness at the back and sourness on the sides.
12. There is a right and wrong way of holding the wine glass. The correct way is to hold the stem of the glass. The incorrect way is to hold the bowl of the glass. Doing it the wrong way will cause the hand’s heat to raise the temperature of the wine and change its taste.
13. Store wine glasses upright, with bowls facing up, to avoid them developing a dusty odour.
14. To remove red wine stains from clothes, remove excess moisture with a dry cloth, then cover with either milk or salt and allow to stand before washing.
15. In ancient Rome, women drinking wine was just not acceptable. A husband could just kill his wife if he found out that she drank wine! 194 BCE is the last recorded time of Roman history when a Roman man gave a divorce to his wife simply because she tasted/drank wine.
Do check out our extensive selection of fine wines and put the additional trick or two that you’ve learned to practise!
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